Making a career change from Banking to Management Accounting

Hi All,

Its been a while since I posted here but I have been feeling a little unhappy recently and wanted to vent here and take on some wisdom from the direct/brutally honest people from WSO haha!

To save you from reading a long essay I will bullet point things below:

• I am a qualified accountant and I have been working in a bank for the last 8 years
• working in a relatively niche areas and there are few places I can really go since people tend to take hire people who have experience in that sector and my sector is relatively niche for the sell side, buy side roles are not really an option as I don't have the right level of financial modelling skills (and its not for me) to be successful in the role
• since I am a qualified accountant without the actual accounting experience I am thinking to move into a business and "restart" my career in industry. the issue here is that I would have to take on a junior position as I don't have the actual experience in preparing management accounts and will need hand on experience
• there are a number of reasons I would like to go to management accounting and one things I have realised is that outside of banking things are less competitive, your options are limited in terms of where you can go after (for every job in my sector there are 20 other jobs in accounting!!) I find the prospect of having a niche skill set when I am 40+ daunting as you will be too expensive and the number of jobs is low in this niche area anyway.
• my priorities is to have stability in my career and I can happily trade off a 6 figure salary for a more modest salary. If I don't take the "hit" now, it will be much harder to do this when I am mid thirties as people tend to have more established careers and hopefully I will have a family.

Have you guys ever thought of doing something a little different? and what do you think about the long term game of a 40 year career!?

The more money you make and senior you become the harder it is to move around? I would also say to the junior people out there that you should try to go into sectors that are always going to be hot areas like Real Estate Finance, Leveraged Finance. Things like Shipping, Project finance, aviation are niche areas and departments have been cut significantly recently