Is FP&A corporate finance?
As the title states.
If it is, I got an FP&A intern offer from a midsize IT company (NYSE). Should I take it? I'm not looking to be an investment banker, but possibly looking for a CF role in Big 4 or F500.
Or should I just go to AIG (another summer internship offer)?
FP&A internship is exactly what you want to do considering your overall goal is to do FP&A long term
So FP&A is part of corporate finance? Should I still take the internship considering the fact that it's not a F500 company?
corporate finance is a really broad term. FP&A is pretty broad in itself, but it absolutely falls under corporate finance. I would say an internship doing FP&A would be pretty transferable to f500 cf depending on what they have you doing. budgets and forecasting, accounting, etc is pretty much the universal language of FP&A
Personally, I think that FP&A becomes really interesting when the company you're working at has a physical product (in the IT world can be semiconductors). This means that there's an entire production process that has to be managed from a financial perspective.
If the company operates in a SaaS environment, I find that stuff like margins (and the resulting planning) are slapped on based on industry practices ("70% feels about right") rather than supply-chain based math, which admittedly is more scrupulous but at the same time more precise.
Regardless, good luck. FP&A is not given as much appreciation as it should in my opinion.
So should I go with the FP&A role for my junior internship?
Personally, I'd go with the FP&A role. It feels more versatile than insurance. Just $0.02 from me.
FP&A experience is essential if you want to eventually move up to a high ranking position within a finance organization. You'll also want to get experience in other areas like treasury and controller's office. Budget& Planning, Risk Management, and Accounting are all critical areas in Corp Fin.
Yea I think the same way. But the problem is, before moving up the ladder within the finance organization, I have to first get a full time offer from them.
Do you think taking the FP&A role is better than working for AIG in its backoffice?
Depends what the AIG role is. On htis board, most Corp Fin roles, including FP&A would be considered back office. Get over that part. It's a meaningless description. In every business there are two businesses going on; the working on the actual product or service line (i.e doing deals) , and the running of the business. One can't exist without the other. You could make an argument that the CFO is "backoffice" but my two buddies that are F500 CFOs nake a couple mil a yr and will do way better than most bankers ever realize. One started in B4 audit and the other in FP&A . Once the B4 audit guy moved to industry, they both worked their way up the Finance organization, obtained top MBA, etc. Neither have ever been in a revenue producing role. Took between 15-20 yrs.
I think FP&A is a great place to start. Get a lot of modeling experience. In a few yrs get some M&A experience, etc.
Thank you all for very thoughtful advice and opinions. I have set up my mind.
My only concern is that the company I will be working for this junior internship is not a F500 company (although it is publicly traded in NYSE) and has lesser brand value than AIG.
This wouldn't hinder my chances of getting into higher company for full time right?
I go to a semi-target with mid 3.0 GPA.
FP&A - Puts the F in Corporate Finance. Yes the AIG brand is great but like everyone said above: Insurance is a little less versatile. I wouldn't worry about this company not being Fortune 500. If they put you on some meaningful projects that you can confidently and truthfully speak to in an interview, that's all that matters. I think part of your worries about the brand name recognition stem from people looking at your resume but if you really want a good job you're going to network in and have internal pull on your resume regardless. For reference, I went Corporate Finance LDP intern -> Financial Services.
100%
FP&A is definitely the right choice. I interned (and actually still do remote, part time work while I'm at school in my senior year) for a Fortune 600 industrials firm. Its so far back in the supply chain no one outside of the space and local area know the firm.
Over the course of my time at this firm in FP&A, I've realized the benefits of being at a smaller firm in this function. We have a firm-wide FP&A headcount of 13 which is insanely small compared to triple digit FP&A headcounts. What this does, is give each member of the team in a small group like mine more flexibility in projects that you can work on. You can also add so much more value in a team like this versus a F25. The CFO of our firm (a guy who makes a cool 2-3 mil a year) regularly came over to our team's cluster of desks to talk. Our team functioned as his sort of "brain-trust" for anything related to strategy, ad-hoc projects, etc.
While I thoroughly enjoy my time and experience at my current firm, I did accept an offer for GE FMP for my full time role. The interviewers at GE were extremely impressed with some of the projects I had worked on at my F600 firm that an intern at a F100 probably wouldn't have touched.
I think you made the right choice- I was in a similar situation where I interned for a F700ish company and got a ton of exposure I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.. I ended up getting an offer for a F200ish FLDP and took that, even though I'm confident I could have gone back to the company I interned for.
I've kept in touch with the folks I met at the company I interned for, and have had a few conversations with them about coming back. Smaller companies seem more willing to accept your prior experience and bring you in with a promo, while bigger companies seem to more often bring you in as a lateral.. So I think it's best to get through the analyst years at as big of a company as possible, and then reevaluate when you have more options.
Brand does play a part in your hiring process but from what I have seen not as big of a part. I had various internships including FP&A at a F500 company. However, when interviewing places they were always more interested in my banking roles at small completely unknown banks because of the tasks I was given. I find that sometimes smaller companies will give their interns more tasks than the larger companies. So if I am interviewing someone I would value the brand name because it means that you were good enough for them, but in reality if you did not contribute anything meaningful then that brand does not carry the same weight. I would rather have meaningful experience related to the role they are applying for than a big brand in an unrelated industry. I currently work in a F500 corpfin role and my first job out of college was at a tiny bank that specified in a certain type of lending. (commercial) However, I was able to talk about my role there and what I did and it blew them away and I got a job here. I have been here 3 years now and my prior experience at that small bank still comes up for training purposes and what not. My opinion is take the role in what you want to do and the rest will come later, work extremely hard and take on as much as you can possibly handle and build your brand that way.
In my mind, the term Corp Fin = FP&A. Take the FP&A role. You can move up in the company or go to other companies' FP&A departments and move up there. It's actual accounting/finance.
Perhaps these labels mean different things in different parts of the globe, but in Australia: FP&A and corporate finance are not considered to be synonymous.
Within the context of corporate development industry roles, financial planning & analysis tends to fall under the accounting arm. I have seen Big 4 auditors move into FP&A roles within the industry and previous comments note similar areas such as treasury and financial controller. The "corporate finance" team at these same firms is often called exactly that, or "commercial" or "strategy" where you're staffed on evaluating internal M&A opportunities.
Your actual post makes a clear distinction between FP&A and a "CF role" within the industry, so yeah. Take the FP&A internship if there's nothing else on the table, but be mindful that it's far more accounting-based than it is "corporate finance" if that's an issue.
I work for an amazing company called DataRails but in the future would like to extend my experience up the corp finance ladder. For now as I'm relatively new in the field working for a top-notch financial analytics platform that was made for people who work in FP&A does the job, I'm learning a lot and get to build upon my knowledge by interacting with people who work in FP&A. I do want to make my way up long-term, so it's good to see that the knowledge I'm developing will be useful.
I had an FP&A role this past summer w Fortune 200 company. great experience, got a lot of great exposure to a lot of different aspects of CF. CF can be a rewarding path in my opinion.
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