‘We are more like a finance school rather than a business school’

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: After spending almost two decades with leading firms in the financial services sector in the US, Europe and India, Anish Wig decided to take a turn towards the education sector and became associated with International College of Financial Planning (ICFP) which was established in 2002 where Wig is currently director & CEO of the institute. Prior to ICFP, he was the director & country head, private banking & investments for Deutsche Bank in India. Wig had previously worked with Merrill Lynch & Co and Credit Suisse Group in the US, UK and Europe. Wig says the education sector is not new to him, as in London, he established the European training school for Merrill Lynch, which has trained over 2,600 private bankers in technical and product skills. In an interview with FE’s Vikram Chaudhary, Wig talks about the financial services sector in India, the importance of financial services education in the current turbulent times and, of course, ICFP. Excerpts:

What are the kinds of career opportunities in financial services available to students of ICFP?

Our students go on to start their careers as financial planners, wealth managers, sales and marketing officers in various banks, mutual fund and insurance companies as well as with financial planning organisations. We have maintained a track record of 100% placements year-on-year.

What are some of the placement trends of the institute?

Our students have already gone to major firms in New York and London. For India positions, the companies who regularly recruit from our college include Deutsche Bank, Barclays Wealth, HSBC, Citibank, Standard Chartered, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bharati AXA, Anand Rathi, Tata AIG, Birla SunLife, Bajaj Capital to name a few. Last year HSBC hired 40 students from ICFP. As far as salaries go, our top students are able to get close to 7.5 lakh per annum (and that too without an MBA degree) with the average being close to 4.5 lakh per annum.

Where do Icfai and other financial education institutions stand versus ICFP?

Icfai and other financial education institutions generally offer plain vanilla management courses, like MBA, so the student goes into a general management sort of a role. Ours is a super-speciality finance college, we are more like a finance school rather than a business school. Our students have taken the entry-level roles as financial or wealth managers.

When was ICFP established and what was the idea behind its establishment?