At Singapore unis, undergrads fight for places at coveted finance clubs

SINGAPORE – At Singapore universities, undergraduates are fighting for the golden ticket they believe will get them a coveted banking job: membership in a campus finance club.

Lengthy interview rounds and days of working on PowerPoint slides have become de rigueur as a gloomier job market in the banking and trading hub raises the stakes for undergrads seeking a career in finance.

“It’s low-key crazy. It’s quite absurd how competitive it is,” said Ms Maya, a social sciences graduate from the National University of Singapore who declined to give her last name and now works at a global payments firm. The pressure was worth it, she said, adding: “Without it, I wouldn’t be able to ‘sell myself’ to the recruiters who have thousands of business students they can choose from.” 

Her angst comes as financial institutions in Singapore have added fewer people in recent years. Undergrads view the clubs as a crucial line on their resumes, adding to a hyper-competitive cauldron for students in Singapore alongside tuition and so-called internship-stacking.

As hiring gets tighter, the number of graduates from popular business and administration courses has climbed for most of the past decade. It topped more than 3,500 in 2023, according to government statistics. And while 84 per cent of business graduates found jobs in 2024, that is a decline from the previous two years. 

Trade wars and market turmoil may worsen the outlook for young bankers around the world who are also grappling with the rise of artificial intelligence.

Those threats are magnified in Singapore, where finance looms large in a population of six million and is seen by many as the clearest path to success. 

Global and Singapore banks, including Citigroup, surveyed by Bloomberg News say they use a broad set of criteria to evaluate entry-level applicants. OCBC, for instance, said that while such club participation is not a prerequisite for applications, it can serve as a “meaningful indicator” of skills, leadership and commitment, according to Mr Ernest Phang, managing director of group human resources. 

Ms Rachel Ng, now a prime broker in an investment bank, applied to consulting and investment groups while in university because of the “anxiety” that she would not be able to secure internships in her freshman year.

“People in my batch were starting to secure internships at highly desirable banks because of their participation in case competitions and networks from clubs,” Ms Ng, 23, said. “I decided that I needed to be where it happens, too, if I wanted to be like them.”

Joining these finance clubs is the first hurdle. There are so-called “super days” with multiple rounds of interviews stretching for hours with a student panel, mimicking major banks that use this tactic to whittle down to final offers.  

Mr Matthew Quek, a former vice-president of Singapore Management University’s (SMU) student-managed investment fund, gave potential entrants to his club two weeks to pitch a stock and present a financial case study to an executive committee.

Once the idea was approved by a panel of senior students, the final round was a mandatory coffee chat to get a “vibe check”, said Mr Quek, 25, who had three internships in as many years in college. 

The fund receives around 200 applications every year and accepts just over 20, he said. At other finance clubs across the country, the acceptance rate is also about 10 per cent on average.  

Pitch decks

The work gets more intense once club membership is secured. 

The SMU fund hosts meetings every Saturday that run from three to eight hours long. There, members learn to build financial models and create pitch decks from senior students and alumni. The group seeks to model international counterparts who emulate real-life funds, such as Harvard University’s Black Diamond Capital Investors, which touts itself as among the most successful student-run hedge funds in the US. 

In 2025, members of the SMU fund will get an extra boost. The club’s alumni donated $130,000 to invest in the best ideas that will be handpicked by a board comprising professors and former members working in the finance industry. 

Mr Dylan Liew, 30, formed his club at the National University of Singapore in 2018 after studying in the US. He built a team that has since grown to more than 60 student consultants, pitching their services to businesses like a hospital ship focused on making a social impact. 

“It was always a good story to tell recruiters and interviewers” when it came time for him to find a job, said Mr Liew, who worked in consulting after graduating. “They could see that I built this, I can tackle things.”

‘Sliding’ days

Still, taking on the job of an investment banker or management consultant, on top of about 40 to 60 hours of college classwork a week, can quickly wear students down. For Ms Maya, the payments associate who was in a consulting club, so-called “sliding” days before check-ins with clients were common, where members stay in a Zoom room for what can be 12 hours to edit slides together.

Her semester abroad in Europe was marred by club work as she often had to stay up past midnight to call clients in a timezone seven hours ahead of hers. “I think there was fear that I was not going to be employed, so even though I was supposed to have fun on exchange, every week I was kind of suffering,” said the 24-year-old.  

Many do not see the demand to join these clubs cooling down, despite the stress. 

“Sadly, so many people have a really strong GPA and a really good school, so there needs to be something to differentiate you,” said Ms Bethan Howell, a Hong Kong-based director of recruitment firm Selby Jennings. “If being in a club gives you confidence or makes you feel more sure in the interview, then sure.” BLOOMBERG