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Career conversations: Making the leap from science to finance

Yau
Published 24 Jan 2024

Tong Yau, CFA, is keen to see people from diverse backgrounds enter the finance industry. In his case, having background in biotechnology means he brings a different perspective in his role as a Sales Team Head. Watch Tong Yau’s career story.

    During my journey of studying biotech, it was a challenging one because the interest element was not there for me. Then I reflected when I was young, maths was my strongest subject and it's always something that I was very excited doing. I was not so interested into science. But maths, it just comes naturally that I just love it. That's when I realized that, yeah, numbers, maths, it's something that I'll be happy doing in my career.  

    Hi, I'm Tong Yau, Sales Team Head from UOB Privillege Banking, specializing in Wealth Management. I'm a CFA® Charterholder.  

    During my first year of banking career, I have a colleague that was a CFA® Charterholder as well. I could see the difference when he was explaining financial assets or advisory to clients and it shows the strong fundamentals that one has after going through that rigorous program and I wanted to obtain that similar benefits.  

    The program, it's very well covered in the topic of finance in every element possible. With CFA [Program], it really builds that competency level of a banker, where you could describe an advisory in its most fundamental way.  

    What I have benefited more from it was the journey of obtaining that CFA® designation. To keep persevering, and to keep finding different ways to expand that boundary. CFA [Program] gave me that perseverance.

    With CFA [Program], it gives me that ability to improve the quality advisory because we can go so deep in each financial asset classes. And how then extract these benefits of these financial assets, to link them up, to create a portfolio, and to benefit our clients. So that is something that I always hold precious to my heart.

    I strongly encourage candidates from different diverse backgrounds because it's important to have a diversified view. Finance is finance, but if you bring arts into finance, if you bring science into finance, if you bring engineering into finance, you're further enhancing the topic of finance.

    And I surely and strongly believe the industry could benefit from this diversification. How I felt the diversity helped me was that the way research was conducted is very sequential and every step has to be explained clearly on why a certain step is done. So I felt that diversity was very important because finance is so intangible, right?

    If you could not explain the steps and the intention of a particular recommendation, then you lose the client, you lose the ability to lead a claim. 

    And I strongly encourage candidates with a diverse background. Don't see that diversity as a weakness, but it's actually a strength to further complement the topic of finance.

    If you are still single, no kids, please take your CFA [Program] ASAP. Because if you have, there's no time. But apart from that anyone who have an inclination to finance, I will say a strong yes.