Graduate Finance Roles

The short answer is: a lot. Finance touches every sector of the economy, which means graduate finance roles exist across investment banks, insurance firms, tech companies, retailers, public sector bodies, consultancies, and everything in between.
The groupings below cover the main areas. They are a useful starting point, not rigid boxes.

Accounting is one of the most common entry points into finance for graduates - and one of the most structured. Roles in accounting generally involve preparing and analysing financial statements, managing budgets, ensuring regulatory compliance, and providing financial information that organisations use to make decisions.

What makes accounting distinct from most other finance paths is that the career is built around professional qualifications obtained while working. The three common routes are the ACA (awarded by the ICAEW), the ACCA, and the CIMA. You study for these examinations while employed on a training contract.

Within accounting, there is more variety than the title suggests. Audit involves examining company accounts to verify accuracy and is dominated at graduate level by the Big Four firms - Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY. Tax is a specialism in its own right, covering both compliance (preparing tax returns and filings) and advisory work (helping businesses and individuals manage their tax position). Management accounting focuses less on external reporting and more on internal financial planning - analysing costs, supporting budgeting cycles, and helping leadership teams make decisions.

Accounting training contracts are open to graduates of any degree subject. Strong numeracy is expected, but a finance degree is not a requirement.

Investment banking:

Investment banking is a front-office role focused on advising companies on major financial transactions - mergers and acquisitions, capital raises, initial public offerings, and restructurings. Graduate analysts build financial models, produce pitchbooks, run market analysis, and support senior bankers on live deals.

It suits candidates who are comfortable with pressure, genuinely detail-oriented, and willing to put in the hours - at least in the early years. The workload is well documented.

Most graduates who land full-time analyst roles at major banks did a summer internship at the same firm in their penultimate year. That internship functions as a long-form interview - a significant proportion of full-time offers go to interns. Many banks also offer Spring Week programmes in your first year, which often serve as a pipeline into the summer internship.

Key employers include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Lazard, and Rothschild & Co, as well as a range of smaller boutique advisory firms.

Online assessments - which vary by bank - screen out a large proportion of applicants before any human reviews a CV. JP Morgan uses Pymetrics, a 12-game behavioural assessment, alongside a HireVue video interview. Goldman Sachs uses SHL-provided numerical, verbal, and logical reasoning tests. These platforms test different things in different formats. Knowing which one your target bank uses - and practising that specific format - matters.

Corporate finance and financial planning & analysis (FP&A):

Not all finance careers sit inside banks. Corporate finance and FP&A roles are found inside companies across every sector - from retailers and energy firms to NHS trusts and tech businesses. Graduates in these roles manage internal budgets, produce forecasts, analyse business performance, and support strategic decisions made by senior leadership.

The day-to-day is broader than the title often implies. A corporate finance graduate at a large retailer might be tracking store-level profit and loss one month and supporting an acquisition analysis the next.

Entry routes include graduate schemes at large corporates - including companies like Unilever, BP, Amazon, Network Rail, Tesco, and Virgin Media O2 - as well as direct analyst hires at smaller firms. Many schemes involve studying towards a professional qualification (commonly CIMA) while working.

Asset management and wealth management:

These two terms are related but refer to quite different working environments.

Asset management involves managing investment portfolios on behalf of institutional clients - pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and similar bodies. The work is quantitative and research-intensive, with performance assessed against defined benchmarks. Graduates in these roles analyse markets, build investment cases, and support portfolio managers. Key employers include BlackRock, Schroders, Vanguard, Fidelity, and Baillie Gifford.

Wealth management and private banking involves managing money and providing financial advice to high-net-worth individuals. It is more relationship-driven and client-facing from early on. St. James's Place, UBS, Rathbones, and Investec are among the employers hiring graduates into this space.

Both tracks sit on the buy side - these firms are allocating capital, not executing transactions for corporate clients.

Actuarial work and insurance:

Actuarial work involves using statistical and mathematical models to price and manage risk - for insurance products, pension fund liabilities, and other financial purposes. It is one of the most technically demanding graduate finance paths and one of the most consistently underestimated.

The qualification is a long-term commitment. Fellowship of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) typically takes seven to ten years, with professional examinations sat alongside full-time employment. However, this commitment also limits supply in a sector with genuinely stable, recession-resistant demand.

Graduate actuaries work primarily in two environments. Insurance companies - including Aviva, Zurich, and Legal & General - hire graduates into pricing, reserving, and product development roles. Consulting firms - including Deloitte, Willis Towers Watson, and Aon - hire graduates to advise clients across sectors on pension, insurance, and risk strategy.

Insurance more broadly is a significant graduate employer in its own right, covering underwriting, claims, broking, and product roles across both personal and commercial lines. You do not need to be an actuarial candidate to work in insurance.

Financial consulting:

Financial consulting refers to advisory roles in which firms help clients solve financial problems - whether that is improving financial performance, managing a restructuring, assessing a potential acquisition, or navigating regulatory change.

At graduate level, this area overlaps heavily with the Big Four (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, EY), which run large consulting practices alongside their accounting and audit functions, as well as with specialist boutiques and the financial services arms of broader consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, and Oliver Wyman.

Graduate roles in financial consulting often involve data analysis, financial modelling, building reports and presentations, and working directly with client teams. The work varies significantly by employer and specialism.

This is a useful path for graduates who want broad exposure to finance across different sectors and organisations, rather than a specialism in one area.

Fintech and financial technology:

Fintech is a growing area that combines finance with technology - and it has created a distinct category of graduate finance role that did not really exist a decade ago.

Graduates entering fintech may work in financial analysis, product roles, compliance, data analysis, or operations - but within companies whose core business is built around technology. Employers range from established players like Revolut, Monzo, Wise, and Starling Bank, to larger financial institutions building their own digital capabilities.

The work environment is typically faster-paced and less structured than a traditional finance career, with more emphasis on adaptability and commercial thinking. Qualifications vary by role - some fintech positions favour a finance or economics background; others lean more heavily on data and technology skills.

Pensions:

Pensions is a specialist area of finance that manages the long-term financial obligations that employers, governments, and financial institutions have to their employees and clients.

Graduate roles in pensions sit across consultancies, insurance firms, and in-house at large organisations with significant pension liabilities. The work involves a mix of financial analysis, actuarial modelling, regulatory compliance, and member communications depending on the role type.

Employers like Mercer, Aon, Willis Towers Watson, and Legal & General run graduate programmes in this area. It is often combined with actuarial training, though not exclusively - administration, consulting, and client-facing roles exist alongside the more technical tracks.

The hiring process varies considerably depending on the type of role, employer, and sector within finance. There is no single path into the industry.

For some of the most competitive graduate roles in investment banking - the recruitment process is often fairly structured. Candidates will typically complete an online application and followed by online assessments. Often there can be a video interview and some companies follow up with stage with an assessment centre. The online assessment stage is frequently one of the most significant screening points in the process. Different banks tend to use different assessment providers and formats, so understanding which platform a target employer uses and preparing accordingly can be one of the most effective ways to prepare.

For accounting training contracts and corporate finance graduate schemes, the process is often less intensive, although competition for places remains strong. Applications generally open early in the academic year, and many employers recruit on a rolling basis, meaning candidates who apply earlier may be reviewed before programmes reach capacity.

For consulting, risk, and fintech roles, recruitment processes can vary widely between employers. Some organisations use structured assessment centres and multiple interview stages, while others operate a more streamlined process that moves quickly from application screening to interviews.

Graduate finance is a large, varied sector with many entry points for graduates. Accounting and corporate finance roles are the most widely available. Investment banking is the most selective. Actuarial, treasury, pensions, and fintech offer routes that many graduates overlook entirely - and that is partly what makes them worth considering.

The most important thing is to understand the specific hiring process for the roles you are targeting - because the preparation that helps you pass a Goldman Sachs SHL test is different from what helps you through a Pymetrics assessment, which is different again from what gets you through an accounting firm interview.

If you are applying to banks this cycle, explore JobTestPrep's bank-specific PrepPacks to practise the exact formats your target employers use.