Jai Ho

http://www.cfainstitute.org/about/foundation/Pages/index.aspx

Glad they got this out of the way for the tenth time.

20k people registered in India. Cost reduction, coming to an investment bank near you.

Whats with indian’s pursuing standardized tests, is it a national passtime or something.

I feel like most of these people don’t even have an idea what they are getting themselves into.

They are really freaking good at them because their entire education system is about taking them.

They don’t care what they are getting themselves into so long as it is high paying. They want money, they aren’t delicate snowflake mellenials like Americans that need to feel good about what they do. When India heard that the average charter holder makes 130k, or something like that, they all got on the train. The only reason this didn’t happen sooner was this lawsuit made the test impossible to take in India until fairly recently. Having to fly to another country to take the exam made it negative npv.

In the 90s when they heard people with MBAs were making 100k they all got on that train. Before that we had IT. Now I’m even seeing a lot of legal outsourcing and of course financial outsourcing here.

Indians are that force that Porter talks about. When a business makes too much money it attracts competition. Instead of a business however it is for labor. Any high paying profession in the US will fall victim to The Indian work force unless they can artificially keep competition out (medicine might be an example of this in the US or a cushy government job).

The free trader in us says this is a good thing. I’ll say this much. India puts up more barriers to entry and protects more professions than any country I know. Foreign law firms are forbidden. It’s next to impossible to start up your own business in India with 100 percent ownership. You almost always have to have a local partner. So while India benefits from outsourcing they are in no hurry to encourage competition locally.

Seems to make sense to me. While it might be a net benefit to society, it doesn’t benefit me. Remember how much an MBA used to be worth before everyone got one? Remember how well paid lawyers were until we created a few too many million of them? Think how much being able to read was worth 100 years ago? I would keep people ignorant and beneath me because it benefits me, even if not society as a whole. This is the argument for protectianism and where I stand it makes sense. Financial Analysts are next. Lights out.

In any case, the genie is out of the bottle. The internet has democratized knowledge in a big way. In the future, unless you are absurdly talented and/or absurdly well connected you can expect to be poorly compensated. Asia is smart and will eat your lunch while you are busy tweeting about your artistic aspirations.

there was something in the CFA mag a few years back, global skills arbitrage about outsourcing some of the lower level quant jobs to india with the reports sent back via the internet.

If there end up being a lot of CFA charterholders in India who will work for a fraction of the price, that may happen more

I have a buddy who runs a hedge fund in Chicago essentially by himself. His only fulltime employee is someone he rents from a company in India for 50k a year to do modeling for him.

He pays that guy’s company 50k a year, god knows what they actually pay him, and my buddy get’s his 2,20. GREAT SUCCESS

It won’t just be outsourcing.

Thats why like 40% of doctors in US are indian. Indian kids dont sit there and think “I want to help people and live a fulfilling existence”. Daddy says, “you go to medical school, otherwise, somebody gonna get a hurt reeeeal bad”.

I can attest that a lot of doctors in the US are Indian. But, don’t you need to go to medical school in the US in order to practice? My brother, the same one that got the prenup, had a chick from paraguay in his class who was already a practicing doctor in Paraguay but needed to redo med school in order to practice in the US.

You don’t need to redo med school, I believe you need to redo residency, which is a giant pain for a middle aged person.

There’s some sort of exam you have to pass and residency requirements to practice medicine in the US. The exam takes a lot of work. But, strictly speaking, you don’t need to have gone to a US medical school in order to practice.

That would suck, Imagine if you had to redo levels 2 and 3 but multiplied it by 10 and got paid minimum wage.

Clearly there is some sort of barrier to entry though? There are plenty of foreign doctors (especially Canadians) in the US.

I could solve a big chunk of the health care crisis just by importing a bunch of 3rd world doctors. They are fine for 90 percent of what patients need, I bet.

I think it’s because US residency programs don’t like to accept foreign doctors.

There is some process by which you can have your foreign educational credentials certified. Not sure about the residency though. It’s my understanding that the cerfication process is long and expensive if you graduated from a school that is not already recognized.

The spots in residency programs are pretty limited, first tier are US graduates, then Foreign graduates, then US graduates who go to Caribbean etc.

They are afraid of exactly what CT suggests - doctors getting outsourced to new Indian/Russian doctors.

At least with surgery, patients can be told to go to India to get an operation done - which is happening nowadays.

Any foreign doctor has to do residency in order to practice in US. They need to clear USMLE that is a 3-step exam ( 3 full day exam and 1 clinical exam).

In each exam, if your percentile falls below 95%, there are very less chance that you get into good program and if your percentile falls below 80-85%, only luck can get you into any program and you cannot retake exam before 7 years. Cut rate is 75%, that means you failed and can retake it.

Foreign doctors have a very good advantage once they complete the program. They can practice in US or they can go to other country (most countries recognize US degree) or to their home country for better pay and rewards.

Unlike being a financial analyst. Anyone anywhere can take the CFA exam and be an analyst anywhere.

Short Financial Analaysts

Good thing I am in sales then, those geeks will never be able to compete with me on charm and good looks!!

^^Exactly what I was thinking. Unlike IT, managing money has a much more emotional and personal component to it. Number crunching? Ok, outsource it. But, I expect it is probably even cheaper to hire an Indian consultant to write a program to crunch the numbers than it is to higher an Indian consultant to perform the financial analysis his/herself.

From higher level analysts meeting the managements to PMs doing client calls to sales people gathering assets, asset management is a “soft” science at best and probably more of an art than anything. Maintaining client confidence is the most important thing. There are two ways to maintain client confidence:

  1. Have great numbers.

  2. Have a personality/gravitas that instills confidence in clients.

If you outsource the asset management function then you better have great numbers, because a consultant running a portofolio is not going to instill confidence in clients.

Yes this is true. All the white guys that I know working in India are there because they are charming and posh English people. They will almost unanimously admit that they are nowhere close to as talented as their Indian colleagues except for in soft skills. The biggest problem one buddy of mine who was director of equity at one of the Morgan’s is that the they lacking drinking skills.

This is our last advantage being white guys. However, you’d be amazed at how many Indians are getting educated overseas and are returning with decent bedside manner. All these poshos generally are being replaced by locals with overseas education in the long run when cost is what matters.

My strong belief is that most non client facing roles are going to lose in compensation long run in a big way. The days of getting paid a half a mill for doing DDM modeling on excel are numbered.

As for the client facing ones they will still be well paid, but don’t kid yourself, there are plenty of charming Asians as well, just proportionally fewer. There will be more.

What this means is that I want my own business long run and citizenship in a wealthy country with lots natural resources and a small population. While Im certain that I’ll be fine, (I’m half way through my corporate career) my kids are gonna have a hard time competing against Asians born after broadband, unless they turn into the same lazy self entitled millenials that we are.

You should move to Canada.