Even ex-banking MDs can't get their children finance jobs now

31 October 2025

4 minute read

If you're a student looking for a banking job and are feeling beaten down by your inability to find one, you can take some solace from the fact that you're not alone. The well-connected offspring of managing directors who've spent decades working in the banking industry are struggling to find jobs too.

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Quentin Nason, a former Deutsche Bank equity capital markets managing director and ex-partner at a mid-market private equity fund in the UK, has a son who would like to work in finance. Nason tells us that his son made 150 job applications and achieved one job offer. The recruitment process for getting junior banking jobs has become tortuous, says Nason: it's a "meat grinder."

For all the complaints of nepotism in financial services, Nason's son isn't the person to discover a parents' unexpected impotence in helping land a first job. Nason posted about his son's experience on LinkedIn. Other senior people from Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, UBS and HSBC, said their children are all experiencing the same.

"My DMS have lit up from other people in banking on this," says Nason. "Everyone's saying the exact same thing. That there are really clever students, from good universities, with first class degrees and a parent who worked in finance and they can’t even get a position. It’s a universal thing."

The acceptance rate for banking jobs has plummeted to below 1% in recent years as applicant numbers have swollen and banks have reduced hiring. At Goldman Sachs, for example, 315,000 people applied for 2,700 entry-level jobs in 2024. This year, 360,000 people applied for 2,600.

It's a problem of both "remunerator and denominator" says Nason. On one hand, students in the UK are targeting highly paid jobs because they now graduate with £50k ($66k) of debt, and they can use AI to send out hundreds of applications. On the other, banks are hiring fewer people as they prepare for jobs to be done by AI instead. Nason predicts that it's only going to get harder: "Imagine what it will be like in two years as AI really starts to impact."

In the past, people with connections were able to inveigle their offspring into the banking recruitment process. Nowadays, Nason says "it makes no difference whether you worked in the industry." All student applicants face the same automated sifting systems, the same tests and the same Hirevue digital interviews.

The process is brutal. Nason says his son leapt through hoops to get his job offer and attended an assessment day at which half of the applicants were sent home after being unsuccessful.

Nason is vice chair for the London Foundation for Banking and Finance, a charity that aims to advance knowledge about financial services. He says the Foundation works with a lot of A level students who are despairing of ever finding jobs. "We have one business studies student who needs work experience for his course, but who can't find any," he says.

What's the solution? Nason suggests more in-person events. Other former bankers are taking a different approach. Marcus Brown, a former MD at UBS and NatWest in London, says he told his youngest son to "forget the city" and to "focus on small companies in an area he is genuinely interested in," instead.

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AUTHORSarah Butcher

Global Editor

DA
DA25
6 November 2025
Most parents today dont spend time with their children showing them how the real world works. First class and MBA is good but you will need new enhanced certification to convince employers you have what it takes to fit in just fine when you are employed. Hiring managers and consultants are not willing to share their experiences. After leaving university, you must create structures that support your industry standard skillset and an experienced mindset: the kind that speaks for you rather than the kind that others like your well-connected parents or friends explicitly do for you else you wont last in the role. And, some professionals are not good people at heart during bringing up their children up via higher institution. If a child cant learn one or two certifications before they get into college or university, the child, even with first class honours will struggle in the role. The best candidates are usually the ones that did two degrees in one sitting of a four year period - plus, they they have already tried niche certifications. Banking and finance will never go away. Rather, the stakes for high quality prospects will become tighter and more focused on individuals who go one or two steps further than what they applied to do since it is more productive and less frustrating to bring someone who will behave like a senior or manager. Today billionaires look for a complete star to work with, not a beginner who have friends and families in high places. Quant developers are typical examples of the best of the best. If most of these star employees told you what they went through while studying to become competent programmers, you will think they were not humans at all.
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TS
TS100
31 October 2025
If you chase a dream in an industry that is becoming increasingly obsolete, with skills offshored or AI generated, then you shouldn’t complain about not getting on the job ladder. Human race has seen industrial shift even since its existence. Technology and cycles is not a new phenomenon. But the world order is slightly different now. Banking as an industry set up when wealth in the world post war and pre war was more polarised. Higher education was scarce. Now people are at more levelled. The differentiation is not in being in services, but building something, or applying a technical application. Be an engineer, a doctor, a data scientist, or an entrepreneur. Why chase M&A and fund management ! They may have been highly paid professions in recent decades. But the capital asset pricing model has not changed since existence and it no longer takes a superior Harvard MBA or tier 1 billionaire contacts to step into the finance world - hence it’s now a mediocre , generalist another corporate job. Technology has enabled osmosis of corporate finance knowledge. If you still showed the carrrot to your budding kid and instead of having him focus on science and engineering thought you could secure him a blueberry bracket job, sorry mate , you are as obsolete as the banks you worked for. Old school banker totally applies to you !
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