Kate Lynch 

As part of the Graduate Coffee Chats series in collaboration with Foresight Business Group, Foresight Vice President Kate Lynch spoke to Emma McLoughlin, Private Equity Analyst at HSBC Asset Management to get insight into her life as a graduate at HSBC. 

HSBC Private Equity Analyst Role 

As a Private Equity Analyst in HSBC’s London office, Emma works within the Asset Management team. Her team specialises in fund investment, focusing on multinational private equity funds like KKR and  Blackstone. Emma’s day-to-day responsibilities involve analysing fund managers, their historical track record and the companies they previously invested in. Alongside fund investments, her team also focuses on participating in direct investments in partnership with other privacy equity firms.

Emma reinforces the value of hard skills, such as Excel, which she didn’t initially recognize as crucial until her role at HSBC. She also highlighted the importance of developing problem-solving skills. “You would be surprised how many day-to-day things come up”, she commented. Her course, MSISS, was “very good for teaching us overall problem solving skills which [she] found very useful in [her] day-to-day role”. Although Emma is on the investment team where she isn’t required to interact with clients daily, she still emphasised the importance of being a people person to build rapport and create a nurturing work environment. Despite her position as analyst, Emma notes that there are projects that mandate strong ownership, where the ability to lead is vital when engaging with directors and senior managers. Although originally under the impression that leadership skills wouldn’t be relevant till much later in her career, she attested that this is not the case and rather needed from the get-go. Emma concluded that you are not expected to have all the necessary skills on day one and “as long as you’re willing to learn, you will build up your hard and soft skills over-time”. 

Although Emma couldn’t share specific information on her favourite project that she’s worked on, she did mention that they recently looked at a venture capitalist fund. This involves investing in small start-up companies that have substantial growth potential; “for example Snapchat was a company that venture capitalists invested in when it was very small”, she detailed. Emma expressed her enthusiasm for this project, as it is different from other funds that she would typically be working with. She also mentioned how interesting it was when they directly  invest in companies, as it requires research and understanding of the market that they’re investing in. For example, one of the companies that Emma’s team looked at was a bakery chain in the US. It was “really cool”, she commented, as they had to think about how the industry of baked goods has been evolving recently with fitness trends.

The problem-solving element of Emma’s job is her favourite part. Some tasks might seem impossible at first glance, but thinking about and working through them is a very satisfying process for her. Managing time and day-to-day deadlines was also a new challenge for Emma, as it was vastly different from her days in college. However, she still enjoyed the challenge, as it encouraged her to work on these time management skills.

Career Progression 

If you were to stay in this role, the stages of progression are quite straightforward. It begins as an analyst (Emma’s current role), and then progresses to Associate and then to Vice President. Once you become a Vice President it is difficult to pivot into a different area. As an analyst, Emma explains that she’s currently in indirect investment but as she is so early on in her career she could probably pivot to direct investments if she wanted to move to the likes of KKR or Blackstone. Another option would be to stay in her current field and work her way up to becoming a senior, a role that focuses more on client facing deal sourcing.

Interview Process at HSBC 

Before graduating, Emma did a summer internship with HSBC. She expressed how the interview process with HSBC is quite different to the traditional process found at other banks. There is no cover letter or mathematical assessment involved, but instead a “workplace simulation”, a 30-40 minute scenario-based assessment where you have to rank your preference of how you would react in given situations. The second round interview was a similar simulation, however it was more specific to asset management. The final round involved four in-person interviews with 4 different people within Asset Management, two behavioural and two technical interviews. They expressed to Emma that they knew she didn’t know everything but that’s what they’re there to do, to teach her what’s needed for this role. Beyond simple technical skills, the team assessed her interest and passion for the position. 

After scoring a spot in the graduate programme, there were three criteria needed to succeed in to get offered a full-time position: first, on-desk performance; second, a project she had to complete and present; third, a final interview on trends in the market and how HSBC could capitalise on them.

Emma explained how the work culture in HSBC is unique, as they place a big emphasis on work-life balance. With work-from-home ingrained into HSBC’s culture, she only finds herself working in the office twice per week. However, Emma’s team is slightly different to the rest of the company. However, congruent with banking culture, her team tends to work late until around midnight during a couple of days of the week. Emma believes that starting her career in a job like this will continue to teach her to be resilient and more productive with her time. Although the work culture is quite tough, Emma emphasises that the team’s culture is great and that she loves the overall environment of HSBC. 

Advice to Students 

Emma reinforced that being involved in societies such as the Trinity SMF gave her so much confidence in public speaking, teaching her the jargon of the financial world that she still uses to this day. She would highly recommend getting involved as much as possible, believing that extracurriculars are greatly important and shows the employer or interviewer that you get on with people, a big thing that they look for. These hobbies and interests make you stand out in comparison to everyone else. As a final piece of advice, Emma emphasised to “stress a bit less, college is great! Enjoy every bit of it, you’ll never get the time back so make the most of it”.