The non-IIM top MBA Alumni Report Part Three (Banking and Consulting)

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Banking and finance

A basic understanding of the trends in banking and finance can be obtained by reading some of our earlier articles in the series (starting here). In this section, we just present the brief insights:

- ISB's performance in Banking is less impressive than its performance in consulting, however, it does have some decent penetration in HSBC, Citibank, and specially in Credit Suisse.

- XLRI has respectable numbers in all top companies - though you must remember that XLRI's data includes both the Business Management and the PMIR courses, and therefore may be slightly skewed.

- FMS is also consistent across the board, and has especially large numbers in Citibank and Standard Chartered. Given that some of XLRI's numbers are from non-core banking functions, FMS' performance is comparatively very strong, in fact it may have the best numbers in the lot.

- SPJIMR has strong relationships with certain specific companies, rather than being strong across the board - it shines at Citibank, Credit Suisse and Nomura.

- IIFT doesn't appear to be a particularly finance-focussed campus. Only HSBC has decent numbers here. Ditto for NITIE. After all, these two institutes have a positioning - foreign trade and operations management respectively.

- JBIMS - with its Mumbai base, has traditionally been strong in finance. It has impressive numbers everywhere (esp Morgan Stanley) except American Express and Goldman Sachs.

- MDI Gurgaon alumni have also succumbed to the lure of the finance MBA - but their distribution across B schools is quite skewed, indicating that a few recruiters make a large number of offers.

Consulting

Not many B schools in this set have made inroads into Bain & Co, AT Kearney, AD Little, Oliver Wyman and Alvarez & Marsal. The trends in consulting are summarized below

- ISB is definitely a great success story in consulting. Look at the kind of numbers it has racked up in a short time span. 85 alumni in McKinsey - far outstrips any other campus in this dataset. Among the big four Deloitte and EY hire more than KPMG and PwC.

- XLRI (again, larger dataset) nearly matches ISB in presence at BCG, but falls behind when it comes to McKinsey. Its presence at the big four consults (KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte) is quite impressive.

- FMS has just started making inroads into BCG. It has a decent presence at Accenture and the Big Four (except PwC).

- SPJIMR seems to mainly favour the Big Four along with IBM, and Accenture. It has an impressive presence in McKinsey.

- IIFT does have a few outposts in some of the Big Consults (McKinsey and BCG), but its presence in the Big Four is quite weak. Accenture and IBM seem to be the most common options.

- JBIMS is not a particularly consulting-focussed campus. Frankly we expected a greater presence in McKinsey - it is generally believed that JBIMS students have the upper hand in the McKinsey batch day process that happens across some leading B schools. Noshir Kaka, MD at McKinsey India, is a JBIMS alumnus.

- MDI has an impressive presence in McKinsey. It too has outposts in some of the most prestigious consults, and its presence in the Big Four is decent (except PwC).

- NITIE with its focus on operations management - has its best presence in Accenture and IBM Process Consulting.