VP of wealth management: What I do and how much I make
About this video
Nekpen Osuan, a 30-year-old vice president at a Fortune 50 financial services bank earning $145,000, manages three digital platforms used by financial advisors. Her key role is sitting between technology and the business, turning advisors' needs into technical specifications. She describes the technical and non-technical skills needed, what she enjoys about working with people, and how her pay grew from $125,000 through annual reviews.
You'll be able to
- describe what Nekpen's role involves in managing digital platforms for financial advisors.
- explain what it means to 'sit between technology and business'.
- sort the skills she names into technical and non-technical.
- explain how her salary grew and why entry VP pay has little room to negotiate.
Key words
- vice president (VP)
- A senior job title; at big banks it can be a fairly early management level.
- financial advisor
- A person who helps clients manage and invest their money.
- digital platform
- Software that people use online to do tasks, like keeping records or connecting with others.
- technical specification
- A detailed description that tells engineers exactly what to build.
- analytics
- Using data and measurements to find patterns and make decisions.
- annual review
- A yearly meeting where an employee's work is assessed, often linked to pay raises.
Transcript
I'm Nekpen Osuan. I'm 30 years old. I'm a Vice President at a Fortune 50 financial services bank. I make $145,000 a year. One of the major objectives in my role is to manage our three digital platforms that financial advisors work with. The first is a digital platform that allows financial advisors to keep record and to connect with the clients that they serve.
The second is a digital platform that allows financial advisors to connect with each other, forming teams and strategic partnerships. We also manage the record keeping for accounts that are being redistributed when advisors leave or join our firm. A key part of my role, which I love, is sitting between the technology and business part of our firm.
It's important for me to understand what advisors are experiencing when they don't like something or they would like to see a change happen. I gather those requirements and I stay with our technology team to translate what the business needs are into a technical specification.
It's very important to be able to speak both to the business and technology in my role. For someone to be successful in my role, you'll have to have both technical and non-technical skills. Some of the technical skills that are required include having experience and comfort with analytics.
There's a lot of measurement, a lot of data sets, and numbers involved in the work that I do. Another technical skill is being able to understand the wealth management space and the financial policies that guide it. Some non technical skills required for my position include communication.
You have to be able to effectively communicate your ideas and also to negotiate on different deadline and terms for the work that we do. Another one is relationship management. I talk to a lot of advisors every day. They have great ideas on how to improve our firm.
It's my job to effectively manage the relationship so that they feel appreciated and also provide a realistic picture of some of the things that we can and cannot do. What I like about my job is the opportunity to work with so many different individuals. I consider myself a really outgoing person.
Wealth management can be dry, when you're looking at numbers or thinking about project plans, but the people and the advisors that I work with, really bring my work to life. They give me a deeper sense of the impact of my work. And so that's one of my favorite things.
So I make $145,000 now. Starting off as, sort of, a entry-level vice president, I did not make that much. I made 125. Each year, our firm does an annual review based on things that you've accomplished, you're contributions to the overall team, you get a pay raise.
And so I've had a steady increase almost every year. A lot of the work that goes into finding out what a competitive salary in financial services is out of your hands. A lot of firms will say entry VPs will make x amount. You can negotiate a little bit, but there's not a lot of wiggle room.
And each firm defines that entry level VP starting salary very different. So, for example, a competitor might offer me more or less.
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