Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) profile is nothing but a fancy word for outsourcing Excel Work to India
Are you a Chartered Accountant? If yes, then think twice before taking an FP&A job from an MNC!
CA Amit – Hi Rahul! Have good news. I got a job. It’s in an MNC and FP&A profile.
CA Rahul – Great news. You will be working in corporate and that too in finance domain. Sounds fantastic!
CA Amit – Thanks.
A few months later,
CA Rahul – Hi Amit, Hows are you and your FP&A Job?
CA Amit – Umm, nice. Preparing budget and forecasting.
CA Rahul – That’s fancy – Preparing budget and forecasting. How much cost do you save? How you do forecast? I can learn a lot from you.
CA Amit – Actually, I get the numbers from the team sitting in London, UK. I just put them in MS-Excel using vlookup, sumifs formula, and share the file with my Onshore team.
CA Rahul – Okay
CA Amit – I do check variance in forecast vs actuals and ask for comments from another team.
CA Rahul – Sounds like simple subtraction and percentage formula.
CA Amit – Yes, It is.
CA Rahul – No worry, this is your first job in finance which is normally reporting work. You will do real planning and analysis in the next few years.
CA Amit – Not Sure, my manager who is 5 years older than me, mostly spends her time on Ms-Excel. She does know more advanced excel formulas.
CA Rahul – You can switch teams after a year – try to apply for a team that does controlling or planning.
CA Anil – In India, we don’t have any such team. The controlling and Planning team sits in London.
CA Rahul – But your profile was FP&A, now what you do is just report the number to your onshore team. Seems like a backend role. Any interesting team you guys have except reporting?
CA Amit – We do have a Re-Engineering or Automation team which is trying to reduce repetitive excel work using VBA Macros. My work falls into it.
CA Rahul – Bro, start looking for a new job. Make sure it’s in the controlling or re-engineering team.
CA Amit – Yup, Can you forward my resume to your company.
Does this conversation remind you of something?
Being a Chartered Accountant is a great deal in a one-person life, imagine you wasting all your hard work in just doing Ms-Excel work. Ths is what you study for?
The same job profile is offered to Delhi University students who did their B.Com (H) from Shri Ram College of College, Lady Shri Ram College, Hansraj College. Yes, these are a few best commerce colleges, but students here also do not prefer such jobs. And you being a chartered accountant who has studied 10 times more than any B.com student settling for such a profile. What an embarrassment to your career.
Don’t get fooled by a fancy FP&A job profile which is merely an outsourcing excel work from India. It’s like a finance call center. I do apologize for using such harsh language but it’s on purpose to make you FP&A guys feel bad that what are you doing with your CA degree. If you are stuck in such a job profile, it’s high time that you either change your company or look for other teams. Or if you recently clear your CA- Final exams and were offered a job in such a profile, then do think twice before applying, else you will be complaining and crying what the hell are you doing? This is why you burnt the midnight oil to clear CA exams just to end up here?
So now the question is, how to identify a fake FP&A profile?
Here are some tips to identify whether FP&A job is just a reporting based job or is a real finance job which included planning, controlling, and analysis-
Your manager is also doing same work as you - That is He/she are validating your excelwork
This is a repetitive task you perform every month
You are in control of any numbers. All you do is reporting work through dashboard
This is a backend i.e., not a client facing role like audit in Big4 or any other CA Firm where you deal with clients directly
You report to a onshore team sitting in UK, Poland, Sinagapore or US
You guys have or will have re-engineering to automate your work using VBA Macros
Let’s Learn about the solution now –
Instead of always complaining – this is not what I dreamed of, let’s focus on learning new skills say Macro, VBA necessary to make the job switch. There may be other teams in your company like the Re-engineering and Automation team, get familiar with them, their work, and apply for internal transfer. If no such opportunity is available, then look for opportunities outside the organization.
FP&A job profile especially from MNCs like JP Morgan, Accenture, Amazon, and many more other MNCs outsource their Ms-excel work to India in the form of FP&A jobs which include just reporting and exclude core finance work like planning, decision-making, and analysis.
I am not saying this is a bad job, all I’m saying is these types of jobs are not meant for Chartered Accountants. CAs opting for such jobs are lowering their own brand value and settling for much less than they actually deserve. If you are stuck in it, get out of it ASAP. Keep applying to your preferrable job profile, learn about the skills they need, and upgrade yourself. Do everything you can to get into the core finance profile.
One of the ways is to search for finance roles in Indian companies. There FP&A role means proper financial planning and analysis role. No, cover up. You can also start your career with Big4 and if you do a good job then the corporates who are your clients now will offer you a much better role in their corporates.
Sheryl Sandberg
Feeling confident – or pretending that you feel confident – is necessary to reach for opportunities. It’s a cliche, but opportunities are rarely offered; they are seized.
Outsourcing jobs to India is nothing new India because of cheap labor costs. Even FP&A jobs offered by MNCs are Ms-Excel Outsourcing work to India. Such jobs are for graduates and not for Chartered Accountants.
FP&A reporting job profile is okay to pursue for one year as a fresher but then there should be scope for employees to move up towards planning, decision making, analytics.
Don’t worry FP&A is not the only job profile in the finance domain offered by MNCs. Some MNCs do offer proper controlling, analysis jobs too in India. Apply to such companies for a better career in finance.
When MNCs offered FP&A reporting job profiles, there is one big opportunity where you can apply is the Automation and Re-engineering Team which is created to reduce and eliminate repetitive work. Since FP&A reporting is a repetitive task, you will definitely find a re-engineering team and to apply for automation/re-engineering team, you should know Macro VBA skills. So go for it!
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