Finance

In the crucial industry of finance, which is a career cluster that can carry global implications throughout its various occupations, it is important to prepare individuals for employment in the career pathways related to the field. It is also necessary to note the specific areas that apply to finance and the skills needed within its pathways. This publications hopes to accomplish just that.

The finance career cluster can provide impactful, life-changing occupations such as accountants, personal financial advisors, loan officers, auditors, and many more. Whether a future employee is looking to help manage mutual funds in order to return the highest dividends or to ensure families achieve the appropriate mortgage for their home, the field of finance has a wide array of jobs for those looking to enter a field in which they can truly make an impact.

As previously stated, the finance career cluster does allow individuals a wide range of tasks or facets in which to focus, but that does not mean there is not a set of skill requirements that are typically needed to thrive in the field. These requirements include basic skills such as active listening, critical thinking, mathematics, reading comprehension, and speaking, but also mathematical reasoning, written comprehension, deductive reasoning, near vision, number facility, the ability to interact with computers, and much more. While this list of skills may appear daunting at first, the better one can become proficient in the majority of these skills, the more advancement and proficiency he or she can achieve in his or her finance career.

In the finance industry, there are five different pathways one can take. An individual can go through the accounting pathway, the banking services pathway, the business finance pathway, the insurance pathway, or the securities and investments pathway. It is important that individuals make their decisions about which part of the finance industry they would like to be a part of in order to enter the pathway that will most interest them.

For example, if an individual wants to venture down the path of securities and investments, he or she will need to take the appropriate courses to be skilled on such things as applying mathematical models of financial or business conditions.

The path to landing one of these occupations in the finance career cluster begins in high school with courses such as business essentials and business technology applications.

Individuals working in the finance career cluster typically require at least a bachelor's degree, although there are specific cases in which that might not be necessary, or cases in which it might be more beneficial to possess a higher degree.

Occupations in this cluster include financial quantitative analysts, sales agents for financial services, insurance claims clerks, insurance underwriters, brokerage clerks, tellers, loan officers, credit analysts, bill and account collectors, and many more.