Do you need coding skills to start a Fintech career?

Chim Kan -

You don't need coding skills unless you want to be a fintech software engineer. There are plenty of types of talent a Fintech startup needs. To build a startup company, in general, you need to start with:

  • A technology-savvy person
  • A lawyer
  • Someone with experience in a particular Finance vertical (e.g., payments, stock trading, banker, etc.)
  • A marketer with strategic and hands-on experience

Based on that, my recommendation is to find any job that can get you into fintech first. Then, if you have skills and experience to bring to the table, you should get a job in a Fintech company.

Let me share my story of how I got into the Fintech world.

I ended up in the fintech industry as a head of product because I worked with an entrepreneur who had a client who wanted to build the Lending Club for Canada.

At that point, I had no industry knowledge, but I studied and worked with the client to become knowledgeable. I had to create the scope of the product, so I had to understand the process flow of lending, the credit adjudication, fraud, payments, regulations, etc.

Then I had to translate those things into User stories, UX/UI, etc. Also, find third-party data and APIs to process loans. It was a great learning experience that gave me a solid foundation for the operations and technical part of fintech.

Nowadays, I'm responsible for choosing the technology, operations flow, and many aspects of Fintech products that our company creates.