There was a time, not too long ago, when certain professions, I believe, carried with them a near-universal seal of approval. Doctor. Engineer. Banker.

In countries like India, and in many parts of the world, working at a bank wasn’t just a career choice, it was a marker of having “arrived”, epitome of socially accepted as successful.  It meant job security, predictability, government-linked benefits if you were lucky, and more often than not, a quiet pride in the family or neighbourhood. It was a job, one’s parents could explain without effort, and a title, that neighbours could respect without question.

This reverence for banking jobs didn’t bloom suddenly one fine morning. It was shaped by a socio-economic landscape that had just begun to stabilise. Where trust, security, and tangible proof of progress, mattered. 

Banks symbolised that progress. And so, for decades, banking jobs remained one of the aspirational career choice of the lower to middle-class family, even elites and the prestigious in the society.

Fast forward to today, and that landscape is changing, slowly, but unmistakably.

Enter fintech. Agile, digital-first, innovation-fuelled. These companies might not have marble-lobbied branches or a legacy brand name, (mostly because they do not advertise on Television on newspapers) but they are reshaping how the world saves, spends, borrows, and invests. And they’re doing it pretty fast. 

The thing is, society hasn’t always caught up with this shift in perception. A job at a fintech startup doesn’t always evoke the same instant social validation, or glamour.
(BUT are millennials and GEN-Zs and alphas, or even the new age parents much concerned about the old social validations? I can’t say. Probably you know ;)

Yet globally, the market shouts (on social media) a different story. Fintech companies are being valued at billions, going public, and transforming not just consumer experiences but institutional frameworks. Their employees, product managers, AI architects, API strategists, are ‘living the dream’, the new age professionals, who may not have a cubicle but have global reach and a respectable lifestyle.

This isn’t a competition between old and new. It’s a shift from “either-or” to “both-and”. The BFSI sector today is a spectrum. And somewhere along that spectrum, the traditional and the modern not only coexist, they’re starting to overlap. A bank today might employ a blockchain engineer. A fintech might hire a compliance officer with 20 years of banking experience. Skills, not job titles, are the real currency.

In this article, am trying to explore the contrasting (and increasingly complementary) skillsets required in banking and fintech jobs. We’ll also touch on the global growth of BFSI careers, the rise of Oracle-powered financial technologies, and how organisations like Profinch are creating workplaces that combine the best of both worlds.

Because at the end of the day, whether you’re wearing formals to a branch or sneakers to a cloud lab, what really matters is, do you want to be part of a revolution, have a career, that is shaping the future of finance?