In this dialogue, the speakers critique the traditional recruitment model of major banks, which heavily favors graduates from a handful of elite universities and assumes academic excellence equates to trading success. They argue that this approach overlooks a vast pool of high‑potential individuals from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds—people they liken to a "Serena Williams" of finance who remain hidden because conventional hiring pipelines cannot reach them. The conversation highlights how academic achievement does not guarantee the resilience, self‑discipline, and emotional control required on a trading floor, and how banks’ recent diversity pledges often remain superficial, merely swapping one elite cohort for another. To address this gap, they introduce AmplifyMe, a free, globally accessible simulation platform that mirrors the training banks provide to interns. Participants can test their trading abilities, generate performance data, and be discovered by banks such as Morgan Stanley. The platform aims to democratize access to finance careers, irrespective of university pedigree, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, by using objective performance metrics to connect undiscovered talent with financial institutions.
Chapters
Perhaps playing— the sport I played was basketball, and basketball is a notorious sport. It's kind of like football is in the UK, for example. The people who play football in the UK are usually from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, very mixed ethnicities. And they're not the types of people who generally go to work on Wall Street or in the City of London. But for me, I'd like to think that this is what I feel very passionate about because my interactions with these people is that there's extreme talent. I've always sort of thought of the world as in there's a Serena Williams of the finance world just sitting there waiting to be unearthed. It's just that traditional recruitment methods or the way that banks have seen the employment process before is so rigid. That it hasn't allowed Serena to break through yet in our field.
And so, yeah. Yeah, Serena never gets unearthed. And that right there is one of our driving ambitions, is to make sure that every Serena out there not only gets discovered and unearthed, but also gets then fast-tracked and connected with these institutions so that they do get on that platform and can become who they're supposed to become. I think banks, if we think about it just from the bank's side, and we'll talk about the student side in a second, but from the bank's side, yeah, historically, look, they're changing. And they're aware of, of course they're aware of the situation. Diversity is the buzzword. And a lot of big banks are setting out really what looks like on the face of it some really impressive, ambitious sort of diversity plans. Okay. But historically, of course, it used to be that banks would hire just from target universities. So it'd be the top 5, top 5 universities. Let's just talk about the UK, but it would be the same in America or in Asia and whatever. We'll just hire from the top 5 unis because the kind of one-dimensional, quite naive thought process is, well, they're the brightest minds of their generation. Because otherwise, how else would they have gotten into that top 5? Now, straight away, of course, that means that you're assuming that everyone who's not in the top 5 is not bright and doesn't have any potential. Of course, there's a huge portion of people that have incredible potential that never get anywhere near to the top 5 unis, not because they're not good enough or don't have the potential to be good enough. They're just— where they've come from in their life, they're just so disconnected from that world of Oxford and Cambridge. I mean, well, I know they're two football teams, but do they do anything else? It's like, university's not even on their radar. Their family's never been to university. Their families have never done A-levels, never mind going to university. And so they're coming from a place that can't get them to that stage by their early 20s, top 5 unis. And so they're entirely missed. The other thing is that the problem that banks found, and one of the reasons why they're evolving, is that they realized that hiring from the top 5 meant that they were hiring basically the same person. And it became an incredibly one-dimensional workforce. And they're all super successful academics. They've had an academic career where they've done nothing but succeed. And so yes, they've done amazingly well at GCSEs, amazingly well at A-levels. Yes, they've got their place at Cambridge. Yes, they've smashed it and they're super academic. Success, success, success. And so the banks are like, right, they're the crème de la crème. "We need those people. Come with us. Here's a load of money. Come and sit on our trading floor." Then they get to the trading floor and the harsh reality of a markets-based role is that markets don't always go up. Although looking at the S&P chart, you might be forgiven for thinking that, but markets don't always go up. You're not always successful. Sometimes you're going to lose money. This is the key, right? How do you deal with adverse scenarios and these academic elite students. And again, I'm generalizing big time, so by no means am I suggesting that everyone at Cambridge has had an entirely smooth ride for their entire life, but a lot have, and a lot are not equipped and don't have the resilience to deal with adverse situations on the trading floor because they've never been exposed to it. It's through no fault of their own, it's just that their trajectory has not put them in a situation where they failed, or where it's not going right, or something's not working out as they thought. And then they're just not equipped to kind of then deal with those scenarios. So banks recognize this. Now they've certainly put in place— the wheels have started moving towards addressing this. But if you look at the press and look at these big bold headlines, Goldman's are now only hiring or only— sorry, Goldman's are going to hire 50% females and 50% males. That's it. OK. And that's a great headline. And it's great PR. If you want to be a little bit critical about this, it's great PR. But behind those scenes, fine, 50/50, sure. But where are these 50 females coming from? Top 5 universities. It's like, well, all right, OK. Fine. You're trying to diversify in one way, but you're not really truly diversifying. And I think that the— yes, the banks recognize they've got to change, but the rate of change is fantastically slow. And the distance they've got down the track of change is way smaller than what you would imagine your perception is, having read all the press around these big diversity initiatives that these banks are kind of putting into place. So This is where we come in. Because to be fair to the banks, it's hard to change. How can you find Serena at Bangor University where she's studying psychology? How the hell do they unearth that person when Serena doesn't even know herself that she's an amazing market maker and should be working for Morgan Stanley? So this is AmplifyMe. It is the platform where the entire global student community can come on for free, entirely for free. If you want to work in finance, come on to the AmplifyMe platform and have a go. And I mean use the simulation technology that all these banks are using to actually train their new hires to get them ready for life on the trading floor. Exactly the same training that you'd get if you're on the Morgan Stanley summer internship program. It's, it's free. It's on our platform. Anyone, anywhere. And it's from your performance data. How do you perform in these simulated roles? This is how we're finding talent. This is how we're finding Serena. Now, it's our challenge to make sure that Serena, in inverted commas, is aware of this platform and is aware of what it does and what it could do. So we need to get her on it. Once she's on it and she performs, then Morgan Stanley, come and check out this person. And it's about connecting the super talented. And I don't care where you're from. I don't care what your gender is, what your skin color is, what your socioeconomic background is. I don't care where you are in the world. I don't care what you're studying. Can you do these jobs? Because actually, I've been a trader for 20 years. And I can 100% tell you that the most important attribute of a trader has got zero to do with academics. Zero, zilch, nothing. It's about resilience. It's about self-discipline. It's about staying in control, being rational and logical in a very volatile world. And that's got nothing to do with academics. Just because you've got a first from maths from Cambridge doesn't mean you're definitely going to be good at that. You might be, but it doesn't mean you're definitely going to be. Serena at Bangor doing psychology, may well be equally as good or better than you doing a first at maths from Cambridge.
