Want to move on from banking? Build ‘portable skills’

• Key insight: To transition out of banking, build skills that you can bring with you like deep sector expertise. 
• Expert quote: “If I was better at smiling and saying nicer things, I would be making a lot more money now” – Anne Clarke Wolff, founder and CEO of Independence Point Advisor.
• What’s at stake: Your career. 

Banking has a reputation as a buttoned-up industry, and women who’ve been successful and then left the sector say that in order to do the same, you might need to shed some of that programming. 

Joyce Phillips, founder and CEO of fintech startup EqualFuture Corp., told women at the conference that risk-taking isn’t rewarded in banking, to its discredit. Phillips has been included as a Most Powerful Women in Banking honoree several times. 

“We don’t reward bold decisions to try something new and build new things. We have to think about that,the incentive of how we get people to take those kinds of risks.” she said. “Right now there’s no incentive. The incentive is to deliver incremental progress from what you did yesterday. And I think that’s a really big problem for the industry.” 

Instead, focus on building “portable skills,” or deep sets of knowledge and expertise that you can take with you when you leave, said Anne Clarke Wolff, founder and CEO of the boutique investment bank Independence Point Advisors. She is also a multi-time honoree of the Most Powerful Women in Banking list. 

“I wish I had been more deliberate about building a portable skill and brand,” she said. “I was really good at running big parts of big banks, growing top line revenues and having great talent,” she said. “None of that translated into what I do today.” 

“Don’t confuse what you’re really good at in a large financial institution of being immediately portable,” she said. 

Wolff said that being successful outside of a large financial institution — she was most recently chairman of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of American Securities — requires a different kind of mindset than traditional banking. 

“If I was better at smiling and saying nicer things, I would be making a lot more money now,” she said. “I knew in my heart, in some ways, that was very freeing.” 

As for when you know it’s time to leave your banking role into something else, Brandon Snower, founder, CEO and creative director of men’s clothing brand Le Alfré and former investment banking analyst at Santander Bank, said to pay attention to your passions and where you spend your energy. 

“Part of the reason why I left was I consistently woke up slogging out of bed saying I don’t want to go to work,” he said. “If you spend the exact amount of time, energy, effort that you do at your career and you don’t necessarily love it, imagine what you can do if you absolutely love something and are passionate about it.” 

There’s tradeoffs, Phillips said, but it’s worth it if you’re passionate about your new path, and think you can add something that the market is missing. 

“It takes a lot of courage, and it’s a lot, it’s not for the faint hearted to step out of a big role and lots of money to go out there on your own and build your own team,” she said. “It hits on all of that, not getting invited to things that you were always on the invitation list, but you get access to new, smart people that are doing different things.”