UNB Students Get ‘Real World’ Education Making Decisions On $8-Million Investment Fund
If you’re interested in a career in finance, you’ve probably been told to go to Toronto. The city is Canada’s financial capital, after all, and it makes sense to be where the action is.
But plenty of opportunities exist outside the buzz of Bay Street. In fact, budding high-finance types looking for a top-notch education don’t need to look farther than Fredericton.
UNB Fredericton has a long history of punching above its weight when it comes to financial education programs. Case in point: its Student Investment Fund, which is one of the largest in Canada.
The SIF is a hands-on financial program that lets students help drive investment decisions for $8-million of investment funds.
Operating in close partnership with Vestcor Investment Management Corporation and SEAMARK Asset Management Ltd., SIF students are tasked with producing research and portfolio recommendations for the firms.
Don Wishart is the director of UNB’s Centre for Financial Studies and the president of SEAMARK. He’s an instructor for the Student Investment Fund and says the program aims to emulate “the true experience of being part of an investment management firm.”
Students work closely with portfolio managers, participate in morning scrums, and undertake course work that prepares them to challenge the Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1 exam.
Wishart says that, combined with the practical investment management tasks students need to complete, the course provides a rich learning environment.
“It’s being taught by a practitioner in the industry so that you can combine the more theoretical stuff that you would have learned in the courses taught by the professors with the actual activity of deploying it,” he says.
Chantel Pearce is a freshly minted SIF alumna who now works as an associate at Vestcor.
She called SIF an “eye-opening” experience that raised her expectations so much it spoiled many of her other classes.
“It was like a different kind of learning. It created a work environment that was more or less like a workplace, as opposed to a classroom, which was super great to have,” she says. “It was a super amazing experience, in terms of just learning.”
Nachiketa Kumar is another recent alumnus of the SIF who now works as a junior associate director with MUFG Investor Services (Halifax) Ltd.
Kumar came to Canada as an international student after working in the United Arab Emirates and says he appreciates he was able to get such a high-quality education at UNB.
“Based on my savings I was able to get a comparable quality education for a fraction of what the ‘Bay Street’ universities would cost me. I was able to complete my MBA without a student loan,” he says.
Pearce also said there were material advantages to getting her education in Fredericton.
“I got to take part in a SIF, I got to be president of the finance club last year. Those are opportunities I wouldn’t necessarily get at bigger schools, or they would be a lot more competitive to come by,” she says.
She also said the SIF’s annual trip to Toronto was an “incredibly valuable” career experience. During the trip, the class was given face time with executives from big firms like Goldman Sachs and National Bank. A chat over coffee with the managing director of National Bank even got her a job interview.
Kumar said he also found the program’s networking trips, competitions, and other unique aspects very valuable.
The SIF program complements its “hands-on” aspects with a solid theoretical foundation. The course also follows the recommended study path for the CFA level one exam and SIF grads have historically outperformed the CFA industry-standard almost every year.
“Obviously, every single program can give you the theoretical aspect of things, but SIF had way more on the practical side,” Kumar said.
He said he valued the opportunity to work with big firms like Vestcor and SEAMARK and that making decisions with real-world impacts pushed him to do better and learn more.
“Because you know the work you do has a pretty big chance of impacting real people’s real money. There’s this extra responsibility that you put on yourself that you really have to do your due diligence. Real money is on the line, and that’s something that gives you the real feel,” Kumar says.
Wishart agrees. SEAMARK manages a portion of UNB’s endowment fund and he says the fact that students are influencing decisions that affect the university’s funding is a big deal.
“We teach ethics as part of the course and the CFA code that goes with it, so students understand the importance that they’re not just making whimsical picks, they’re helping decide how much income will be generated to fund scholarships, or run programs — all kinds of other beneficial things, and that has to be taken seriously,” he says.
“It’s an important dose of the real world.”
Wishart says he is consistently impressed with the knowledge and skills of the program’s grads and happily recommends them when he has the opportunity.
More information about UNB Fredericton’s Student Investment Fund is available here. This article was sponsored by UNB Fredericton’s faculty of management.