Philmon Gidey landed his first role in fintech in the old-fashioned way. He met a senior figure in the flesh at the Work in Fintech AI Summit (WIF), engaged in genuine conversation and was then recommended for a vacant post. He is not alone; 10 other attendees have secured full-time jobs through the Summit, alongside 65 others who obtained internships. Looking someone in the eye and offering a firm handshake is staging an unexpected resurgence as an effective alternative to clicking the “easy apply” button on LinkedIn.
Matthew Cheung, who organises the Work in Fintech AI Summit, an annual gathering targeting the 18-25 demographic, observes that the job boards frequently put the cart before the horse.
“Your CV,” he says, “shouldn’t be front and centre. The young person should be front and centre. Having a conversation face-to-face with a CEO or founder is the quickest route to short-circuiting any job search.”
There is a catch, though: you have to be memorable.
Matthew Cheung, CEO of fintech ipushpull, runs the Work in Fintech AI Summit in his spare time.
AI Applicants Charming AI Evaluators
LinkedIn data cited in 2026 indicates the platform was processing around 14,200 job applications per minute at its early‑2026 peak, roughly 58% higher than two years earlier.
In a Gartner Q4 2024 survey of 3,290 job seekers, 39% reported using generative AI during their application process.
To cope with application volumes now measured in thousands per minute, many employers rely heavily on Applicant Tracking Systems to rank and filter candidates.
On top of that, there is a steady stream of ghost job listings from companies that have no intention of filling them, and sometimes, from companies that don’t even exist.
AI applicants are now being evaluated by AI advisors in a market that has never been bigger and weirder – or better yet, Kafkaesque.
Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL Technologies, a fintech company that provides AI-ready financial market data, acknowledges that this generation has it rough.
Humphrey, who is speaking at the Summit, goes as far as to say that, “In recent memory, I believe it has never been so important for society to help young people to find their way to employment.”
There’s More Than J.P. Morgan
The Work in Fintech Summit, which takes place in London this Friday at a NatWest branch in Bishopgate, puts young graduates and professionals in proximity to the fintech industry, allowing them to become more than a needle in this ever-expanding digital haystack.
As Gidey puts it, “Without the networking and connections I made through WIF, I may not have had the opportunity to secure that first role in fintech.”
Philmon Gidey now works as a Compliance and Finance Assistant at Stanton House (Source: LinkedIn)
The event also gives them a chance to expand their horizons.
For most university graduates, the world of fintech begins and ends with institutional titans such as J.P. Morgan, Citi and Goldman Sachs. While their brand equity and prestige are undeniable, Cheung believes that university career advisors, alongside parental expectations, might be part of the reason why young people fixate on these bulge-bracket institutions.
Yet, small and medium-sized companies comprise nearly half of the British market.
“There are over 30,000 fintech companies in the world, but most young people would struggle to name more than a handful. However, all of those fintech companies are growing, hiring, are exciting places to work and are often led by forward-thinking CEOs and founders who value intellectual curiosity, hunger, hard work and diversity. This makes them very appealing,” Cheung says.
For young people without established networks, industry events such as the WIF are key to bridge this knowledge deficit. One of them is Joshua Quinton, who recently graduated Business Economics from Queen’s University Belfast.
“At university, I knew I wanted to work in markets but coming from a small rural town in Ireland, I didn’t have the traditional network or insight into which areas of financial markets excited me most,” he says.
Quinton won the Summit’s last year hackathon, which turned into an internship at BMLL Technologies, and that experience helped him land his first internship at Citi.
Meeting the executives running the company in person also helps translate dry corporate copy into real commercial purpose. When job postings describe a company as a provider of harmonised market data analytics, the phrase sounds hopelessly abstract to an undergraduate.
Joshua Quinton received an internship at BMLL by winning the Summit’s hackathon (Source: LinkedIn)
As Quinton reflects: “WIF gave me access to people in the industry and most importantly, opportunities to prove myself. It has helped turn an ambition I had at university into a genuine career path.”
Fear and Loathing in AI
Hardly a day goes by without an article, an announcement or a hand-wringing declaration that AI will take over the labour market. Some of these fears are well-founded: unlike previous technological advancements, like banking mobile apps, which were a distribution exercise, this new wave of AI hits at the cognitive level.
It is set to automate the foundation of many white-collar jobs.
Among young job hunters, this shift generates equal parts dread and opportunism. “I’m scared there will be fewer entry level roles because of AI, I’m graduating soon so the timing’s rough. But I’m equally excited because the bar has shifted and knowing how to prompt well is the new skill,” says Fox Abibou, another of the event’s attendees, who is into his third year of Bioengineering at City St George’s, University of London.
Fox Abibou, Bioengineering, City St George’s, University of London (Source: LinkedIn)
Yet, a degree of this fear stems from basic human nature: uncertainty inherently breeds apprehension.
Having spent time at BMLL working with market data and now moving into commodity trading at financial services platform Marex, Quinton has seen different sides of the industry and how technology is becoming increasingly important across them. “There is naturally some uncertainty about what trading will look like ten or fifteen years into my career, particularly as execution, market making and systematic strategies become more automated. WIF has helped me engage with that change early in my career,” he notes.
Meeting people working at the forefront of trading technology and having the opportunity to experiment with the tools can help assuage those fears by giving young people a clearer picture of where the world is heading.
And some of those who are on the front lines do not necessarily believe the future is all gloom and doom.
“Fintech companies have many different roles to offer within them and AI is creating more opportunities. To draw insights from data, often the requirements include the skill of coding; with AI, the skill becomes knowing the questions to ask,” Humphrey says.
Not Just an Employment Pipeline
Beyond putting young people and executives together, the Summit has also evolved into a sort of incubator for young entrepreneurs.
In 2025, Jinesh Vohra pitched a startup concept to a panel of industry veterans at the event; within twelve months, he secured £50,000 on the BBC programme Dragons’ Den for his mortgage cashback application.
“There has never been a better time for young people to become entrepreneurs and take on traditional businesses. Barriers to entry and the cost of capital have dropped dramatically,” Vohra says.
In his view, navigating the next four decades of work demands proximity to seasoned practitioners.
“That is exactly why initiatives like Work in Fintech matter. AI will create real challenges for many young people, but it also brings enormous opportunity. What they need is the right mentorship and access, and I cannot think of a better initiative to be involved with,” he says.
The Art of Networking, or How to Not to Blend in the Background
Returning to the catch: fading into the background is just as easy in person as it is in the digital abyss of job boards.
Gidey mentions that when he attended his first Summit two years ago, he didn’t take full advantage of the opportunity. “I used that experience to prepare myself for their second event. I made a conscious effort to step outside my comfort zone,” he says.
As Cheung stresses, they need to make themselves noticeable; differentiate themselves from the crowd.
That means arriving prepared, reading the room, and more importantly, resisting the temptation to treat executives as walking transaction points. Approaching a chief executive with a blunt demand, such as “Can you give me a job or can you give me an internship?”, is instantly counterproductive.
Instead, the focus must rest on listening, intellectual curiosity, and thoughtful follow-up.
The etiquette of working the room, then, is essentially for a handshake to turn into a job offer. And while technical competence matters, the capacity to collaborate, articulate ideas and build trust is what truly makes someone stand out in the crowd.
These soft skills are regularly cited as defining characteristics of the next generation of workers, particularly as AI automates or augments an increasing share of routine cognitive tasks
“Everyone, not just young people, can always be better at this, something which AI cannot do,” Cheung notes.
Philmon Gidey landed his first role in fintech in the old-fashioned way. He met a senior figure in the flesh at the Work in Fintech AI Summit (WIF), engaged in genuine conversation and was then recommended for a vacant post. He is not alone; 10 other attendees have secured full-time jobs through the Summit, alongside 65 others who obtained internships. Looking someone in the eye and offering a firm handshake is staging an unexpected resurgence as an effective alternative to clicking the “easy apply” button on LinkedIn.
Matthew Cheung, who organises the Work in Fintech AI Summit, an annual gathering targeting the 18-25 demographic, observes that the job boards frequently put the cart before the horse.
“Your CV,” he says, “shouldn’t be front and centre. The young person should be front and centre. Having a conversation face-to-face with a CEO or founder is the quickest route to short-circuiting any job search.”
There is a catch, though: you have to be memorable.
Matthew Cheung, CEO of fintech ipushpull, runs the Work in Fintech AI Summit in his spare time.
AI Applicants Charming AI Evaluators
LinkedIn data cited in 2026 indicates the platform was processing around 14,200 job applications per minute at its early‑2026 peak, roughly 58% higher than two years earlier.
In a Gartner Q4 2024 survey of 3,290 job seekers, 39% reported using generative AI during their application process.
To cope with application volumes now measured in thousands per minute, many employers rely heavily on Applicant Tracking Systems to rank and filter candidates.
On top of that, there is a steady stream of ghost job listings from companies that have no intention of filling them, and sometimes, from companies that don’t even exist.
AI applicants are now being evaluated by AI advisors in a market that has never been bigger and weirder – or better yet, Kafkaesque.
Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL Technologies, a fintech company that provides AI-ready financial market data, acknowledges that this generation has it rough.
Humphrey, who is speaking at the Summit, goes as far as to say that, “In recent memory, I believe it has never been so important for society to help young people to find their way to employment.”
There’s More Than J.P. Morgan
The Work in Fintech Summit, which takes place in London this Friday at a NatWest branch in Bishopgate, puts young graduates and professionals in proximity to the fintech industry, allowing them to become more than a needle in this ever-expanding digital haystack.
As Gidey puts it, “Without the networking and connections I made through WIF, I may not have had the opportunity to secure that first role in fintech.”
Philmon Gidey now works as a Compliance and Finance Assistant at Stanton House (Source: LinkedIn)
The event also gives them a chance to expand their horizons.
For most university graduates, the world of fintech begins and ends with institutional titans such as J.P. Morgan, Citi and Goldman Sachs. While their brand equity and prestige are undeniable, Cheung believes that university career advisors, alongside parental expectations, might be part of the reason why young people fixate on these bulge-bracket institutions.
Yet, small and medium-sized companies comprise nearly half of the British market.
“There are over 30,000 fintech companies in the world, but most young people would struggle to name more than a handful. However, all of those fintech companies are growing, hiring, are exciting places to work and are often led by forward-thinking CEOs and founders who value intellectual curiosity, hunger, hard work and diversity. This makes them very appealing,” Cheung says.
For young people without established networks, industry events such as the WIF are key to bridge this knowledge deficit. One of them is Joshua Quinton, who recently graduated Business Economics from Queen’s University Belfast.
“At university, I knew I wanted to work in markets but coming from a small rural town in Ireland, I didn’t have the traditional network or insight into which areas of financial markets excited me most,” he says.
Quinton won the Summit’s last year hackathon, which turned into an internship at BMLL Technologies, and that experience helped him land his first internship at Citi.
Meeting the executives running the company in person also helps translate dry corporate copy into real commercial purpose. When job postings describe a company as a provider of harmonised market data analytics, the phrase sounds hopelessly abstract to an undergraduate.
Joshua Quinton received an internship at BMLL by winning the Summit’s hackathon (Source: LinkedIn)
As Quinton reflects: “WIF gave me access to people in the industry and most importantly, opportunities to prove myself. It has helped turn an ambition I had at university into a genuine career path.”
Fear and Loathing in AI
Hardly a day goes by without an article, an announcement or a hand-wringing declaration that AI will take over the labour market. Some of these fears are well-founded: unlike previous technological advancements, like banking mobile apps, which were a distribution exercise, this new wave of AI hits at the cognitive level.
It is set to automate the foundation of many white-collar jobs.
Among young job hunters, this shift generates equal parts dread and opportunism. “I’m scared there will be fewer entry level roles because of AI, I’m graduating soon so the timing’s rough. But I’m equally excited because the bar has shifted and knowing how to prompt well is the new skill,” says Fox Abibou, another of the event’s attendees, who is into his third year of Bioengineering at City St George’s, University of London.
Fox Abibou, Bioengineering, City St George’s, University of London (Source: LinkedIn)
Yet, a degree of this fear stems from basic human nature: uncertainty inherently breeds apprehension.
Having spent time at BMLL working with market data and now moving into commodity trading at financial services platform Marex, Quinton has seen different sides of the industry and how technology is becoming increasingly important across them. “There is naturally some uncertainty about what trading will look like ten or fifteen years into my career, particularly as execution, market making and systematic strategies become more automated. WIF has helped me engage with that change early in my career,” he notes.
Meeting people working at the forefront of trading technology and having the opportunity to experiment with the tools can help assuage those fears by giving young people a clearer picture of where the world is heading.
And some of those who are on the front lines do not necessarily believe the future is all gloom and doom.
“Fintech companies have many different roles to offer within them and AI is creating more opportunities. To draw insights from data, often the requirements include the skill of coding; with AI, the skill becomes knowing the questions to ask,” Humphrey says.
Not Just an Employment Pipeline
Beyond putting young people and executives together, the Summit has also evolved into a sort of incubator for young entrepreneurs.
In 2025, Jinesh Vohra pitched a startup concept to a panel of industry veterans at the event; within twelve months, he secured £50,000 on the BBC programme Dragons’ Den for his mortgage cashback application.
“There has never been a better time for young people to become entrepreneurs and take on traditional businesses. Barriers to entry and the cost of capital have dropped dramatically,” Vohra says.
In his view, navigating the next four decades of work demands proximity to seasoned practitioners.
“That is exactly why initiatives like Work in Fintech matter. AI will create real challenges for many young people, but it also brings enormous opportunity. What they need is the right mentorship and access, and I cannot think of a better initiative to be involved with,” he says.
The Art of Networking, or How to Not to Blend in the Background
Returning to the catch: fading into the background is just as easy in person as it is in the digital abyss of job boards.
Gidey mentions that when he attended his first Summit two years ago, he didn’t take full advantage of the opportunity. “I used that experience to prepare myself for their second event. I made a conscious effort to step outside my comfort zone,” he says.
As Cheung stresses, they need to make themselves noticeable; differentiate themselves from the crowd.
That means arriving prepared, reading the room, and more importantly, resisting the temptation to treat executives as walking transaction points. Approaching a chief executive with a blunt demand, such as “Can you give me a job or can you give me an internship?”, is instantly counterproductive.
Instead, the focus must rest on listening, intellectual curiosity, and thoughtful follow-up.
The etiquette of working the room, then, is essentially for a handshake to turn into a job offer. And while technical competence matters, the capacity to collaborate, articulate ideas and build trust is what truly makes someone stand out in the crowd.
These soft skills are regularly cited as defining characteristics of the next generation of workers, particularly as AI automates or augments an increasing share of routine cognitive tasks
“Everyone, not just young people, can always be better at this, something which AI cannot do,” Cheung notes.
