Hi, welcome to PWM Pathway. My name is Kyle Shrader, and I am very excited to introduce you to our platform. I’m currently a senior at Columbia University majoring in Economics, and I’m originally from Illinois. My mom was a wealth advisor at Citi and one of the top producers nationwide. 

As you can imagine, while I was growing up she was always working and her dedication and success in the field influenced me a lot. I think many of the traits and worldviews that made her successful were passed on to me, and naturally, I gravitated towards wealth management as a career choice and decided to specialize early on. To date, I’ve had three internships in the industry, one at Morgan Stanley on a high-performing team managing around $2.5B, and two at Citi Private Bank, where I’ve spent my last two summers.

Over the past three years, I’ve learned about the industry by watching countless YouTube videos, reading several books, completing online certification courses, engaging in countless coffee chats, and of course learning from my mother. I’ve received several offers from many of the bulge-bracket private banks, and have helped my friends land internships and full-time jobs at firms like Citi, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs just to name a few.  

While I ultimately succeeded in breaking into the industry, interview prep was a lot of work, incredibly roundabout, and more time-consuming than it had to be. Among college students, there’s a general lack of awareness of what private wealth management is. Once they hear about it, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what analysts in PWM actually do and what the recruiting process and career path look like. That’s why I created PWM Pathway, a comprehensive, one-stop-shop online course where you will learn everything you need to know to ace the interview process and land that six-figure job in the relationship side of finance. 

This course originally started as the in-person curriculum for onboarding new analysts in my student organization on campus, the Columbia Undergraduate Wealth Management Club (CUWMC). To date, I’ve taught hundreds of students about personal finance, how to approach investing their own money, and what private wealth management is as a career. I find teaching others to be very rewarding and I think more people need to know about this career path as an option. The videos you are about to watch have been refined over time. After feedback from dozens of my colleagues currently working in the industry, the PWM Pathway flagship program has evolved into what it is today, a 10-hour asynchronous, modular course for anyone who wants to break into private banking. It has been streamlined so you learn exactly what you need to beat out 99% of applicants and land the offer. Nothing more, nothing less. 

As the Great Wealth Transfer approaches, millions of individuals will inherit new assets. While there is a huge business opportunity, people must learn how to responsibly manage their money early on and build awareness of how private wealth advisors can be helpful to them. So whether you’re a college student just curious about the career path or are currently knee-deep in recruiting, this course is for you. I will mention that while this course has been designed with college undergraduates in mind, many Master’s students have attended and benefited from my club’s programming, so I firmly believe that the lessons here apply to anyone trying to become a private banker or advisor. 

Our free one-and-a-half-hour Introduction to Private Wealth Management lesson will provide you with a high-level understanding of why people invest their money, the private wealth management industry, its business model, and the role of a wealth advisor. We’ll also highlight the recruiting process and what you need to do to land an offer. You’ll walk away today with a better understanding of what PWM is and why it’s such a lucrative career path.

Ultimately, the goal of this course is to introduce you to the so-called “personal side” of finance, and why the PWM Pathway team is best suited to get you there. I hope you enjoy it.