“Everything is about technology,” Matthew Cheung says. “Everything. If you don’t think it’s about technology, then you’re just looking everything the wrong way around.”
Cheung, the CEO of ipushpull and founder of Work in Fintech, is in a typically upbeat mood as we meet at his company’s office in the City of London.
Two weeks prior, I had attended one of his Work in Fintech summits, as Cheung embarks on an almost one-man-mission to help young people find work in one of the fastest growing spaces in the financial services industry.
“I’ve been working since I was 20, and in fintech for two decades, and over those years I’ve built a good network and I’ve always made an effort to keep in touch with people as well,” he explains. “I then thought I wanted to help my old school because it was not very good when I was there.”
Cheung was brought up in Littlehampton, on the English South Coast, by his Irish mother and Hong Konger father. “Both my parents were immigrants and are working class,” Cheung says. “They didn’t have any network of people to lean on, or really know anyone that could help me.”
From a young age, his imagination was captured by films such as Trading Places (1983) and Wall Street (1987), Cheung knew he wanted to become a trader. He would take his first steps on that path aged 15, when he spent time doing work experience at a local provincial stockbrokers, Laing & Crookshank.
“It was basically all these guys in their 60s and 70s who used to work in the City before moving to the coast,” Cheung remembers. “I kept in contact with those people, who helped mentor me. I ended up doing my A-Levels and got an E in economics.”
Despite finding his A-Level results amusing in hindsight, Cheung managed to get into City, University of London and studied for a bachelor’s degree in investment and financial risk management. After starting with no connections in finance, things were looking up for Cheung — until he was hit by personal tragedy.
“My mum died when I was at the end of the first year,” he says.
“I missed all the exams at the end of the first year and did them at the end of the summer. I managed to scrape by and then scrape through the rest of university. I was probably not in a great place, but knuckled down and got on with it.”
Not only was Cheung suffering in his personal life, but the momentum behind his career progression had slowed.
He explains how, “at university, there wasn’t really anyone guiding how to get into working or on a grad programme in a bank.
“I ended up getting my first job by going back to those old guys back in Worthing at Laing & Cruickshank.”
Returning to the South Coast from London may have felt like a step backwards, but Cheung’s luck eventually came in when his boss gave him a list of names to contact.
“I sent letters to all six of them, four of them didn’t give any response. One of them I called up and he goes, ‘Oh, you’re the kid who put the wrong name on the letter.’ And he put the phone down,” Cheung laughs. “But then the last guy I met around the corner from here for a coffee and we got on well. He said he didn’t have anything for me at that point, but we kept in touch.
“I then decided to go backpacking around Africa but the day before I left, he called me and asked, ‘how do you fancy working in investment management?’ I said, ‘That would be brilliant but there’s only one problem; I’m leaving for Africa tomorrow.’ He just replied that he would sort the job for me while I was away and it would be ready for when I am back. That was my first foot in the door.”
Door to door
Cheung started working in the private wealth investment management company but was not enamoured by the work. His next role had him splitting his time between London and the Channel Islands — a place, Cheung says, that was quite boring for a young man in his 20s.
“Then 9/11 happened, and there were no jobs,” he says of his decision to do a Master’s degree which led to him becoming a futures trader and then an analyst at Refco.
“I’d sit in the middle of about 400 people on the trading floor. We had loads and loads of screens up and we’d be watching out for market moving news. Then when a piece of news broke, we would then grab a microphone and shout out the news and do some analysis on it,” he says.
Working at Refco, Cheung was beginning to feel settled again — then the company was hit by scandal and the share price collapsed. “We were all just like, ‘We’re gonna be out of a job’.
“So me and this guy I was working on the desk with started going around to all these other trading shops and seeing if we could get a job with them.” Cheung says. “I was probably on like a 30 grand salary at the time and so when we went into the first place we said we wanted a 50 grand salary and they said ‘can you start on Monday?’.
“That was quite easy. So we went to the next place and asked for 100 grand and this and this and they said, ‘can you start on Monday?’ By the sixth company we asked for 250 grand each and a half million quid expense account before the guy was like, ‘hang on, lads, I think you’re taking the piss here.’”
Realising the acute demand for their skills and services, Cheung decided to start his own company, RANsquawk. “We were nearly profitable, like straight away,” he says.
“There was a lot of demand for the service, and the costs were quite low to get set up.”
Cheung’s never-ending entrepreneurial spirit would not stop there either and, following a number of trips to the pub with a long-time friend, he had yet another idea.
“I used to meet up with this guy every now and then,” Cheung says. “Each time we met he would show me the app he was building, and each time it got better and grew. He had kind of all these remote traders, and he wanted to be able to monitor their risk and what they were doing. Every six months, I’d see him and say keep going, keep improving. Eventually, I thought ‘I think we could sell this.’ And that’s where ipushpull really started”
The growth area
Cheung has been CEO of the data analytics fintech firm ipushpull for close to a decade. After such extensive experience in the industry, particularly in technology, Cheung now wants to give back.
He explains: “I started by going to my [old school,] I helped with CVs and mock interviews but it felt like it was more just going through the motions.
“When Covid-19 hit and there were these year groups who didn’t have the chance to have work experience like I had had, I set up a work experience programme for kids in that year group who were interested.”
These sessions started online, with two virtual talks every week, and Cheung got 12 people from across the fintech space to offer insight and answer questions asked by a group of 14 and 15 year olds.
What has he learnt about the new generation of talent?
“I know a lot of people who think you need to go and get a job at Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan or BlackRock and all these big names and if you don’t, you’re a failure,” he says.
“But the chance of you getting a job at Goldman Sachs is pretty slim.
“A lot of students will be just focused on passing their course or thinking about getting a job at Goldman Sachs. It’s like, no, forget about that. There are all these things happening that are going to completely change the world.
“There are 27,000 fintech companies in the world, and all of them are growing, and all of them are hiring. But when you talk to students, how many fintechs could they name? Maybe like ten?”
Cheung’s main message to these students is clear: “If you’re interested in finance, look at fintech. That’s where all the action is happening. That is where the growth area is.”
He points to how, because the banking industry has been in existence for close to half a century, it will not grow at a rapid rate.
Instead, Cheung says, young people should look to “working in a growing fintech company in a growing fintech sector”. He emphasises that “we’re at a very interesting point, with what’s going on with technology at the moment, because it’s going to change very, very rapidly.”
He explains that his aim is “trying to make it less opaque for them. The name fintech itself can mean many different subsets of fintech, and so I set up this work experience programme to help show them the number of opportunities out there.”
Has he had success? “In that group of about 15, only a few of them had thought about going to university. Now, all but one of them are in university and the one who isn’t did an apprenticeship and is on his way to earning his accounting qualification.
“We do this because we love doing it and we’re passionate about it, but it is only a few of us doing it. I want to get Work in Fintech to a point where we can get enough funding to hire a few people to work on it full time,” Cheung replies.
How far can Work in Fintech grow? “It would be nice to do it nationally and do more things at schools as well. You want to open people’s eyes to opportunities as young as possible,” he smiles.
Thinking bigger
“I see all these young people that are applying for jobs, and they’re just getting ‘no, no, no, no, no’, because they’re applying for the wrong jobs, most of the time,” Cheung says. “Obviously, you want an ideal job. Everyone does, right? But you need to start somewhere. And if you’re sure of yourself, then you will prove yourself very quickly wherever you go and work.”
The perfect first job is achieved by a fraction of new graduates and Cheung is determined to prove that this is not a bad thing. Rather, he wants to encourage young people to use their first job as a chance to take risks and try something new.
“People are living longer and longer and if you’re 20, you could have 60 years of work ahead of you. Is this job you’re gonna get when you come straight out of uni really gonna make any difference whatsoever in a period of 60 years? No, not really. You have just got to start working somewhere,” he insists.
Cheung has spent decades in the financial industry and wishes he had had more guidance and mentorship to lead him. That is why he is so determined to offer that support to an emerging, diverse group of talent leaving school eager to enter the financial world.
“You have got to think for the longer term. I wish I had someone to guide me a little bit better. Having a mentor is so important, even if it is just a friend or an auntie or uncle, or someone in the industry who is older and wiser to guide you through that longer term view,” he says.
As he began, Cheung is determined to make it clear to his students that everything is about technology and says that it is so important for young people to attach themselves to the ‘rocket-ship’ that is fintech.
Above all, though, Cheung adds finally: “When you’re young, you can take as much risk as you want because everything that doesn’t work out is all building into your knowledge. You can’t afford to take as many risks if you have a kid or a mortgage. Take all the risks when you’re young. Think bigger.”
Next interview →
Xceptor
Michiel Verhoeven
Image: ipushpull 
