Commerce route
Financial planning and wealth management
You help people decide what to do with their money — how much to save, where to invest it, how to pay for a house or a parent's illness — and in India that advice is licensed work.
First question
What does this person do?
Most people in India are not bad with money so much as unadvised: they hold too much in one place, buy insurance they do not need, and have no plan for the expensive things they know are coming. A financial planner's job is to sit with a household, work out what it earns, owes and will need, and build a plan — an emergency fund, the right insurance, a mix of investments, a way to pay for a child's education or a retirement. Then you review it every year as life changes. In wealth management you do a version of this for people with a lot of money, which adds tax, property and inheritance questions.
The important thing to understand about this work in India is the split between two ways of being paid. A SEBI-registered investment adviser charges the client a fee and is legally bound to act in that client's interest. A distributor or agent is paid a commission by whoever makes the product they sell — mutual funds, insurance policies — and is not the same thing, even when the job title and the office look identical. Much of what is called wealth management in banks is sales, and the difference matters to whoever is taking the advice.
Next question
What are they paid?
LPA = lakhs per annum; ₹1 lakh = ₹100,000. These are broad India market estimates across common employers and work settings—not guaranteed offers, audited statistics or the ceiling. References give context, not proof of each exact band. Historical anchors and evidence gaps remain in Sources.
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Entry first role
Estimated range₹3.0–8.0LPA
Broad India market estimate, not a guaranteed offer or audited statistic. Fixed pay and incentive-linked compensation vary with client assets, employer and role.
Commerce estimated midpoint at this rung: ₹7.5 LPA · midpoint median across 11 editorial Commerce routes · compare all routes
Market reference: AmbitionBox www.ambitionbox.com Estimate dated
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Mid about 5 years in
Estimated range₹7.0–18LPA
Broad India market estimate, not a guaranteed offer or audited statistic. Fixed pay and incentive-linked compensation vary with client assets, employer and role.
Commerce estimated midpoint at this rung: ₹16 LPA · midpoint median across 11 editorial Commerce routes · compare all routes
Market reference: AmbitionBox www.ambitionbox.com Estimate dated
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Senior about 10 years in
Estimated range₹15–35LPA
Broad India market estimate, not a guaranteed offer or audited statistic. Fixed pay and incentive-linked compensation vary with client assets, employer and role.
Commerce estimated midpoint at this rung: ₹27 LPA · midpoint median across 11 editorial Commerce routes · compare all routes
Market reference: AmbitionBox www.ambitionbox.com Estimate dated
The vertical line marks the midpoint median of the editorial estimates for this stream. Published examples are excluded. Scale: ₹ lakhs per annum.
Hiring landscape
Who hires for this work?
Examples of large employers and institutions associated with this route in India:
- HDFC Bank
- ICICI Bank
- Kotak Mahindra Bank
- wealth and fintech platforms
Examples, not a ranking or a promise of a current vacancy. Hiring changes; check the employer’s own careers page.
What it takes to get in
- Entrance exam
- There is no entrance exam to study for this, but there is a licence to earn. To act as an investment adviser you must hold a certificate of registration from SEBI and pass the NISM-Series-X-A and NISM-Series-X-B Investment Adviser certification examinations. To sell mutual funds as a distributor you need the relevant NISM certification instead, and to sell insurance you need to satisfy IRDAI's requirements. Many planners also take the Certified Financial Planner qualification, which is not required by law.
- Realistic cut-off
- No rank and no percentile — the filters here are a licence and clients, not an admission list. SEBI's Investment Advisers Regulations set qualification, certification and net-worth conditions that an adviser must meet and keep meeting, and a registration certificate is valid for five years and must be renewed at least three months before it expires. The harder, unwritten filter is that this is advice work: nobody hands their savings to a twenty-two-year-old, so most people build it on the back of years inside a bank, a broking firm or another planner's practice first.
- How long
- 4 years
- Roughly what it costs
Not stated as a single figure
Low in fees, long in unpaid time. The NISM-Series-X-A Investment Adviser (Level 1) certification examination costs Rs 3,000, the Level 2 examination is priced similarly, each certificate is valid for three years, and the renewal examination costs Rs 2,500. Behind those sits an ordinary three-year degree. What this route really costs is the years spent building a client list, during which income is small and irregular — and, for a registered adviser, the net worth SEBI requires you to hold at all times.
Approximate, tuition only, excluding coaching and living costs unless the source text says otherwise.
- Can you switch out later?
- High. The certifications are exams you sit rather than courses you enrol in, so nothing is closed off while you take them, and the underlying knowledge — investments, tax, insurance, personal finance — transfers into banking, mutual fund companies, insurance and fintech. The part that does not transfer is the client relationships, which are the actual asset in a planning practice and take years to build; someone who leaves at year eight leaves those behind.
Delhi entry paths
These are the routes people in Delhi commonly take into this career. This is not a ranking of institutions and does not list cut-offs for any particular college.
- Any three-year degree — BCom, BA Economics and BBA at Delhi University colleges are the usual ones — then the NISM certifications, which are online exams with test centres across Delhi NCR and no degree requirement of their own
- Most people enter through an employer rather than straight into practice: private and public banks, broking firms, mutual fund companies and insurance companies across Delhi NCR hire commerce graduates into sales, service and relationship roles
- Chartered accountants and company secretaries move into this work from the tax and compliance side, and their qualification satisfies part of what SEBI asks of an adviser
- SEBI registration as an investment adviser is applied for nationally and online; SEBI's Northern Regional Office is in New Delhi
- Gurgaon and Noida hold a large share of the country's fintech and wealth-platform companies, which hire for advisory, research and product roles
How this compares
| Route | Entry | Mid | Senior |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial planning and wealth management (this route) | ₹3.0–8.0 LPA | ₹7.0–18 LPA | ₹15–35 LPA |
| Company Secretary (CS) | ₹4.0–8.0 LPA | ₹8.0–18 LPA | ₹15–35 LPA |
| Economics degree (policy, research and financial regulation) | ₹4.0–10 LPA | ₹8.0–20 LPA | ₹15–35 LPA |
| Cost and Management Accountant (CMA) | ₹5.0–10 LPA | ₹10–20 LPA | ₹18–35 LPA |
| Running a business (entrepreneurship and family business) | ₹0.0–12 LPA | ₹0.0–30 LPA | ₹0.0–60 LPA |
Sources
- Securities and Exchange Board of India investor.sebi.gov.in
2026-08-17: SEBI's official investor education page on investment advisers: an investment adviser advises clients on securities, investment strategies and portfolio allocation and owes fiduciary duties; a SEBI registration number must be obtained before offering services; the NISM-Series-X-A and X-B Investment Adviser certification examinations must be passed; a minimum net worth must be maintained; and the adviser is paid a fee by the client rather than commission from product issuers. 2026-08-17: Historical evidence gap for the entry rung; not validation of the displayed estimate: There is no published figure and the reason is structural rather than accidental. Registered investment advisers are mostly self-employed or work in very small firms, and what they make is the fees their own clients pay, which nobody collects or reports. Distributors and agents are paid commission on what they sell, so their income is a function of sales volume, not a salary. Bank relationship managers do draw salaries, but no bank publishes them and much of the pay is an incentive tied to targets. Any single number offered for this route would be describing one of these three very different arrangements while implying it covers all of them. 2026-08-17: Historical evidence gap for the mid rung; not validation of the displayed estimate: Nothing verifiable is published. In the fee-charging branch of this work, income at five years depends almost entirely on how many clients you have kept and what you charge them, which is closer to running a small practice than to being on a salary. 2026-08-17: Historical evidence gap for the senior rung; not validation of the displayed estimate: Nothing verifiable is published. The figures that circulate for wealth managers usually describe people managing very large portfolios at private banks, which is a small and unrepresentative corner of this work.
- Securities and Exchange Board of India www.sebi.gov.in
2025-08-07: Securities and Exchange Board of India (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013, as last amended on 7 August 2025 — the regulations that impose registration, qualification, certification, net-worth, risk-profiling, disclosure, record-keeping and code-of-conduct requirements on investment advisers, and under which a certificate of registration is valid for five years and must be renewed at least three months before expiry.
- National Institute of Securities Markets www.nism.ac.in
2026-08-17: National Institute of Securities Markets official page for the NISM-Series-X-A Investment Adviser (Level 1) Certification Examination: examination fee of Rs 3,000; certificate valid for three years from the date of the examination; and renewal through the NISM-Series-X-C Investment Adviser Certification (Renewal) Examination at an enrolment fee of Rs 2,500 for a further three years.
- AmbitionBox www.ambitionbox.com
2026-08-21: Broad India market estimate, not a guaranteed offer or audited statistic. Fixed pay and incentive-linked compensation vary with client assets, employer and role.