Junior Analyst Structured Products Review

Fantastically enjoyable - the Bank is ambitous and growing, which is a really good enviornment to go into as an intern.

Highly valued, unlike other banks in RBC departments have to ask to have interns; they are never just thrust upon them. Therefore as soon as you start you know you are there for a purpose.

This was probably the best part of the internship. Structured Products aka derivatives is probably one of the most complex parts of the trading floor. So in the first couple of weeks I asked a lot of questions and the guys on the team were always really helpful in their answers. They understood how closed an environment it is to the outside – information is quite difficult to find without first hand involvement.

Always kept busy, the markets managed to stoop towards Armageddon and back a couple of times in the 8 weeks which made it quite non stop on the trading floor.

I think it’s impossible to have much responsibility as an intern in any structured products department, mostly because FSA regulations mean you can't actually sell, but also because option pricing and structuring is just too complex for an intern to ever have any sort of final responsibility over. But with that as a boundary I had a lot of freedom in what I did.

The two things I learnt that are most useful for the future are probably computer skills like VBA and a first hand knowledge of the markets. Unfortunately neither of which are related at all to my degree.

Intense and exciting, when the whole trading floor erupts in gasps or claps simultaneously its pretty cool. There is a lot of hustle and bustle as you would expect but it’s also really laid back – especially on Thursday evening and almost all of Friday.

Given how fast the firm is growing, HR does a really good job in keeping the show running. There are lots of intern events and extra training sessions to keep you busy.

There was a lot of training available in almost every imaginable area of banking – most of it is voluntary and definitely worth doing.

Yeah we all met up on the weekends and after work to go out.

Cheap for The City to be honest, there is an O'Neil's 1 min away and a Spoons 2 mins.

Pretty poor unless you like crowded basements and The Only Way is Essex, but Old Street and London Bridge are really good and they are still walkable.

There was extra Bloomberg training outside of work, and a couple of charity runs and things, but not many 'Join RBC Cricket Team' posters if that is what you are hoping.