Corporate and Commercial Banking Intern Review

I really enjoyed my 10 week internship because I had the chance to spend time with various different teams across the bank and therefore better my understanding of how the bank operates as a whole and the range of roles available. The team was really welcoming and I settled in very quickly.

The team was very welcoming to me and from the very first week I was invited along to team drinks and other social events outside of work. This helped me get to know the people I was working with and I always felt happy in the office to be working with such a nice team.

I was fully supported by my line manager with regards to the day to day tasks I was doing and I always felt able to ask questions if I was unsure of something. Similarly, my intern manager was really helpful with some of the more logistical aspects of the internship and likewise, my graduate buddy was good at answering some of my less formal questions.

This was varied depending on the team I was working with but in general I always had tasks to do and I felt able to ask for more work if necessary. There was a good variety of different tasks which made each day more interesting than doing the same task all the time.

Some of the work I was doing was designed to better my understanding of the bank rather than actually do something that needed to be done so I did sometimes get slightly bored if the task was just to read through a document. However, I also had the chance to work on projects where my input was important and I felt more motivated by this work. In general I would say I wasn't given that much responsibility but I still had tasks that needed to be completed by certain deadlines and the chance to work with external clients which was more of a responsibility.

The skills I have developed whilst on this internship will be very useful to my career but possibly not that relevant to my degree. However, I now have a better understanding of banking and finance which will come of use for the optional modules I have chosen in this area.

Everyone in the office was very friendly and in general it was a good atmosphere to work in. One of the things I particularly liked was that there would always be a few people having lunch together in the office kitchen and I was welcome to join them. However, Fridays were extremely quiet because lots of people seemed to work from home, this made the office slightly more boring.

It was well organised.

I had weekly meetings with my intern manager to discuss the tasks I had been given each week and how everything was going. My line manager was great at organising a few short work experiences with other teams so that I could learn more about how the bank operates as a whole and the variety of roles available.

The graduate scheme looks really good and it provides the chance to try different roles through the 6 month rotations. There is good exposure to many different areas of the bank and everyone I have worked with has been really nice. The only thing that is slightly off-putting about the graduate scheme is that they are keen for people to do at least one rotation in a regional office which doesn't suit everyone and I don't think there is much flexibility with the rotations.

I was expecting to see much more of the other interns than I did. We arranged to go for lunch a few times and went out for drinks after work on a couple of occasions but that was it. I don't know how this kind of thing works at other companies but it is probably down to the individuals to arrange things like this rather than the company.

Very expensive but that's not a surprise for London.

Really good but also expensive. I didn't go out much during the internship because, as I said earlier, there wasn't a great deal of socialising amongst the interns.

No.