Investment Banking Summer Analyst Review

I had a great time here, mainly because the team were so great to work with. Everyone here made a massive effort to make sure the interns felt like valuable members of the team. They organised events so we could meet other interns without our division and across the firm, which meant you could quickly develop a wide network of connections in the bank.

The analysts made us feel really included in the team, and we felt like the work we did for them really helped. It didn’t feel like there was any rigid hierarchical structures, so even as interns we felt comfortable asking questions or going to chat with more senior members of the team.

Citi really made sure we had the support we needed. We were each assigned a buddy, and female interns had a female mentor, so it was easy to get guidance when we needed it. Even though we sometimes had to wait to get help, as everyone was busy with their own work, if they told us they’d stop by to help they’d always keep their promises.

The workload varied a lot across teams and amongst our team. I didn’t have too many late nights and never left after 2am, but other members of my team had weeks where they regularly left around 3 or 4am. It depends on which projects you’re staffed on, which you usually don’t have much say on.

When I was assigned work that was going out to clients, I felt a huge responsibility to produce work of a high quality that reflected the standards of the business. There were some tasks we couldn’t do as we lacked the technical skills, but you could always ask an analyst to guide you though whatever they were working on.

The financial skills I learnt will be incredibly useful as I return to university to complete my third year of studies in economics. I’ve also learnt a lot about teamwork and working in a professional setting that would help in any career, and learnt more about what it means to maintain a stellar work ethic even when the workload gets heavy.

The team spirit was excellent and we all got along really well. We often went out for team bonding activities or to watch the World Cup together, which made us feel more unified as a team. During particularly busy times, everyone worked quite intensely with their heads down, but there was always someone in the office to chat to or grab coffee with.

HR did a great job at organising everything. In particular, when we sent out our preferences for what teams we wanted to join, everyone ended up somewhere that they enjoyed and that suited them. They also arranged weekly drop in sessions in case we had questions during the internship, and were speedy to respond to email queries.

We had a week of training with an external company and some internal team members during week 1, and our team did an additional week of training with the analysts during week 2. Between the training, buddy system and mentoring scheme, it was clear they were invested in both our personal and professional development.

Rather than having a fixed number of job offers available at the end, they set a threshold in terms of performance and give an offer to anyone above that level. This was a huge help because you didn’t feel like you were competing with the people in your team, but as long as you worked hard you should get an offer at the end.

Since everyone had different schedules, it was hard to organise social events that everyone could attend. During training week, we had the chance to socialise at events organised by the firm, and tried to meet up at least once a week to catch up, but even if we couldn’t see each other in person we tried to connect over WhatsApp or LinkedIn.

London is not the cheapest area when it comes to entertainment. It was hard to buy lunch for under £5, especially because the only big supermarket in Canary Wharf is a Waitrose. You have to learn to be very cautious with your budgeting, especially if you’re paying for rent and your Oyster card too.

Canary Wharf has a lot of bars and restaurants, but not many pubs or night clubs. There isn’t much time for going out at night because of the late hours, and even with spare time, going out was quite expensive.

The firm organised lots of events we could get involved in, like sponsored runs or volunteering events in Victoria Park. They also had people by reception handing out flyers from time to time with upcoming events so we could find out about everything they had been organising, even as summer interns.