Commercial Banking intern Review

My day to day tasks were very diversified and many people across my division used to come and help me out in order to know more about their teams. I gained a lot of understanding about the main risks, products and relationship management roles. The tasks given to me were very helpful for my personal and career development.

My colleagues always used to be here in order to answer my questions. If I requested any feedback on my work, they would kindly take one hour of their time and go in details in what I used to do in order to seek for areas of improvement. As most of them were interns as well before, they gave me a lot of advices about my career path and how to approach other colleagues within the company.

My manager always used to arrange a one to one meeting every week as well as answering my emails . He was always available when I had any questions and he had a lot of materials which was really useful for me in order to know even more about what I used to ask him.

I had my personal project as well as my group project. Furthermore, I had some day to day tasks and other objectives that I had to achieve within my placement. I worked across all the tasks that an analyst could do on a day to day basis. I also had the chance to attend trainings and client's meetings. I was kept very busy during the whole day but all the tasks given were very helpful for my development.

I used to work on very diversified tasks. From low to high risk ones, I was given the work but I was also every time guided by colleagues to meet the expectations required. As any other employee, my tasks had deadlines and precise guidelines to follow. This developed my skills such as time efficiency , management planning and team work.

What I have done in my internship is different from my university program. Even if I study business and finance, I found it quite surprising to know more about banking products as well as how the bank operates. I found that there is a lot of difference between the academic learning and my practical job experience.

My office was in central London. There is many facilities around the offices in terms of restaurants , bars and train stations. My colleagues were really nice with an integrative culture even if I was an international person. The office space is an open space which helps you sit wherever and always meet new people within the business.

My internship was very organized by the emerging talent team and my line manager. Each of them had specific objectives with specific deadlines that I had to meet. They also used to every time arrange one to one meetings in order to give me feedback as well as seeing if I was on track for my future objectives.

The company invested a lot in our trainings. We travelled 3 times to Birmingham to have extensive development day in order to know more about other teams within the business. As well, we had access to e-learning which was compulsory and very helpful as it contained a lot of videos to learn more about what we are doing. We also had a development day where we had the chance to know more about HSBC's culture.

One of the compensations of the internship if any interns achieves all his objectives successfully is to get into the graduate scheme which is a year and a half job with three rotations ( relationship management, risk and product). We got the help of many graduates during our internship speaking about their internship experience and how they have got their graduate scheme.

We were all knowing each other within the scheme and used to organize drinks quite often. All the interns were in their penultimate year which made our learning quite similar to each other and each of them studied different things which helped us as well seek help if there is any task we could not perform with our skills.

The living costs were quite high because of the central location of the office however HSBC gave us descent financial support through our wages in order to support our expenses. The office was in central London which made it not very expensive to travel. The rent was a bit expensive.

I work in the bank area so there is no real nightlife in terms of clubbing however there is a lot of pubs where we used to organize after work drinks.

We were involved in a charity day where we got to learn more about Alzheimer and Dementia and we contributed to create muffs in order to help some patients. I found this day very valuable as we used to help real patients as well as positively contributing to our community.