Summer Analyst Investment Banking Review

Even though the internship was virtual, literally everyone at the bank made the effort to connect with the interns. No matter who I contacted, they made time for 30+mins to give advice and insights about their work. They all aimed at giving you insights while also understanding your background and fit for the bank. That way it was a true learning experience for myself, while being challenged on a constant basis. I would totally recommend the internship to others.

As I said, everyone made time for you - no matter whether head of EMEA or analysts. They truly valued you as a person and tried to look a bit behind just the work that you did but get to know you as a person. They have always underlined the importance of the team spirit, since you're likely going to spend a lot of time with the team and encouraged to do a 'diligence' for yourself, whether these are people you want to spend your daily life with.

At all times, there were people responsible for me. Right on the first day, I was introduced to my Development Officer and the Team Liaison coordinator. A day after I was introduced to all analysts, who offered to help with whatever bothered me. I was also assigned a buddy from my team and a mentor from another team (with who you could e.g. talk to about problems with the team etc.). For my tasks, I had two other people responsible for my work, who feedbacked everything I sent them - no matter what time of the day.

Given that it was a virtual internship, I don't think I can give a valuable indicator here for the internships to come over the course of the next years. During training, the hours were 10-18 usually, but we had self-study times and lunch breaks as well. After training, we were working on individual projects, so we didn't really help with actual tasks but rather prepared for a presentation after 2 weeks. So we were really free with deciding when to work. They also really made an effort that no one worked on a weekend or after 6pm.

As it was a virtual internship, they barely entrusted us with actual work that the team was working on. We had our individual case study, which was a bit fictional. We were quite independent with that but you can't say that true responsibility was given to us. In week 3, which was after delivering the presentation, we were pretty free. During that time; I got a few tasks from an Associate where she did give me some responsibility, but still double-checked everything. It was more a preliminary desktop research that she could follow up on.

It was amazing that we had 3 weeks of training which not only provided us with an understanding of the bank and its values, but also true hard skills. We had projects in accounting, data literacy and ESG. Additionally, we had 2 weeks of training about M&A and modeling with an external provider which was extremely helpful to prepare me for the project to follow. They also provided us with material that we can still use after the internship.

I don't think I can give a true indicator here, given that it was a virtual internship. Nonetheless, I would say that the majority of people I had calls with were very relaxed and open. Some others were a bit stiff, so with that I'd like to give a mediocre grade. Please note that this is definitely true in real life, but the only way I am able to judge is from those calls. Additionally, there has been a team drinks event on zoom that we've been invited to and everyone seemed to be very relaxed and quite fun (but not everyone participated).

The entire internship was extremely well organized. There was an app that would tell us the schedule and allowed interns to communicate in a platform (similar to Facebook or so). We received all the information needed on time. Nonetheless, there were a few things that you could tell they had not thought about previously, as they were moving the internship online (e.g. labour law restrictions based on your country of residence, a virtual ESG project where deadlines were pushed around etc.). All in all, very well organized but some minor insecurities organization-wise.

With dedicating half of the internship time (3 weeks) to training, it is quite apparent in how much they wanted to deliver 'learning' to us rather than extract workforce from us. We had training in a smaller group of people with an external provider, which is also still available to us after the internship. Furthermore, they provided us with precedent material, like podcasts and videos that we could watch. The team I joined also organized lecture about the different deliverables one would work on as an analyst. That way it was great to get an understanding of the diversity of tasks you could get.

In general, Bank of America is definitely a great employer and allows you to be exposed to huge clients from a very young age onwards. What I am a bit hesitant towards, is the impression of working hours that we got. We weren't allowed to log in after 6pm and also not on weekends. When you talk to analysts in Investment Banking obviously this is different. I understand they don't want to have crazy working hours during the internship, but nonetheless, it would have been great to experience first hand whether these hours are for you or not.

I would say that this year it has been particularly hard to connect with fellow interns as no one was in the office. Nonetheless, one could easily connect with the group of interns that we worked with in the various projects we were assigned to as well as the interns in your particular teams. While it's been definitely hard to incorporate social life into the virtual internship, HR tried to still do it and organize e.g. a virtual pub quiz which also allowed us to connect with other interns.

Working in London is of course not as cheap as living somewhere else. Nonetheless, they provide a very competitive salary which will allow for a decent place to live etc. Regarding the virtual internships, we were reimbursed all the costs we had with transitioning to work from home and people without internet access or computers got those from the bank. I feel like the bank really tries to have an inclusive environment from the beginning onwards and believe that with all the additional opportunities at the bank the cost of living in London (despite obviously being very high) shouldn't be of a big concern.

I have not worked physically in the office in London but the London nightlife is definitely something one should experience. The team also pointed out that there are very frequent team drinks and nights out, especially to celebrate some deals or achievements of the team. Overall, I think that the nightlife and also the possibility to take part in it (despite long working hours) shouldn't be of a large concern. In future years, this will obviously have a bigger role to play for interns that are physically in the same place.

Again, the virtual internship is probably misleading here. However, we got regular newsletters about ESG initiatives of the bank that we could get involved in. They also organized mentor calls with high school students that we could give feedback on their speaking skills and also give them advice on their career plans. They also made an effort to communicate the usual gatherings that are happening under normal circumstances in order to give a better understanding of what working at BofA is like.