Investment Banking Summer Analyst Review

A really enjoyable experience despite the unusual context. The program has been really well adapted to suit for the work-from-home situation. The extented financial training was very insightful, as well as the Case study, which gave us a good I sight of the job. A lot of effort was also made to enable us to get to know the team, with buddies, mentors allocated, and informal calls with the team. Everybody also made themselves available for us.

I felt highly valued by the firm and the team I was placed in. I really felt the internship was a two-way interview and testing process. The firm was obviously evaluating us and our ability to become full-time analysts, but I felt BofA really made an effort to sell itself and convince us that this was the right place for us to start our careers. Therefore, I really felt there was a will to make me like the firm.

The guidance and support we received has been amazing. We were allocated a buddy (a junior from the team), a mentor (a senior from the division), as well as development officer dedicated to a group of 4 to 5 interns (a member from the team) . This allowed us to have a pint of contact early on in the program, ans made us able to ask all the questions we wanted to, choosing which were more adapted to the senior mentor or the junior buddy.

This internship has been really great in terms of skills learned. We had 3 weeks of training, including 2 weeks of intensive high-quality financial training, the longest I have ever had in my internships. This enabled me to develop a lot of technical skills. Then, the emphasis that was put on networking and proactively reaching out to the members of the team helped me develop good networking and soft skills, which is definitely going to be useful for me in the future.

The program was amazingly structured. I felt that a lot of work had been done by both the Investment Banking and HR teams at BofA to adapt the experience to the virtual context. We first had three weeks of introduction and training, enabling us to have a good broad view of the firm and gain some useful technical skills. Then we spent three weeks within the teams, dividing our time between working on a Case study and working on tasks given by the team.

The atmosphere was pretty good, especially if put in context with the virtual situation. Everybody was very nice, open, available and helpful, whether in the teams, HR, or the intern class. Fun informal social events were also organized, which was very fun. I feel that I've managed to build meaningful connections with people of every level in the team and at the Bank and didn't feel that the virtual situation negatively affected that ability to develop relationships.

I think the company invested in me a lot. First they maintained the internship despite the pandemic context. Then they offered us an amazing longer than usual three-week Training, including two weeks of high quality financial training provided by an external provider. And all the people in the team dedicated a lot of their time to helping us, getting to k ow us, and evaluating us, which really made us feel that we were important to the company.

My view is a bit biased because I had already done an Investment Banking internship, and therefore knew what to expect on the job. However, the case study and the staffing we worked on, as well as the presentations we received and the conversations we were able to have with the team members enabled us get a good view of what the job is, and how it evolves with the different hierarchical levels in the team.

I was able to understand the culture pretty well, thanks to the numerous senior executives speakers we had. They gave us a good insight of the firm's culture, values, role, etc. Then, the discussions I was able to have with my team members made me understand the sub-culture of my specific group very well, which was definitely something important as I was choosing whether or not I wanted to starty full-time career in this company and team.

I was paid on a pro-rata of the annual starting full-time salary and I also received a joining allowance. My pay was maintained for 10 weeks even though the internship duration was reduced to 6 weeks. I was also reimbursed the expenses I had already incurred to fly to London to complete the internship. The firm also reimbursed the expenses I had incurred to come to London for the Assessment Center, which was greatly appreciated.

Even though I still believe this cannot be compared to a physical on-site experience, I would strongly recommend this virtual experience. It has been the closest it could be to a physical experience, I felt valued by the firm, and I am convinced that I am now a better performing professional than I was when starting this internship. This is due to the training received, the good exposure we got, and the regular feedbacks received.