The Bank Job

the bank job after MBASo you have been selected to work for one of the ‘Big’ banks in India. What are they paying you?

6.5? 7? More?

Wow!

How was the interview? Did they ask you much about finance? Did they grill you on Marketing funda’s?

It was hard wasn’t it?

So you have a couple of days of vacation before you join? Or is the requirement immediate?

Either way, congratulations on your first ever taste of what it is going to be like to work for a bank and I wish you the best of luck.

Hold on!

Are you a bit curious on what your work will be there? Do you really want to get an understanding of your role as a Management trainee in the Bank?

Let me tell you a bit about the Banks and jobs in India. All these have been gathered from the vast experiences from my friends and classmates from all over India who have worked for various banks as part of their career.

There are basically two types of Banks who recruit management graduates from MBA institutes:

  • Indian private/public sector banks (ICICI, HDFC, Canara, SBI etc.)
  • Then there are the foreign banks. (JP Morgan, HSBC etc.)

So the roles in both of them pretty much are the same so I won’t classify the roles according to the sectors.

You could be given the designation/title of the following on your Letter of Offer:

  • Credit Manager/Loan Manger
  • Operations
  • Relationship Manger
  • Marketing Manager
  • Analyst/Traders

There are many others these days, and a good tip is to speak to the immediate pass-outs from the college to get an overview on the current job hiring trends.

So let me get into these roles one by one.

Credit/Loan Manager: The Role of CM/LM is pretty much similar. One is responsible for the entire credit/Loan granting process in the Credit/Loans department of the bank. These guys work closely with the Credit Card agents, and Credit rating agencies to keep a look out for potential clients, and also keep a vigilant check on the credit rating of the customers of the banks.

They can be assigned to either the corporate clients, like various corporates who have an account with the bank, so as to check their year on year ratings, liquidity, any public announcements and news on credit problems etc.

Or they can work with a list of clients/potential clients of the bank, to issue new credit cards/Loans (to bring new business) or to ensure the existing customers are good creditors to the bank. They keep a vigilant check on the individual rating of their clients and have to keep a check on the defaulters and the remedial actions for the same. The management bit of work comes in where they get to do a lot of analysis on the credit policies of the bank and make suggestions to the higher management. Provide relevant data and analysis of the statistics of the department. Handle relationship with various teams, investigate credit applications etc.

mba graduates

Operations: Most of the foreign banks in India have their operating wing based in India, as part of their strategic global policies. So they are always in huge demand for MBA grads. The work in operations revolves around handling the Back office operations of any section of the bank. Be it post trade processing, Middle office roles, settlements, Reserve calculations, paper work etc.

The reason why I would not elaborate much on the Roles in operations, rather just give an overview is due to the fact that when banks hire for operations, they put their employee under rigorous training and get them well acquainted with their roles before they go on the job. Some of the roles here are high risk. The jobs generally will consist of some amount of pressures with respect to timelines and work. But it is a great way to understand the actual working of the world of finance.

Relationship Manger: The RM has one of the most interesting jobs. They handle somewhat large corporate clients or a group of clients and get to interact with each one on a personal level. They help the bank with maintaining customer relationships. They get to analyze a client’s financial history and current portfolios and recommend various new types of instruments. They also get to research for potential and new clients and custom make portfolios. These guys have to be on their toes with the financial trading markets and any new instruments that are available. They bring new business and do a lot of sales to their clients.

Marketing Manager: The MM gets to join the Bank’s Marketing team and work with various external marketing agencies to use media and print as a medium for advertising the Bank. They have the responsibility to work and maintain the bank’s brand image and make any internal and external communications to the employees and public respectively. They work towards strategizing the Bank’s corporate vision and aligning it with its marketing campaign.

Analysts/Traders: I classify the Analysts/Traders for a bank in a single category as they have one thing in common. The designation given to the job in the Letter of Offer is either of the two. These guys get to see a lot of the Front office action. Their jobs revolve around the clocks of the markets of the world depending which markets a candidate is hired for. They do most of the Front office operations, like trade booking, fresh deals between counterparties, deals with other banks etc. The job is a fast paced and high in precision: ‘Time is money here’.

So, even though there are a lot more roles I hope you have an idea of the general categories. Almost all the roles contain selling, dealing with clients, calculating statistics, making reports, presentations, and handling teams of people. So keep an open mind and make the best use of the experience.


Contributed by Sujir Pavithra Nayak (Class of 2011, IBS Hyderabad)

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