Need advice for striving to be a corporate rm

[supermint]

hi all.

i will be graduating from my uol part time degree in banking and finance this may. so right now i really need to make up my mind which direction i would want to go. so i need some advice from the seniors here.

ive been working in an operations department for almost 3 years while taking my degree in the evenings. basically my job scope is admin and management reporting. so i have gain much knowledge on how the bank operates and how they keep track of their earnings and costs.

my manager have told me that i would most probably be promoted if i remain in the dept. however my goal is to be a relationship manager in corporate banking. i am not sure where is the starting point to be a rm. i have never seen a fresh grad position for rm before. what is the usual path to progress to rm position? will taking a CFA be a big advantage for an rm?

comparing operations and corporate banking, which would have a better career path?

i hope there are some senior bankers and rm here who can advice me on my goals. thanks for reading!

I was a RM in a US bank before leaving corporate banking about 2 years ago.

Joined as a management associate, did my rotations and finally decided to get "placed" in the corporate bank.

For my team, quite a number of the RMs were actually from operations before and being from operations does have advantages:
1. you would have worked directly with the RMs
2. you know the bank processess well
3. you would have accumulated certain product knowledge.

We do also take in fresh graduates and usually take from the local universities. A good number of them were actually interns who had interned in our team or in other teams. They however start off as RAs (relationship associates) before gradually moving on to become RMs.

Forgot to add:

1. CFA has absolutely no benefit at all towards the RM role. Save your time and money.

2. Management reporting has some benefits. There was a lady in my team who works as a senior RA and helps the team do revenue analysis and other portfolio data work as well.

Life of a RM:
- Depends on the segment of clients you cover. For my industry, we are pretty niche and it is more portfolio management rather than client prospecting.

- KPI as an RM is to make client calls. I for example needed to go out for at least 5 client calls / lunch a week. Rest of my time I spend either out on product pitches with product sales, attending to operational escalations, credit and other adminstration work.

- I would say life is pretty comfortable. I get in at work around 9-9.30am and usually either do my admin stuff (e.g. credit or KYC docs) or visit a client. 2 hour lunch break 12-2pm. visit another client in the afternoon, sometimes over coffee etc. Come back office write call report and I'm usually on way home before 6pm. Never worked on weekends.

- Compensation is quite good. I was an AVP rank and my monthly was close to 5 digit already. Bonus of 3-6 months a year. Was a grade B performer (A is the best) and got 5 months bonus back in 2011.

I would recommend this job if you wish a stable career path and not too much stress. Good work-life-balance.

[supermint]

Wow. Thank you very much for sharing!

Definitely the kind of job that I dream for. Stability, decent pay and work-life balance.

Hope you dont mind I ask a few more questions.

1. Are academic results the priority when hiring RAs? My results are not very good, 2nd lower.

2. Are RMs required to hit any sales quota?

3. If I want to improve my chances for getting hired as an RA, what can I do right now? Go for product training or personal skills training?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Forgot to add:

1. CFA has absolutely no benefit at all towards the RM role. Save your time and money.

2. Management reporting has some benefits. There was a lady in my team who works as a senior RA and helps the team do revenue analysis and other portfolio data work as well.

Life of a RM:
- Depends on the segment of clients you cover. For my industry, we are pretty niche and it is more portfolio management rather than client prospecting.

- KPI as an RM is to make client calls. I for example needed to go out for at least 5 client calls / lunch a week. Rest of my time I spend either out on product pitches with product sales, attending to
operational escalations, credit and other adminstration work.

- I would say life is pretty comfortable. I get in at work around 9-9.30am and usually either do my admin stuff (e.g. credit or KYC docs) or visit a client. 2 hour lunch break 12-2pm. visit another client in the afternoon, sometimes over coffee etc. Come back office write call report and I'm usually on way home before 6pm. Never worked on weekends.

- Compensation is quite good. I was an AVP rank and my monthly was close to 5 digit already. Bonus of 3-6 months a year. Was a grade B performer (A is the best) and got 5 months bonus back in 2011.

I would recommend this job if you wish a stable career path and not too much stress. Good work-life-balance.

hi can I ask is the how much of the rm pay is based on commission?
I have always thought that rm job is quite stressful because have to meet sale target every mth?

If the hiring is coordinated by the HR department, they may hire you under some sort of graduate program (Be it a MA program or just another graduate program). They may impose certain requirements such as 2nd upper honors because they need some sort of filter mechanism to sieve out candidate (not possible to interview so many). If so, then academic qualifications become important.

However, the department may also source and hire direct candidates. Most banks require department managers to source internally first. This means that the HOD will look for familiar people within the bank, who are doing other functions and who have expressed interest to join corp banking. This was the process when our team hired an operations lady to join as a RM, a few years ago.

When we need incremental support staff within the team, we hire RAs from pool of ex-interns or simply recommendations.

As can see, networking and inter-personal skills are the best means to get hired into any department (not just corporate banking).

We hired a girl with a Pass degree from a local uni. She couldnt even speak proper English but she had a very good attitude. She was a friend of an intern who hanged out with the team during our lunch time etc. Very fun and likeable person. Boss like her attitude and now she is a full-fledged RM back at my former team.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

If the hiring is coordinated by the HR department, they may hire you under some sort of graduate program (Be it a MA program or just another graduate program). They may impose certain requirements such as 2nd upper honors because they need some sort of filter mechanism to sieve out candidate (not possible to interview so many). If so, then academic qualifications become important.

However, the department may also source and hire direct candidates. Most banks require department managers to source internally first. This means that the HOD will look for familiar people within the bank, who are doing other functions and who have expressed interest to join corp banking. This was the process when our team hired an operations lady to join as a RM, a few years ago.

When we need incremental support staff within the team, we hire RAs from pool of ex-interns or simply recommendations.

As can see, networking and inter-personal skills are the best means to get hired into any department (not just corporate banking).

We hired a girl with a Pass degree from a local uni. She couldnt even speak proper English but she had a very good attitude. She was a friend of an intern who hanged out with the team during our lunch time etc. Very fun and likeable person. Boss like her attitude and now she is a full-fledged RM back at my former team.

and the girl can speak proper eng now?

Corporate RM is divided into industry segment. There is also another segment of RM we call Commercial Banking RM. The difference is the type of clients we serve. This also impacts the compensation structure as well as job KPIs (e.g. sales? portfolio management? or mix % between the two)

If you cover large-scale MNCs (like Apple etc), these are usually head-quartered overseas whilst your team services the subsidiaries. Your job scope is largely servicing, documentation, credit, ops escalation. Your KPI would be portfolio revenue but you don't need to do cold calling etc. Typical bonus would be 20% of total compensation and should not be varied much.

On the other hand, if you are commercial RM and cover SME type clients. Your KPIs will be largely based on sales targets. You don't have much admin responsibilities but are akin to a product sales role. Your compensation will thus be skewed towards commission type structure based on your sales. Typically 50% or more of your total compensation.

For me, I prefer the portfolio management role. More stable and less stressful. I don't earn as much on a good year but I also don't lose that much on a bad year.

Good performance 6 months. Not so good performance 3 months bonus. Base pay however is generally higher versus those sales structured RMs.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

hi can I ask is the how much of the rm pay is based on commission?
I have always thought that rm job is quite stressful because have to meet sale target every mth?

thought the criteria to become an rm have to be able to speak good english?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Corporate RM is divided into industry segment. There is also another segment of RM we call Commercial Banking RM. The difference is the type of clients we serve. This also impacts the compensation structure as well as job KPIs (e.g. sales? portfolio management? or mix % between the two)

If you cover large-scale MNCs (like Apple etc), these are usually head-quartered overseas whilst your team services the subsidiaries. Your job scope is largely servicing, documentation, credit, ops escalation. Your KPI would be portfolio revenue but you don't need to do cold calling etc. Typical bonus would be 20% of total compensation and should not be varied much.

On the other hand, if you are commercial RM and cover SME type clients. Your KPIs will be largely based on sales targets. You don't have much admin responsibilities but are akin to a product sales role. Your compensation will thus be skewed towards commission type structure based on your sales. Typically 50% or more of your total compensation.

For me, I prefer the portfolio management role. More stable and less stressful. I don't earn as much on a good year but I also don't lose that much on a bad year.

Good performance 6 months. Not so good performance 3 months bonus. Base pay however is generally higher versus those sales structured RMs.

oic then can u tell me roughly how much is the pay of fresh grad with 2 few years experience in admin ops supporting bank users?
is there any age limit to join as rm?

lets say if we joined a bank as management associate, do we get to choose which path we wanna go like say as a corporate rm?