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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Happen to chance upon this forum. Very interesting information and discussion. Thought I will throw in my views as well, hopefully freshies will not make similar mistakes some of my peers made when they graduated from uni. I have worked in the financial industry about 7 years, moved around different foreign banks and spent some time in HK as well, and fortunately not in BO - thanks to my internship experience in a local bank ops during uni time, it helped steer my career away from Ops / BO, almost went into this function like many other local grads.
Singapore is like support centre hub, so many of the bank jobs tend to be more ops / BO related, and there are lesser FO opp cuz we are not like HK with very active IPO / debt market, so it is very easy to land yourself in Ops / BO in SG.
Like what some people said, do not join BO when you are a fresh grad (especially if your ultimate goal is to get out of BO and into other functions), no matter it is BB or local bank or what not, once in BO, it is close to impossible to get out of the BO no matter where you go. Your salary will remain depressed and much lower than other functions. BO is also unfortunately where all the cuts tend to go too as these functions tend to be more easily replaced or streamlined with automation and AI etc. With the rapid development in AI / digitization in banking, it will be too complacent for any of us to say our jobs will nt be replaced by machines in the near future. But it is a double whammy for BO. Low salary + high risk of job cuts....
And anyway banking is going sunset, if you can, consider other industries like tech while it is not too late. For me, i am kinda stuck in banking, having already spent sizable amt of time in this industry, part of me wish that i have the ability to acquire new knowledge and jump into another industry, but i cannt stand going thru the study, start career anew as a junior staff and then move up....
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Yep BO is a dead end. Even tech side. Local banks continue to use very dated legacy systems, so most of the tech skills you pick up will be pretty useless, unless you're looking to jump to another local bank. If you are a fresh grad eager to apply your newly-acquired Python skills, you will be sorely disappointed. Most of the programming languages local banks use for their systems and software were born before you, and so do not reflect current best practices in programming. Moreover, these languages are highly obscure and closed-source, making them useless for anything else and consequently not valued by the market. To top it all off, local banks tend not to develop their own banking systems in-house. Instead, they outsource it to IT vendors. So in all likelihood, you will end up as a glorified vendor manager.
Ops side is no better. Lots of manual processing work. Filled with boomers as well. That generation's mindset is dominated by a focus on making an honest living through hard work, and not so much about developing skills. However, the reality is that today's economy is a skills-based one. And data entry is not a skill you want to be developing.