oh dear... I'm a UOL grad not in the financial sector and i feel embarrassed by your understanding of banking...

Consumer bank sales of insurance and investment products are not considered front office, and the MA programs referred to here with top salaries do not refer to these sales roles.....

FYI Sales is front office (that include consumer banking sales in insurance)

when ppl tok about front office, we are usually referring to ppl who are earning more than 8k as a fresh grad.

same for MA... i don't know what kind of MA you are signing up for... but the real one typically pays around 4.3-5k.

That guy probably works in dbs sales job in retail branch. Their grad assoc program does have sales target to meet as it is not a true MA program. Dbs also use RM instead of personal banker or personal financial consultant for retail sales roles. That could be the reason he thinks that he works in front office banking

I'm not from SIM but this is a f**king stupid comment. Front office basically means any revenue generating role and that includes any form of commercial sales.

To even insinuate that you have to earn a minimum salary to consider yourself front office is inherently idiotic. Are you suggesting that an Ibanker for a local bank that makes 4-5k is not front office?

Also, when people say FO they would include IB with it - the front office that you were alluding to. The previous poster did not say that he was in IB FO, he was not wrong when he said that he was working in front office. I do concede that perhaps he is not privy to the various tier of MA programmes available, and hence might have misunderstood or not appreciate the 'quality' of candidates in some of the programmes.

However, that fella was just trying to share his experience in consumer sales. For God sake, don't belittle his contributions just because it is not an elite and exclusive front office job. IB FO is not the only revenue-generating job in the world, so please do yourself a favour and try not to look ignorant!

+1 to the poster. I agree with most of what you said, but just to add to this - I can see why the original poster mentioned that commercial sales may not be considered front office. There are arguments to suggest that the main front office roles in banks are Investment Banking and Markets, both of which pay their graduates extremely well. It is also important to note that roles within Markets include (Sales, Trading, Research..) so I would say that commercial sales is a FO role.

I notice there are a lot of elitist snobs in this forum for whatever reason. Please understand that this is not the place for dick-measuring and the majority of people on here want to educate themselves in the employment space.

I was the one who posted the comment you quoted. I definitely do agree that this is a good space for people to learn of opportunity and advance their career, regardless of where they do currently stand now.

The problem with many undergraduates and graduates today when they quote information online is that a lot of what they quote might not necessary be relatable to Singapore. I can see where you are coming when you say that there are many people who only see the lucrative FO jobs as FOs - especially in wallstreetoasis or TSR. However, it is also important to remember that IB only accounts for a small portion of revenues in SG, which is very different from wall street. The biggest IPO in SG in 2014 is only worth SGD$800mil. There is a reason why goldman sachs is cutting headcount in sg.

If people bother to read the financial statements of our local banks, you will see that the bulk of the revenues come from non-IB work. So are those client facing bankers in the consumer and corporate divisions not revenue generating bankers?

At the end of the day, it is all about revenue-generating and making profits, and banks do whatever they can to achieve that. Why do you think british banks like RBS and Barclays today are re-engineering themselves and focusing on work that many here would scoff here and claim that they are non-FO?

Cheers for the response. What you said is very true. If anyone here plows through WSO like I do (sadly), it is easy to begin to assimilate your own career path with the many graduates and students on those forums. However, as you mentioned, Singapore's employment landscape is immensely different, and the prestigious IBD, SnT and consulting positions may not carry the same weight around here.

That said, while we have established that commercial sales IS a FO role, I guess the crux of the matter is that regardless of this, the simple fact that the salaries paid out in IB, big law and consulting eclipse those of your typical RM or PB, many will continue to understate the importance (read: prestige) of those positions. Perhaps an important point to note here is how hiring practices differ within those roles. While IB/HF/PE hires only the very best, the minimum job requirement for a PB/RM role is a diploma. Regardless of banks' strategies to pull back on IB and leverage comm sales, I can't say that a RM will be likely to ever be spoken in the same breath as IBers. I guess money talks around here :)

Wishing you a good evening, sir!

Kp la. All that are free enough to come here are drawing peanuts as salaries.

ur mum's cooking a trash. can i say that? when i do not know how n what she has gone through n i say your mum is a junk and cook trash. yes i can say that. dun get emo k.