Banking, investment and insurance: Typical employers

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Typical employers include retail banks, investment banks and insurance companies. With the increasing diversification of major financial institutions, there is often a crossover in the services each offer, e.g. the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) now offers insurance, corporate banking, mortgages and many other services, along with its previous staple of current and savings accounts. The numbers of graduates they recruit varies from a handful, to hundreds, e.g. Alliance Trust recruits about three to four graduates annually, whereas RBS typically recruits 800 in 21 different roles worldwide.

Professional qualifications

• Once employed, you may need to take a professional qualification.
• The choice of professional institute will depend upon the area of specialisation, but could be the ifs School of Finance or the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII).
• Studying for such qualifications will require attendance at evening classes, and time off for revision is usually allowed.
• Some firms offer limited day-release facilities and payments are usually made to cover costs of tuition, examinations and text books.

Big players

Retail banking

• Employers include UK clearing banks, building societies, foreign banks with a UK branch network and finance houses.
• Big names include Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, Halifax, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HSBC.
• Typically these companies will employ 50 -100 graduates annually.

Investment banking

• Big players include Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley.
• There are also ‘universal banks’ such as Citigroup, JP Morgan, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital and HSBC which deal in wholesale banking and retail banking.
• Typically these employers will offer around 30 - 60 positions on graduate schemes annually.

Private banking

• There are fewer opportunities given that this is a smaller sector.
• Key players include Coutts and Co (part of RBS), Cater Allen (part of Abbey) and Barclays Wealth.

Insurance companies

• Typical employers are Allianz Cornhill, AXA Insurance, Lloyd’s of London, Aviva and Royal & SunAlliance.
• Numbers of graduate vacancies can vary widely, but are usually between five and ten annually.

Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

• SMEs are organisations with less than 250 employees and an annual turnover of around £26million. Working for a smaller company can be rewarding because you are more likely to forge a path for yourself within the company, although opportunities to try other departments may be limited.
• SMEs are unlikely to use the testing and assessment techniques of larger companies, or follow lengthy recruitment procedures. SMEs are more likely to advertise their vacancies through the local press, university careers service bulletins, local graduate vacancy listings, jobcentres, and word of mouth, rather than rely on their reputation and a presence at graduate recruitment fairs.
• Your university careers service should have listings of jobs with small firms; see also Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
• SMEs specialise in a particular area, e.g. credit derivatives, and they usually do not have structured graduate programmes.
• Working for an SME can be totally different from working for a larger, blue-chip organisation. You will gain a wide range of experience as you may get more exposure to the different aspects of the business. You will enjoy early and possibly more responsibility and you will have more control over your work and your career progression.

Self-employment

• Self-employment mostly involves working as a contractor. It is not that common, although more likely if you work within certain areas, e.g. IT.
• Find out more about self-employment.