Global Capital Markets Summer Intern Review

I rotated across 6 desks, and received very different tasks based on what they were working on in the moment as well as the nature of the desk. Some common ones include doing data analysis for a trend that they may want to look more into, writing market commentary for morning and noon time calls (where you get to speak up) and sometimes the general weekly commentary that gets sent to clients. This is not to mention some other tasks I also received which asked me to use VBA to automate excel sheets for a trader and taking initiatives to build things myself.

Yes, but you need to keep in mind if you can actually contribute to the desk. For example, some desks may already have most things they need or the things they want to improve are not suitable tasks for interns. In this case, you will be given some tasks to do for your own learning (which I found really helpful for stabilizing my knowledge), or the time to have more conversations with the FTs on desk.

Yes, before this I didn’t know anything about Excel VBA and was able to understand its structure, how it works and putting it to use. I also really up-skilled my critical thinking, particularly through understanding different products that the floor does. Most importantly, I felt like I rediscovered some innovation inside me through doing many of the tasks and was able to find myself flowing through them more smoothly as the weeks pass by.

In some desks this will be more than others. On the whole, I received a lot of guidance through conversations I had with the employees of the floor, who picked my brains and gave me scenarios to understand what they do. On some desks you will find yourself more independent, but that’s also a great way for us to see the contrast and the nature of the desk. I really enjoyed the varying styles of ‘teaching’ across the whole floor.

The company culture is great. This is not my first programme with Scotiabank and this is one of the reasons why I decided to come back here for the summer. Through the internship I had some great exposure to the people of the floor and also across different regions, for example through some culture events such as a weekly paddle session and table tennis tournament, where anyone can join. Apart from this, I was also able to reach out to employees of the bank from different regions such as Mexico and Ireland, who were all super keen on having a conversation.

Loved it. Made the right choice between this and the other opportunities I received. You may think well I never experience them, but I can say that I outlived the downside of going into another markets internship (was worried if I should expand exposure to other business areas although I loved markets already) and this was because I really enjoyed the exposure to some very different products than what I knew before due to the strategic focus of the bank.

Yes