Commercial Banking (Customer Products and Propositions) Graduate trainee Review

As an organisation, NatWest are fantastic. The culture here is great and all colleagues including senior management are keen to chat with you and support you in broadening your network.

For my first rotation, I was in SolutionsLine, a specialist sales team sitting in the business banking side of the business. This included a lot of engagement with internal stakeholders and also customer meetings to sell transaction banking and trade products. I undertook extensive training in some of our product offerings in order to feel comfortable to sell these to our customers. My second rotation was a relationship management team. During my time in this team, I supported on a portfolio of >£10m + turnover customers, through face to face meetings and fraud and operational service reviews. I also contributed to other priorities for the business, supporting our high growth work in Manchester and actively engaging in collaboration hub and regional board activity. In my current placement, I'm working in a technical credit delivery team looking at lending deal and heightened monitoring cases. This is a great opportunity to deepen my credit skills from a development perspective.

I think this can be very difficult as a graduate and can depend on your team/management as to how much responsibility you get given.

The option to buy more holiday is great as it offers flexibility. There are shopping offers but I haven't really used these.

This programme is excellent at giving you a range of experiences to aid your development but it can be difficult if you want to explore areas of the bank outside of your programme stream. You have to be proactive and reach out to senior stakeholders in the bank if you want to broaden your network. My placements so far have given me exposure to numerous teams in the bank but it would be great to have more flexibility and explore other areas such as the HR team.

As a graduate, I have a grad buddy, line manager and placement manager so I feel well supported in that respect. What is missing for me, is a mentor. I feel a bit concerned on where to go in my career and feel that a mentor would support me with this.

Work life balance is great. Sometimes it can be tiring joining new placements as there is so much to learn so I am often very tired. Less screen time would also be preferred with more face to face meeting replacing virtual ones. Overall, a very good work-life balance and managers understand that we all have commitments in our personal life.

Fantastic culture! there is a real emphasis on being accepted for who you are. If adjustments are needed to help you feel more comfortable at work, these can all be arranged. It can differ in roles but in my current placement, I can work from home 4/5 days a week as my current team is only in the office once a week. I can also go into the office if that suits me better.

We have various employee led networks which showcase our commitment to DE&I. Some of these include our gender network, rainbow network and multicultural network. An example of a multicultural network event is our Diwali event upcoming where we encourage colleagues to wear traditional cultural dress, rangoli competition and an Indian street food lunch will be provided. Other activities include our Pride stand in Manchester.

Yes

Great organisation that welcomes equality and diversity. There is a reason so many colleagues have been in the bank so long! So many opportunities to move to different areas in the bank, broadening your network and experiences.

The recruitment process was incredibly difficult but understand why as the roles are so competitive. One thing I would say is that I have found my placements to be more financial than I expected - the qualifications are very difficult for someone with no experience in finance so I feel I could have more support with these. Otherwise, it is what it says on the tin!