Personal Banker Review

I am a personal banker. My roles consist of opening accounts, and providing home insurance quotes to customers. I am also make outbound calls on a daily basis to contact infrequent branch visitors to encourage them to attend the branch for an appointment with me to review their accounts. I am expected to grow customer loyalty and develop deep relationships with customers.

I have development many skills such as teamwork, customer relationship management skills and communicating with purpose. I have a new skill; my professional bankers certificate.

I love the apprenticeship. I feel part of something new and exciting and feel proud to have obtained a place. I feel I have a real purpose and I am working to develop myself beyond my day to day job as a PB. it motivates me and keeps my days interesting. it also focus' my attention on what I do each day at work, due to the work based learning aspect of the apprenticeship

Before my promotion I felt over looked and under valued by Santander. following that and a change of branch I feel very appreciated and valued by my new manager. I get internal recognition from colleagues and externally from regional and divisional managers, about how well I am doing. this feels fantastic :)

hit and miss. I am an organised person, so I always want to know all of the details. at times, the programme leaders were not informative enough about the structure of the programme, and so naturally I sought out the answers myself by asking and finding out, as I feel unsettled if I don't feel in the know as I want to be so organised. the scheme seemed to fall apart when some apprentices did not pass the pbc exam and so fell behind with the rest of the work. the exam is perhaps best left until the end for those who cannot pass it before the work based learning half of the apprenticeship starts.

It took 5 months for me to receive feedback on any of my work, this was unnerving and seemed far too long - I would have though feedback would be received a week or two after each piece was submitted. Iain is very contactable, I have received many emails and he is very present in the whatsapp group.

[This section of the comment has been removed by a member of the RateMyApprenticeship Team because it did not meet our site terms and conditions] very supportive of the apprenticeship, but business needs do come first so I do not always get time at work to study/attend webinars/complete assignments. I am often asked to stop working and walk the q etc -- I do understand this need however. should be getting 20% time allocated, average is 2-3hours a week at most (should be 7-8)

I get paid 17,500 to be a full time PB. this is very low because I started as a CSA and Santander will not increase your pay by more than 5% when you are internally promoted. however, if you came from external you will get paid more. it is not fair that people doing the same job are paid so differently, and that Santander pay you less for staying with them. if I left Santander to work elsewhere and then came back, they would pay me more. that seems strange to me. I believe an acceptable salary for my job role would be at least £20,000

my branch get involved in many charity events in the local area I do not feel there are many company events that are easy to get involved in, there are often just a select few eligible I would love to be involved in another company scheme after this apprenticeship such as visiting or working with another branch of Santander somewhere else in the world

Yes

they are a strong stable company to work for with career opportunities and they pay a good pension

learn about the companies 9 behaviours - think of examples of when you have displayed these behaviours dress smart for your interview, be confident and know a little about the company/products/services etc be prepared to travel for your training academy