Assistant Relationship Manager Review

In my role I help to manage commercial sized businesses with their banking needs. I am customer facing and correspond with customers everyday on email, phone and Zoom (and in normal times, face to face as well). I also proactively look for opportunities to support the customer with other products.

I have learnt and developed many skills throughout my apprenticeship including resilience, customer service skills, general banking knowledge and understanding of the commercial world and businesses. I am now also much more confident generally in the workplace and have built on presenting and voicing my ideas to my other colleagues.

I have enjoyed my programme but it has been quite up and down, mainly because of the pandemic. I felt like I didn't have a clear idea at the start of the programme, what the apprenticeship would actually look like and this wasn't explained to me until much later which I found frustrating. I also felt a little abandoned during 2020 especially when my work loads were very high and I just didn't have much contact with BPP at that time when I needed more support. However, I cannot fault the second half of my apprenticeship as I have had great support from my tutors, clear explanations of what was to come next and support through the assessment stage.

I think the programme is well structured generally however I think this structure was very much affected by the pandemic and it lost and structure in the middle before regaining structure at the end. Therefore, I think in normal times the structure is great, but potentially with hindsight, it could have been organised better throughout some of 2020.

I receive a massive amount of support from my line manager who has always given me the opportunities to learn and the time to complete my apprenticeship. I have felt less support from the rest of the bank and do feel like they do not value their apprentices quite as much, especially as they do not want to keep their apprentices in their teams once they have trained them up (at least in the commercial side of NatWest).

As mentioned before, for the second half of my apprenticeship and into my assessment stage, I have received a fantastic level of support from my tutors and the end point assessment team. However, I felt less supported at the beginning of the apprenticeship because I was clear on the structure and who could offer me support.

I think some of the focus on understanding how actions (sometimes actions that otherwise would be classes as business as usual) impact customers, colleagues and the business is good to understand and focus on. However, coming from a different customer service job in the bank already, I don't think the apprenticeship taught me any skills that I didn't already have, I think this was more down to working in a new job/ team/ environment.

I get involved in the Solent Peopleboard team which basically represents the interests of the staff and also organises team and charity events. I get involved in some networking webinars when the time allows and social Zoom get togethers (on Zoom due to Covid) and any charity events that are happening.

Yes

I think generally I have had a really positive experience working for NatWest (in various roles) and I know that the staff that work there are highly experienced and work very hard and always have the customer as their top priority. Therefore, I would recommend it to a friend whether as a customer or employer.

Focus on NatWest's purpose and it critical people capabilities and come up with some really great examples. Interview questions are often competency based and are 'tell me about a time when...' type questions. You should also use the STAR method (situation, task, action, result) format when describing a scenario/ example.