Level 6 Financial Services Professional Apprenticeship

After joining the branch network at 16, discover how Ryan Pawandiwa is now building a career in C&I.

Nobody’s career path is a straight line. For most of us, there are diversions, different paths and the occasional pitstop – so knowing how to make the most of your transferable skills is crucial. That’s something Ryan Pawandiwa already knows a lot about.

“I used to play football, and for most of my youth my aim was to go into professional football. I was 16 and I was in college four days a week. On Fridays I was just being a nuisance at home to be honest, so my parents suggested I get a part-time job.”

While at college Ryan began working one day a week at our City of London Office, dealing with customer queries, and helping with transactions – and found it had more in common with football than he expected.

“I’ve been playing football since I was about three years old. I think what it’s given me is that understanding of how important it is to work as a team. It forces you to develop good communication skills and to have a certain amount of self-belief. That mentality of working together to achieve a common goal, and trying to be the best you can – that was easy to transfer from football to banking, although the playing fields are very different!”

Over the next couple of years, the idea of a career in professional football began to lose its appeal to Ryan, who started to focus instead on building a career in banking.

“I took on a full-time role at Liverpool Street branch when I was about 18, and then shortly after I was promoted to become a Senior Personal Banker.”

It was a job Ryan enjoyed, but the more people he met at the bank, the more he began to wonder whether he’d made the right decision not to go to university.

“Through the people I networked with, and the mentors I had, I started to realise that so many people – particularly those in more senior positions – had gone to university. I think for a lot of young people that decision is all about your influences – whether that’s your socio-economic status, the kind of family you’ve been brought up in, or simply the friends you have.

I’ve had the same friends since I was very young, and we’ve all followed a similar path. So, at the time, I didn’t feel like I needed to go away and get that university experience. And as silly as it sounds now, I was like “I’m already earning a bit of money, I don’t want to just give that up.’”

The more he thought about it, the more Ryan worried he might have missed out. Until he attended an event with Managing Director, Customer Engagement and Distribution (CE&D), Raghu Narula, and realised there could be an alternative path to getting the qualifications he wanted.

“I remember a colleague asking Raghu a question about career progression and CE&D “losing staff.’ Raghu explained that he didn’t see it like that. It was about supporting people to progress. He explained that one of the advantages of working for a big organisation like NatWest was the opportunity to gain experiences in different areas to progress your career – and that was something to be supported. It was really insightful for me. I’d enjoyed my time in Retail, but there were other areas of the bank that also seemed interesting to me. That’s when I first began looking into roles outside of Retail.”

The more he learnt about the different roles across the bank, the more interested he was in getting experience of working in areas inside the Commercial and Institutional franchise – in particular the Corporate Banking & Structured Finance (CBSF) space.

“It was an area that seemed difficult to get into – purely because my understanding was that the main opportunities were via the graduate scheme. I worried that if I wasn’t a grad it wasn’t going to happen.”

“I began speaking to people who had done that journey before. I had a lot of mentors and I made sure to connect with colleagues from different parts of the organisation. That’s how I found out about the apprentice programme. It just seemed like the perfect opportunity for me. It was a chance for me to get a university-level qualification, and get into the business area I really wanted to work in.”

18 months on, and Ryan is nearing the completion of his Level 6 Financial Services Professional apprenticeship, after which he will take up a permanent role within C&I.

“So far, I’ve completed three Chartered Banker Institute (CBI) modules and I’ve got one more due in May. Each one is basically a 6,000-word assignment on a different topic. I’ve built my knowledge around topics including professionalism and ethics, corporate lending, bank risk management and bank strategy, operations and technology. It’s been challenging, but it’s also very exciting. I’m proud to work for an organisation that supports the career progression of its employees – and I’m happy to now be working in the area of the bank that I want to progress my career in.”