Pros
Great Experience for 18months - 2 years if straight out of school/university and looking for a career in Financial Services. If you're lucky enough to get a parking spot in town (waiting list) - this is the most valuable benefit on offer (no really - financially the parking space is worth more than the pension). Easy life if you live locally.
Cons
Pay in the Tunbridge Wells office matches the pay in the Manchester office so is CONSIDERABLY below market. I TRIPLED my salary within a year of leaving. Progression is limited and there is rampant favouritism and cronyism. No Salary bands are provided either so there is severe opaqueness in pay structure, which inevitably leads to huge turnover (over 30% in 2014, I believe) when people do learn of colleague's salaries. The benefits, particularly the pension (3% matched - which by the way will be mandatory for all firms in 2018), are so terrible such that tea-making facilities are listed as a benefit on the employment contract. Ironic how bad the pension is, given that pensions form a large part of business. Other benefits: Death in Service (but only 3x). Town centre car parking, but there is waiting list of around a year. That's it. They do offer to pay for training for the most basic qualification (the IOC), but very inflexible for additional training. They refused to allow me take time off for to do the study course for highly recognised CISI Diploma even though, because they refused to pay for it, I had forked out £1500 for it. They insisted time off for study come out of holiday! Massive dislocation between the Tunbridge Wells (TW) and Manchester (HQ) offices. TW office ignored by the head honchos in Manchester as a satellite office, but still didn't have any autonomy (there was no single individual in charge of the 120+ staff at the TW office). Very disjointed management structures. HR were very disinterested and Senior Management are worse. When there were three consecutive years of poor results on the annual Times Best Companies survey - management told the junior staff and team leaders to identify the specific issues causing the disgruntlement, work out some solutions and report their findings to management (to implement, if they felt like it). Senior Management didn't get involved until all the work had aleady been done! There were also a lot of recurring problems,e.g. Data Protection Breaches that were being reported to the Board on a monthly basis, but the Board rarely, if ever, did anything about them. There was no top-down reinforcement of culture as the Board had no interest in the day-to-day running of what is still quite a small business, nor the staff.