Pros
- The company benefits are pretty good, with a solid amount of PTO and strong 401K match. - It is a good way to get started if you want to pursue a career in wealth management, since they pay for you to get your licenses if you go through the LEAP program as I did. However, if this is how you are going to get your start, you should not stay for long. Leverage the position into doing something worthwhile.
Cons
- Some aspects of KeyBank's business model are just incredibly sleazy unfortunately. They come out with new checking accounts that are virtually identical to the previous version of the account, but they do it so that they can then change the terms on the previous account and charge people new maintenance fees which did not exist when they opened the account initially. I asked our manager what the explanation is for that and the response was "to make money". Wild. - Pretty bad sales advice to be honest. I remember when I started as a Private Client Banker and the PCB Development Consultant said that when you cold call clients you need to say "Hi Sarah, this is Michael. I'm YOUR Private Client Banker." To me this always just seemed odd because if someone called me and claimed to be my banker and I didn't know them I would probably think "What the hell does that even mean?? I don't have or need a banker". That does not even scratch the surface of the bad conversational advice they gave, but if you want to be good, you have to learn elsewhere. - On the investment side, Key frankly just does not do very much for their clients. The advisor who I worked with would essentially just try and toss people in investment portfolios or try and sell them an annuity and call it a day. That is not what it looks like to work with a real financial advisor. That is what a used car salesman does. Their model is just focused on so much on "How can we get as many new clients as possible through cold calls and trying to force people into the branch?" But then when they actually get the clients in front of them, they really don't have the knowledge or the expertise of virtually any wealth management firm that does this for a living. - There is also just too much pressure on branch bankers in general. Call me crazy here, but when industries become so sales driven as banks have, does the client experience ever actually improve? No, is the answer. There is no reason why a client would want to be called by their "branch banker" whatever the hell that even means, several times a year, for a financial wellness review; which by the way is just an excuse to try and sell them some more nonsense. It's like being a leach constantly. And that's probably why there is such high turnover. - Finally, your results as a PCB will be pretty heavily dependent on the branch that you get put in. You can have the most financial knowledge, best sales skills, but if you get put in an area with no wealth, you will probably struggle. And vice versa. If you hit the jackpot with your area and get clients with CDs maturing for $500k, that is a much easier lead in even if you don't really know what you're doing.