Pros
Good friendly work culture, good facilities and flexi-hours. Worked at both the investment and commercial bank. Benchmarking with an American bank, the culture is more pleasant and less aggressive across all levels of management.
Cons
1. Bank rife with bureaucracy - particularly within the commercial bank. Too many middle office people pushing paper work from one person to another, filling up forms that are not targeted and relevant to the business. With a few exceptions, most staff working there more than 10 years are "dead-wood" - find that their purpose of working there is to collect their pay monthly pay cheques and those at middle management often act as "blockers" to the detriment of getting things done. "To move a pen from A to B takes painstaking months compared to days"; too much emphasis on admin and less on the content of the job that needs to be done. Business units too siloed - lots of duplication and lack of communication. 2. Projects are meaningless Huge reliance on contractors for day-to-day work who should be converted to permanent staff. Too much reliance on "programme managers"; do not understand what their role is but am told they are suppose to act as auditors to ensure "change delivery"; believe any change should be done by bona fide external consultants (BCG, McKinsey etc...) within a stipulated time frame.