Pros
*Lengthy, wanted to make this useful as most reviews arent. -Your success is heavily influenced but not dependent upon how you are managed and mentored. My first manager was awful. Left early, didn't know how to perform basic tasks (I had to show her how to do things...she's been here longer than I have been alive), terrible with customer conversations and was verbally/emotionally abusive with employees. My second manager mentored and trained me VERY well and did it by example. He has always been in my corner when dealing with upper management (see cons about this). Drove me to be a top performer. -Vacation time is generous and it is easy to use/schedule. Same with sick time or medical leave. Generous paternal leave. -Health, dental and vision are good -401k is great. With a little management, returns are excellent -Doing your banking as an employee is always the best -Hours. Lots of holidays and weekends off. 9-5 schedule mostly -Office environment. No remote sites or heavy traveling -Concerns are quickly addressed (if management is good...) -Dress code is lax -Lots of locations in market areas -Fairly easy to move locations -Base salaries are fair -Free coffee -Wide network of internal and 3rd party partners to bolster what you can offer to customers -Community bank feel in branches. People are nice and generally helpful -Training is prompt... but has cons I will discuss -Leaders are visible -Lots of resources for bankers... if you can find them. Your best resources are peers!
Cons
*Lengthy. Again, to actually be helpful. -Inconsistent quality in management. Some managers are absolutely incredible. Others are just blatantly terrible - you will quickly see who has the least/most turnover with their staff. -Hiring protocols are questionable... very "diversity" focused company so they hire based on demographics. This does not translate to quality work always. Same goes for promotions. -Incentive pay is atrocious. Changes every year and gets smaller and smaller. Very difficult to max your bonuses due to staffing issues (more on this below) as you do not have the needed support to focus on your desk. -Contantly pulled in 100 directions with no clear list of job duties (it is ALWAYS changing). Very stressful -Bare minimum staff. Every office, department, call center etc is understaffed so you are always doing more work than what is "on paper" for you to do. This is extremely stressful when it affects your pay -Sales pressure leads to harm done to customers. Most notably home financing and credit cards. We have pushed apps on many, many people who should not have done them. Corporate will say "solve for the customer" but this translates to SELL TO the customer at any cost. It is completely ignored and very, very carefully encouraged. -Technology is prehistoric. Slow, outdated, glitchy, overly complex and unsecure. Some days it is just hilarious how much productivity and efficiency is lost daily because of this. Corporate has no idea because they do not have to deal with it so it is not addressed. The customer technology is also lagging horribly compared to competitors. -Raises are rare and the ones I received are comically insignificant despite hitting 150-200% of goals. -Politics. Favorite picking is common practice. You HAVE to be a brown nose to get moved up (if not a minority or LGBTQ+) or know someone well. -Questionable investments. The bank just built two enourmously expensive high rises but cut employees (mortgage bankers, underwriters, servicing teams, branches etc). No improvement of internal tech for over a DECADE. Pouring billions into "justice" type programs to appease politicians and regs (CEO and Lori Lightfoot for example) -You will do 99 things right, never hear about it and get blasted for the 1 mistake you made. If you didn't get to your leads, have minor paperwork errors or dont complete a survey on time you will be put on a list that is sent out market wide to be made an example in front of everyone. Usually it is not your fault due to the technology, poor staffing and conflicting processes. -Useless training. Basically a 2 week long powerpoint course with audio. You are on your own to learn with hopefully good peers and management to guide you. Takes about a year to become independent. -Closing is SLOOOOWWW. Takes us over 30 days to do a HELOC. -DMI conversion. Just Google DMI and this explains itself. Greedy cost saving measure by BMO. -Advancement is difficult and limited due to staffing cuts and a push for "diversity" -Incentive pay is not really worth the stress. 200% to goal in a quarter earns you the max bonus of about $1400. Thats just shy of $500 a month... by then you have profited the bank MUCH more than this. It is a joke how little you are paid for the revenue produced. -Entire bank is in reactive mode. From tellers to corporate. Everyone is just trying to survive and make it through the day if they are actually trying to produce. Stress is awful. Not like investment banking, but a feeling of worthlessness stress from being contantly overwhelmed. You are rarely focusing on what's ahead in your career due to the hundreds of tasks you perform each day just to meet and exceed. -The Canadians get the new tech, concepts and resources first -Hard to "fix" problems for customers. Bankers are very limited with system access and training accross product types. For example, we cannot simply reset an online banking password. We must call down to the internal office. -Partners are nonexistent. No idea who our Private banker is, business banker can barely type English and 3rd party partners come and go worse than employees. -Terrible way of tracking sales and employee activity. Cant explain too much due to internal tech security but you basically write your own "history" in a system. This can potentially be used against you by other employees. HUGE risk that no one apparently sees. -PC culture. As with any large corporation, they are very liberal so keep personal opinions, political affiliations and "traditional" ideas to yourself. It is a "progressive" company. -I have worked a LOT of overtime I wasnt paid for. -As a top performer, you are not congratulated consistently. Only once a year (yippie). If you are left alone and do not hear from upper management, then you are doing well.
