Pros
-BB&T has a great culture and history of taking care of its associates. Your benefits will be good, you will not be expected to work any hours unpaid(if not exempt), and you will be treated like an individual with the ability to make intelligent decisions. In retail banking, this is not necessarily true of many large financial institutions. -Ample training - I received five weeks training before beginning to see clients and ongoing training after that - Values - BB&T is a company that actually cares about its clients. The first time I discussed a fee refund with my manager, he literally word for word asked me what I thought "Was right for the client and right for the bank". BB&T is a for profit business focused on shareholder returns, but from executive leadership on down BB&T believes that its focus in the market is helping its clients to be successful. You won't have to deal with shady consumer finance practices like retroactive interest, hidden fees, or the other sort of crazy stuff some other financial institutions do. BB&T's product offerings, while not always the cheapest, are not meant to be abusive or deceptive. - Room for growth - BB&T is large and diverse with many different areas(retail banking, commercial lending, insurance services, private banking, etc) to grow into. Starting your career at BB&T provides lots of opportunities to grow both upward and to transition laterally if you realize a better fit exists
Cons
- Market Environment - BB&T is working hard to cut costs to provide competitive returns to its shareholders. This means staffing is lighter than most associates are used to and the bank has been repeatedly reorganized to promote efficiency. This is hard on the associates, but hopefully will translate to shareholder value and a more relaxed expense focus longer term - Large Institution - I still happy bank with BB&T after leaving, and am exceedingly happy. However, while a larger financial institution has more width and depth of services, it is still not a small bank. Even with a customer service focus, there is less local decision making than at a small local bank with only a few dozen branches. - Conservative - BB&T is conservative, and very risk averse. While BB&T is currently extremely well positioned in its retail lending from a competitive standpoint, there will be deals you run into where we cannot lend because BB&T is simply to risk averse. Similarly, we will not charge prices that are likely to create long term losses on other services/products to generate short term revenue. This is great for the overall company, but may make it hard to compete with other banks willing to be more risky and short sighted.