Summer Analyst - Trading at Royal Bank of Canada

Very enjoyable experience with the opportunity to add lots of value across a range of projects and desks.

Everyone is given regular constructive feedback to help them progress and where appropriate additional tasks and projects are given to interns, allowing them to work on real projects, solving real problems and adding value across desks. Traders actively shared ideas and market views, encouraging me to share my input and thought process.

Line managers were always available, giving support, advice and sharing ideas/approaches to tasks so that something useful could come out of all projects.

Everyone has a large number of projects and tasks running at once hence there was always things to be working on along with meetings to attend. Tasks range from individual desk projects (trade ideas, data analysis or model building), group projects with fellow interns to daily meetings with analysts to business heads from across the bank.

All projects involved solving real problems desks were facing, from optimisation to automation of tasks.

The knowledge I acquired over the summer has been extremely useful in the final year of my Finance degree from product understanding to being better at coding, enhancing the quality and speed at which I can finish projects in my degree.

RBC is known for its culture and this was something that myself and fellow interns felt really separated the bank. Everyone was willing to give up some time to meet you and share advice. From day one everyone was very welcoming and supportive.

Extremely well organised. HR provided every intern with a very comprehensive guide of what to expect week by week. We were provided extensive initial training and weekly sessions were put on by employees from across the bank to support further understanding of business functions, products and the future of the bank.

A significant amount of time was dedicated to training, from one week of formal training by external providers on the basics of finance and economics to weekly sessions with traders and salespeople from across the bank. In addition, each rotation provides individual one to one training on software to products.

Very. RBC is growing in Europe and is leading the way in a number of areas. They are a highly innovative bank that provides a truly unique culture! The book by Michael Lewis (Flash Boys) provides a great insight into what RBC is like and it exceeded my expectations many times over.

Interns did socialise but we each had different hours depending on the desks we were on. Many opportunities to go out for drinks and socialise with traders within the bank, many opportunities to build solid relationships with senior people and is strongly encouraged.

The office is in the city so a great location but very expensive!

Lots of places to go just very expensive.

We had several opportunities including volunteering at Ronald McDonald House.