Financial

"The interns at my bank work less than me and earn more"

8 July 2022

2 minute read

"The interns at my bank work less than me and earn more"

I am a trainee at a French investment bank in London, and I am fed up with our summer interns and with the way the bank treats them compared to people in its trainee class.

It's a very weird situation. The summer interns here are well paid: our M&A and DCM interns are paid £55k on the same basis. As a trainee, I'm paid just £32k a year.

Despite being paid considerably more than me, the interns do less work. They don't work the long hours that us trainees do, and they literally get around 25% of the work done. As trainees, we are doing real work here and have to stay late to complete it. The interns mostly seem to work on corporate social responsibility projects and to leave at 6pm.

I don't really blame the interns - I blame the bank for creating this situation. I'm not sure why the interns are treated so leniently when the trainees are overworked and underpaid. Most of the trainees are very annoyed by the situation. We've been pushing for our intern to learn a bit more about what we really do, but he still expects to leave early and it seems very unfair.

Gabriel Girault is a pseudonym

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AUTHORGabriel Girault

Insider Comment

10 comments

Ra
Raven
1 August 2022
I'm from the US, I worked for a bank that only paid me $19,500 a year (that was the pay I got after my promotion). When I went on to the next bank, I was only paid $20K a year. Let's just say that I am not a fan of working in US retail banks anymore. Those were the lowest days of my life. But I do understand being paid less than interns, I worked as an administrative assistant and I was paid $23K a year. When we hired a few interns, they were paid $35K a year to do nothing. No they did not go to a nice school, they didn't go anything. They walked around sometimes. I would sometimes have to make projects for them to do. The interns at my current company get paid $50K a year, but that makes sense because they are interning as software developers. It makes me sad sometimes that I still struggle to keep my lights on with my check, but maybe if I was smart enough to go to school to become a software developer, I wouldn't have this problem. Thought about going back to school, but I already owe $45,000 in student loans. So that's out of the question.
Reply
Na
Name
13 July 2022
Thank you for this article. People should know how SocGen treats their employees.
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El
Elias
11 July 2022
Obviously Socgen. They've paid £32k no bonus for 'trainee' roles for the last decade...
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Gu
Guest
10 July 2022
55k for an intern? The intern wont be there for a year, so that will be pro-rated, right?
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Vi
Vitus
9 July 2022
Does this person have a degree. If so from where and in what. An intern from an elite school that is also highly motivated is worth much more to a financial institution then a low level employee with a marginal education.
1 reply