Barclays Wealth Embark programme

[BoffinMum]

For lots of complicated reasons, I am toying with the idea of Going Back To The Dark Side and working in the private sector again.

Does anybody know anything about the Barclays Wealth Embark programme (6 week training course) and whether it is any good?

And Private Banking seems to be undergoing some sort of major expansion at the moment. Do we know why this might be?

have you sent your cv in? they have an information evening apparently.
im doing mine at the moment, i want to see what it is

Private Banking is basically a sales job dressed up as advice to wealthy individuals. It is expanding because the other bits of investment banking and commercial/retail banking are not doing so well.

Do you want to do sales and are you any good at it is the main question you should ask yourself?

Its a job like any other and I suspect heavily commission based remuneration.

Fair point. Actually I would probably end up resenting the other people's wealth and being pissed off I wasn't actually running the bank itself, now you mention it. I would see all the daft things going on and link it to profitability and sustainability issues in my head, and think up great strategies that were continually ignored, whilst I was being nagged about reluctantly persuading some inventor of widgets to buy into a fund I didn't believe in for poxy commission, when I knew that there were better ways for them to be making money (i.e. going to Coutts for a start, and avoiding Barclays silly offshore savings accounts with titchy interest rates, when they would probably be better off bunging the money in the Post Office and paying the tax on it).

Which is probably why I decided to avoid finance as a career last time I considered it. ;.)