Where?

Centralised operations centres – similar to contact centres.

Employers?

All the major banks, building societies and insurers.

Where does the role fit in?

Opening a bank account, borrowing money for a car and taking out a mortgage or an insurance policy all involve lots of administrative work. Details have to be checked, information entered into computer systems, and compliance procedures completed. Most financial services companies have centralised this work into large processing centres that are effectively the engine room of the firm. There are many such centres around the country, sometimes in the same locations as call centres.

This part of the firm is often called the ‘back office’, as it supports the sales and service staff in the 'front office'. More formally it is called 'Operations', although some banks are now calling it 'Manufacturing', in order to show that this is really where the building of financial products takes place.

Although much of the work is done on computers, banking also generates huge amounts of paper – think of all those cheques, and all those letters of complaint! All of these need to be processed and entered into the bank’s computers, or responded to by a manager. In insurance, complex areas such as claims handling produce piles of paper and involve lots of checking and rechecking – most of it now handled in central sites.

What you do

Typical activities include:

• checking paper work to make sure information is accurate
• entering customer and product details into computer systems
• liaising with sales staff to make sure they are able to keep the customer informed of progress
• checking large credit history databases to make sure customers are creditworthy
• following compliance procedures to check that the product sold best suits the customer’s needs – and making sure that sales staff also carry out those procedures
• talking to customers directly if more information is required
• making sure records are kept and customer information is protected

What you need to get the job

These jobs are primarily for school leavers.

Reasonable numeracy and literacy are required because accuracy is important, as is being comfortable with computer work. More specialist operations roles will require slightly higher levels of numeracy – no company wants its operations staff to accidentally type in that 10,000,000 shares have been traded, when in fact the real number was 1,000. When that happens, a reconciliations manager may well start shouting!

So, expect to be asked for reasonable GCSE passes in maths and English (at least a B grade).

Career prospects

Operations staff have a number of potential career paths:

• They can stay in the operations management division and take on supervisory jobs. These require strong people-management and change-management skills (which basically means helping people to deal with changes in the way they do their job)
• They could move into specialist operations fields, dealing with more complex processing procedures, such as business lending or corporate banking (see City Operations and Trade Support for information on operations in investment and wholesale banking). Another good specialist area is 'reconciliations' where operations staff hunt down the reason why processes have failed, or numbers do not tally up
• They can move across to the compliance department, helping to apply the strict controls and procedures necessary in a financial services company, as well as helping to devise new procedures as new regulations are introduced (see Compliance officer)
• They can move into a specialist field like credit scoring
• They can move into areas such as process design and project management
• They could move from the 'back office' into the front office, and take a more customer-facing role in the company. (See these links for more sales-orientated positions: Customer Service and Sales Representative – Call Centre; Customer Service and Sales Representative – Branch; Mortgage Adviser; Financial Adviser.)

Qualifications and career progression

These jobs are highly dependent on the type of product being processed and the types of systems employed by the bank or insurance company – so expect a lot of specific training in both.

Banks and insurers are career-minded, so they may well start you off by getting you to take a general financial services qualification to improve your understanding of the industry and its products. They will also give people specialist training in different products, and this could involve qualifications such as the Certified Documentary Credit Specialist (CDCS).

If you stay in operations and move into supervisory or management roles, you can expect the bank or insurer to invest in management training as well as financial training.

Income

These can vary greatly, as there are so many different operations roles. The following is only a guide.

Starting salaries

These vary by role but are in the region of:

£10,000–£14,000 during training; and

£11,000–£18,000 thereafter as a general administrator, payments operator, fraud analyst or similar.

Career incomes

These also vary according to the role, but can be quite substantial:

£18,000–£24,000 for a supervisor.

£20,000–£30,000 for an operations manager.

£30,000–£40,000 for a reconciliations manager.

£35,000–£45,000 for a senior operations manager in a retail financial services company. It can be much more than that in an investment bank.

You will also find that this is the part of a bank or insurance company where they will often use large numbers of temporary workers. Temp incomes can vary from £6 an hour all the way up to £40 an hour for those who know how to process and reconcile particularly complex financial products.

Many banks will offer a 'large town allowance' for people who need to live in expensive areas or to commute. Where this allowance is paid outside London, it will be around £1,000-2,000. While such jobs are fairly rare in London, expect an extra £2,000-3,000.

Of course, banks and insurers also offer good packages of pensions and other benefits. These may not be of much interest to you now . . . but in the future they will be important!