Banking Stories From A Senior Worker In Chinese Commercial Bank (Part III)

Source: http://calpactucb.blogspot.com/2012/04/protecting-safety-net-fundraising.html

Carry on with my last post, hope my friend's experience will be helpful for your future career:)

About Client Base

As an account manager, clients' deposits directly link to my friend's monthly compensation. But oddly enough, my friend told me that he doesn't like so-called "wholesale deposits", meaning the amount of the deposit is huge. When he chooses his potential clients, he prefers to cooperate with companies within traditional manufacturing industry and wholesale & retail trade industry, especially companies within the industries that are unaffected by cyclical economic fluctuations, like companies within machinery, food and medicare equipment industry. 

The reason behind it is simple: this type of clients are more stable and cooperative. Most of them are industrialist who started their business with nothing. Unlike clients within real estate or mining industry (which is a large speculated industry in China), those industrialists are more loyal and trustworthy. As the account manager of them, what you need to do is to put yourself into their positions in order to design service plan and provide good customer service. It's easier and much more predictive. 

As my friend mentioned, he has been an account manager for over 3 years, he has no single customer is from real estate or financial industry. All his clients are centered on manufacturing industry and commercial trade industry. Through the work with these entrepreneurs, my friend also gains the opportunity to learn from their life experience, industry knowledge and analytic skills. Those "soft compensation" from the work are even more valuable than the monetary compensation he receives from the bank. Deriving the essence from these experiences helps him avoid a lot detours in both his career and daily life. 

About Compensation in Banks

"This is a tough question." said by my friend. It is hard to present a commonly accepted standard because the performance incentives of each bank are different. The same performance is vary likely to receive different level of compensation from different banks. Part of industry lore is that China Mingsheng Bank, China Citic Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank are the best-paying banks for account managers. 

In the same type of joint-equity commercial banks located in second-tier cities in China, most account managers with a middle level performance will receive 200,000 to 400,000 yuan per year (about $32,000 to $64,000). Account managers with a vary excellent performance will receive over 1 million yuan per year (about $160,000). But if you cannot achieve a relatively good performance, your annual income will be as little as 30,000 yuan (about $5,000). The echelon difference is huge. In each case, working pressure is positively link with your annual compensation.