CIMB's TCB Programme = The Complete Banker

I’ve had the privilege of talking to a lot of TCB recruits in CIMB and everytime I have that conversation with them, I feel so nostalgic. The other night as I was packing up to leave an event, a friend of mine came up to me to introduce another friend.

“Alia, this is my friend, he’s a TCB. He's been wanting to meet you”

“TCB? As in the TCB TCB?”

He replied: “Yeah, I’m currently going through my support rotation and am in batch 44”

Homaigod, did I not feel old when he said FOURTY-FOUR. I had started my own TCB programme at CIMB back in 2009 and I was batch 13. THIRTEEN guys, that’s like 31 batches away. I’m so old now, 8 years with the firm with a year and a half off pursuing Masters in London and another few months off to chase after my dream to be a part of a broadway show.

Good times!

If you ask me if I would go through TCB programme  again? A million times over!              

What’s a TCB programme? TCB stands for The Complete Banker – a programme specially tailored by CIMB for fresh graduates wanting to experience and learn all about Investment, Commercial, Retail, basically everything about Banking in CIMB.

It’s a 2 years programme – divided into 2 months of classroom training and 10 months of rotating between 4 departments and another final year of confirming a spot in one department of your choice (if the department is hiring).

To me, the best times were all in the classroom. It was so intense and competitive (coz our batch was the first to have had our Singaporean colleagues in it too and they kept on scoring As for all their exams!!!), they even train you to complete an assignment throughout the night! Can you imagine how much you see your batchmates in a day? Between 11 to 24 hours! Haha! Not, I’m not scaring you, it was indeed the best times I’ve had. The adrenaline rush that comes with the deadlines, the bonding you have with your batchmates (we now travel around for each other’s wedding eventhough some had left the firm) and the mountain-load of knowledge you get from industry players. In the span of 2 months, we sit for 5 exams just to test whether you were listening in all those different classes or not.

*Don’t worry, I failed some too :D

Post 2 months of classroom, we get to request for departments we may be interested in and so I had my 10 months stint in Group Corporate Finance, HR, Preferred Banking and Wholesale Banking Islamic. Work was real, in that 10 months I sometimes had this fear of sending out emails if in case I may misrepresent the company, haha! The good thing about real-life work is that it gives you so much satisfaction knowing “OMG, my team and I was working on that deal” when we see a headline in the papers or even the adrenaline rush knowing that your client has chosen the team to carry out a corporate exercise. Sometimes you get P&C deals that you're bound to not speak to anyone about it, and it's very exciting!

Well sometimes, you get scolded too of course if you do a mistake - but I used to think being scolded was a privilege coz at least now the boss knows you! Weird but true :D

I think one of the more exciting parts was when I was based in CIMB London and was assigned to assist HR in assessing potential TCB recruits studying in UK. Boy was it tough coz I felt like hiring everyone of them! They seem to be as eager as I was when I had my first interview with CIMB, back in London too in 2009. Of course it was a little weird when I had to interview my own Masters classmate from Imperial haha.

I've had many questions about TCB in CIMB, so I hope this post helps a little if not much at all. If not, feel free to drop me an email and I'll be more than happy to answer them :))

 TCB 13

#examstruggleisreal