Standard Bank Group

Corporate and Investment Banking

We unlock Africa’s potential through proactive client partnerships that deliver relevant solutions to large multinational and institutional clients

Programme areas
Global Markets Graduate Programme

In this programme, you'll get in-depth experience in trading, sales, structuring and risk management solutions throughout global financial markets, including FX, commodities, equity, credit, fixed income and debt instruments. We also offer market insights, trading services, analytics and new financial products across a number of asset classes.

You'll be a collaborative self-starter with a positive attitude, a love for complex problem-solving, and a passion for doing business the right way. And you'll have exposure to the full scope of our business, gaining all the necessary skills, before choosing your area of specialisation.

Programme duration: 18 months 

Application dates: 15 April 2024 – 15 June 2024

Minimum Requirements:

  • South African Citizen
  • Maximum of two years' work experience
  • Minimum of 65% average over all years of study

Qualifications

Post graduate or 4 year degree in:

  • Actuarial Science
  • Applied Sciences
  • Computer Science
  • Data Science
  • Engineering
  • Mathematics
  • Statistics
  • Mcom
  • Quantitative Management
  • Advanced Analytics

Key skills and characteristics:

  • Working collaboratively with others
  • Resilience
  • Creative Problem solving and considered decision making
  • Curiosity and willingness to learn
  • Positive attitude and self confidence
Investment Banking Graduate Programme

If you think of yourself as a 'mover and shaker', our Investment Banking programme will give you the stimulation you need to keep you on your toes. Your pro-active spirit and resilient attitude will stand you in good stead as you arrange mergers and acquisitions, capital restructuring and empowerment deals across the continent.  

Of course, we don't expect you to choose your area of expertise up front; we'll train you well and expose you to the full, exciting scope of our business, before asking you to select a specific area to work in.

So if you love creative problem-solving; if you have a commitment to doing the right business in the right way, and a passion for seeing our customers achieve their vision... this programme could be for you.

Programme duration: 18 months

Application dates: 15 April 2024 – 15 June 2024

Minimum Requirements:

  • South African Citizen
  • Maximum of two years' work experience
  • Minimum of 65% average over all years of study
  • Qualifications
  • Actuarial Science
  • Bachelor Business Science
  • Bachelor of Commerce Honours
  • Economics
  • Finance and Investment Management
  • Mcom
  • Engineering
  • Mathematics and Statistics

Key skills and characteristics:

  • Working collaboratively with others
  • Resilience
  • Creative Problem solving and considered decision making
  • Curiosity and willingness to learn
  • Positive attitude and self confidence
Operations Graduate Programme

Our Operations graduate programme provides the opportunity to build deep specialisation in either Investment Banking operations, Global Markets operations or Investor Services operations. Through rotations on various teams, you'll also gain a broad understanding of the operations business segment.

You'll be self-motivated and curious about the world around you, a creative problem-solver and a truly collaborative individual who's willing to reach out to colleagues to assist your learning. You're resilient and a planner, constantly motivated by challenge, and always considered in your decision-making.

Programme duration: 24 Months

Application dates: 1 April 2024 – 15 June 2024

Qualifying criteria: 

  • A minimum of 65% across all years of study
  • A minimum of a postgraduate degree in: Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Computer Science, Informatics, Business, Mathematics & Informatics, Actuarial Science, Economics, Finance and Investment Management, or Statistics.
Finance Graduate Programme

Forget what you'd normally expect from a Finance function. Today, we're so much more. We're guardians of our organisation's financial resources, using our technical expertise to ensure efficient use the scarcest resources.

We need to have a total understanding of the complex structure of our organisation, products and markets, so we can implement robust controls that benefit our shareholders, clients, regulators and partners.  

And we have to make sure we link in closely with business to advise on opportunities and threats. We're a hub for innovation; heavily invested in new ways of working and data science.

For our Finance graduate programme, we're looking for individuals who bring something different. We encourage our people to express their individuality and apply their unique skillset to help drive our organisation forward.

You’ll get exposure and insight into the inner workings of a major financial institution – and have an important role to play from day one, ensuring that your experience is practical, relevant and valuable. 

Self-motivated and curious about the world around you, you'll be able to adapt in an ever-changing environment, and motivated by solving complex problems. An excellent communicator with a genuine passion for finance and financial markets, you'll enjoy working collaboratively in a team, and be committed to excellence and delivery. 

Programme duration: 24 to 36 Months 

Application dates: 1 April 2024 – 15 June 2024

Qualifying criteria: 

  • A minimum of 65% across all years of study
  • A minimum of a postgraduate degree: diverse degrees will be considered (with the exception of Auditing) and emphasis for filtering for minimum skills/knowledge (e.g. financial acumen) will apply more rigorously in the online application process.
Risk Graduate programme

There's only one thing we take more seriously than reducing risk. And that’s finding people with the curiosity, resilience, self-motivation and creative problem-solving approach, in shaping the future of Risk Management.

Risk Management is enormously complex and involves understanding the Bank’s financial risk profile, setting risk appetite, finding opportunities for growth and protecting our shareholders and investors by trying to ensure that the Bank is making the right decisions and that we are acting responsibly and within regulation. We do all of this through a combination of thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis. We partner with the various sector and product segments to understand the risk profile to optimise their returns. But we also assess a range of other areas including financial, economic, legal, political, regulatory, environmental and reputational risks.

Join us on our Risk Management graduate programme, and you'll gain wide-ranging experience. You'll have unrivalled access to the key businesses and transactions at the heart of corporate and investment banking's expertise, such as Corporate Credit Risk, Non-Financial Risk, Real Estate Finance Credit Risk, Financial Institutions Credit Risk, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Risk, Country & Sovereign Risk, as well as Data Management and Risk Assurance.

Take the challenge and join our team!

Programme duration: 18 months

Applicaiton dates: 1 April to 15 June

Qualifications

A minimum of a postgraduate degree in:

  • Mathematics and Statistics
  • Actuarial Science
  • Financial Mathematics
  • Financial Risk Management
CIB Technology Graduate Programme

In an ever-changing global landscape, our ability to deliver cutting edge financial products and services on digital platforms, is key to the success of our franchise. CIB Technology is the backbone of the Corporate Banking businesses of Global Markets, Transaction Banking, Investment Banking and Real Estate. The intense, high-performance environment of Global Markets and Transaction Banking makes partnering with these areas particularly exciting. As the technology partner, the solutions we provide enable the processing of multi-million-rand transactions by these businesses. Additionally, CIB Technology empowers our business with a technology landscape that services non-retail customers which include Banks, public institutions, corporates, and asset managers to name a few and facilities various transaction types, from high frequency trading (Algorithmic trading) with low values, to low frequency trading, high value payments to complex structured products.

Our graduate programme aims to attract talent that not only displays sound technical knowledge and skills, but who can be groomed into thought leaders and trusted partners. We blend theoretical learning of hard and soft skills with practical experience. Your learning journey will be supported through several rotations, where you will be exposed to the end-to-end life lifecycle of the CIB Technology business. This includes, learning about application and technology architecture processes through the disciplines of analysis, design, development, testing and deployment, as well as being exposed to the operations, maintenance, and support processes of live production environments.

Furthermore, we work on almost all technologies, and we are encouraged to give our business a competitive advantage. Some of the common technologies across CIB: JAVA, Angular, GO, C, C#, C++, AWS, AZURE, Salesforce, AKS, Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes clustering, SQL (Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL Server, Mongo), Matlab, Source Code repositories (GIT, SVN), Bitbucket Server, GIT Lab, SourceTree, Agile framework (JIRA), Confluence Wiki, Scripting (Murex, Java, Shell, Unix), VBA

Upon completion of the graduate programme, you will have the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to kick-start your career and to find a home in CIB Technology, where you can thrive and contribute to the broader success of the Standard Bank Group.

Qualifications
Post Graduate qualification (Completed or completing in 2023)

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
  • Electronic Engineering
  • Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Financial Mathematics
  • Statistics
  • Informatics, Information Systems
  • Software Development
  • Software Engineering
  • Data Engineering
  • Data Science
  • Quantitative Risk Management

    Programme duration: 12 months

    Application date: 15 March to 30 May

CIB QUANT Graduate Programme

Are you a recent postgraduate degree holder in Actuarial Science, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Math of Finance, Physics, Quantitative Risk Management or Statistics? Do you have the desire and passion to implement creative problem solutioning across various disciplines within Risk Management, Corporate and Investment Banking? Are you a self-starter who can work collaboratively in teams and independently? Are you intrigued and stimulated by data analysis, implementation, and deployment of Mathematical and Statistical models?

Join us on our graduate programme, and you'll gain wide-ranging experience across banking and trading book quant teams whilst learning from some of the best in the industry. We’re searching for candidates with a growth mindset, resilience, self-motivation and creative problem solving to influence the future of risk management as we drive Africa’s growth. Take your first step towards a successful career in risk management.

Qualifications

A minimum of a postgraduate degree in:

Some background in Finance (Actuarial Science, Math of Finance, BMI (Business Mathematics and Informatics) etc) – can be BCom Hons/ BSc Hons or higher.

General Science Degree with limited Finance background (Physics, Pure/Applied Maths, Stats, Computer Science, Engineering etc) – should be MSc/MEng.

Key skills and characteristics:

  • Working collaboratively with others
  • Resilience
  • Creative Problem solving and considered decision making
  • Curiosity and willingness to learn
  • Positive attitude and self confidence

Programme duration: 18 months

Application dates: 1 March to 15 May

APPLY FOR GRADUATE PROGRAMMES
Graduate application process

We believe in making dreams possible and connecting the brightest talent to the meaningful opportunities they need to build their skills, ignite their ambitions, and get closer to their purpose.

Step 1: Apply online

  • Visit the Careers Portal 
  • Go to the apply tab then select my profile.​
  • If you are a first-time visitor select tell me more to create your SmartRecruiter profile.​
  • Complete the profile information or upload your LinkedIn or Indeed profile to create a SmartRecruiter profile​
  • Once your profile has been completed and you have uploaded your supporting documents including your full transcripts then you can proceed to apply for your preferred Early Careers Programme.

Step 2: Pre-Screening Process

You'll complete a pre-screening questionnaire related to the requirements of the role. You'll then receive notification via email to complete an online Odyssey assessment once you've successfully met all the minimum requirements in accordance with the Programme requirements.

Step 3: Interviews

Once you've successfully passed the screening part of our process, we'll invite you to a video interview for the programme you've selected.​ That will be a panel interview.

If your application is unsuccessful for your preferred programme, but you meet the criteria for another, we'll invite you to a video interview for that programme.

Step 4: Assessments

Candidates that are successful at the interview stage will be asked to complete psychometric assessments. The successful candidates will then proceed to the next step.

Step 5: Final selection

The selected candidates will then be invited to an Assessment Center or a final round interview with business depending on the Programme needs.

Step 6: Offer/Decline

Although we'd like to offer all the talented applicants a place, competition for spaces on our Early Career Programmes is often fierce. That's why, post the final selection stage, we'll prioritise letting you know whether your application has been successful or not.

Still have questions?
Visit our FAQ page before applying