About Citizens
Industry: Banking
Location: Boston, MA
Company size: 17,000
What They Do: Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the nation's oldest and largest financial institutions, with $220 billion in assets as of March 31, 2024. Citizens offers a broad range of retail, commercial, and private banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, large corporations, and institutions.
Website: www.citizensbank.com
Q&A with Bryan Carr, Vice President, Funding & Liquidity Senior Manager at Citizens
Q. Can you give an example of the type of work your resident undertook?
A. Our resident collaborated with our team on model development, leveraging her analytics background to enhance existing models used by our treasury team and other bank users. She applied her analytical skills to optimize these models, which included improving predicted mortgage prepayments and deposit behaviors in varying interest rate environments. Her contributions resulted in more accurate and efficient model performance, benefiting our operations significantly.
Q: How does the D'Amore-McKim corporate residency program differ from a standard internship at Citizens?
A: One key difference we found with D'Amore-McKim's corporate residency program versus traditional internships is the longer duration of the experience, in our case, six months. Unlike shorter summer internships, this extended timeframe allowed for a more comprehensive integration of the student into our team. As a result of our recent resident's extended tenure, she became an integral part of our operations.
Q. How did your corporate resident make an impact at Citizens?
A. Our recent corporate resident brought a wealth of knowledge and skills acquired through her MBA coursework in areas such as analytics, business management, and quantitative fields. Her fresh perspective and proficiency with the latest tools and techniques allowed her to propose innovative solutions and streamline processes, ultimately driving innovation and productivity within our organization.
In the short term, her contributions as a full-time analyst provided essential support to our team, especially during periods of increased project workload. Her contributions extended beyond one-off projects, allowing her to fully integrate into our operations and significantly enhance our productivity.
In the long term, the improvements she made to our models will have lasting benefits, especially in how Citizens manages its interest rate risk. These enhancements will enable us to more accurately forecast performance and client behavior, leading to improved service delivery for our clients, customers, and colleagues.
Q. Did you feel supported during the residency?
A: D'Amore-McKim's Graduate Career Center provided comprehensive support to Citizens before and throughout the corporate residency program. The career team communicated clearly about timelines, expectations, and opportunities for both employers and students. They facilitated networking events and opportunities for Citizens to engage with potential candidates, ensuring a collaborative and seamless process. When it came time to interview candidates, we met with a diverse pool of highly qualified candidates. During the corporate residency, our career center liaison solicited feedback from managers to assess the student's performance and offered tools for ongoing support and reviews.
Q: Was the corporate residency program a pipeline for full-time hiring?
Yes! Our first corporate resident joined us as a corporate resident from June to December and continued working part-time while completing the second year of her MBA. Now, she's accepted a full-time position to begin after graduation. This has been a great experience, and despite current economic challenges, I'm committed to hiring more corporate residents. The program has been effective in attracting talent to our treasury department, and I intend to participate in recruiting next fall and thereafter.
