This is truly a great post that provides some very good advice and insights for fresh graduates, thank you for posting this!
I am seeking advice and opinions on career choice and path as a fresh graduate, would appreciate if you would enlighten me with some of your thoughts.

As a fresh graduate with strong interest and inclination to join the financial industry, I am considering whether to join a bank as a Personal Banker/ Personal Financial Consultant/ Consumer Product Specialist (a position with principally Sales Job Scope ) or to be a Life Insurance Consultant.

From my own very basic understanding, the Sales Position (for personal/consumer banking) of banks is responsible for promoting and selling the wide range of financial products and services from the particular bank to its customers (e.g. Bancassurance, Unit Trusts, ILP, Loans, Mortgage, Deposits, Credit Card, etc). Heard from some peers and seniors that most of the Personal Bankers start with selling Bancassurance/ Insurance, then only they move on to promote and sell more of other financial products.

As for Life Insurance Consultant, the career is principally providing the sales and services of financial planning/ consultation with Life Insurance products as well as some General Insurance products (e.g. Whole Life, Term Life, Savings, Endowment, Medical, PA, etc).

So my questions are:

(1) Comparing between a Banking Sales Career and an Insurance Consultant Career , which will be providing a fresh graduate with a better career opportunity, future growth, and a steep learning curve?

(2) According to some peers and seniors, a Banking Sales Career will always provide us a list with a large number of leads to call on for the prospecting part. As for Insurance Consultant , we have to generate the leads by ourselves right? Considering the fact that as a fresh graduate, the limited networking and contacts might be considered a barrier to make more sales, is that make sense?

(3) Pay wise, a Banking Sales Career might secure us with a decent or reasonable basic salary, while being an Insurance Consultant is on straight commission. Of course I am aware that it makes perfect sense that the rewards of a sales career/sales job should be proportionate to the effort we have put in. If we want flexible income opportunity, we have to be willing to sacrifice the stable/secure income mindset. No pain no gain, there must be a trade-off for anything that is good and rewarding.

So my question is that are the commissions given by the banks on par with insurance companies? Say, for every Life Insurance Policy sold, is the commission received is of the same amount from either the bank we are working for or the insurance company we are attaching to?

Unlike being a Life Insurance Consultant , of which commissions are awarded for every case closed, in order to earn commission from a Banking Sales Job , we have to exceed certain target threshold then we are only being entitled to the commissions, is that so?

These are the questions that I currently have in mind on whether to join a bank or to attach to an insurance company as an agent, I would appreciate every bit of good advice, feedback and opinions from all of you.

Thanks to all of you in advance!

Hi ckguin,

With regard to your concern, I would like to share with you my humble opinion.

Sending a thank you email to the interviewer won't be something annoying, but a show of appreciation to them.
On top of that, a thank you email shows that you have a good manner and sincere interest in the job position. This also helps the interview to remember you, and this works as a follow up to the interview progress as well.

Good luck to you in your career life.