Investment bank Goldman Sachs will begin an apprenticeship scheme for traders next September in a bid to broaden diversity and social mobility in the sector.
Goldman Sachs will train apprentices on its London trading floor as part of a degree apprenticeship partnership with Queen Mary University of London.
Global markets degree apprentices will combine on-the-job training with study over four years, and applications are open from Monday (20 December). They will work towards a degree in Applied Finance, although a role with the bank is not guaranteed at the end of the programme.
Apprentices will work five days a week at the bank and attend two one-week teaching “sprints” per semester. The first cohort will consist of 10 candidates.
A spokesperson told finance website eFinancialcareers.com that the firm was “very focused” on building a more diverse talent pipeline “to attract an ever more diverse range of students of all ethnicities and backgrounds”.
Apprenticeships
“We feel that embracing an apprenticeship model will be particularly useful to our efforts to encourage greater social mobility, acknowledging that not all students wish to pursue the traditional university route, and many that prefer to enter the workplace immediately after their sixth form studies may be financially motivated to do so,” he added.
Last year, the Treasury launched an independent taskforce to address socio-economic diversity across financial and professional services employers in the City of London.
Research from the City of London Corporation found that nearly nine in 10 senior roles are held by people from privileged families.
JPMorgan and Standard Chartered also run apprenticeship programmes in their markets businesses.
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QMUL was recently voted the best university in the UK for social mobility by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in partnership with the Sutton Trust and the Department for Education.
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