Experience being a Business Associate Intern at Bizsquare
The following is a reflection written by one of our Business Associate interns about his experience so far with us: “This week marks the mid-way point as it’s the 10th week out of my 16 weeks internship with BizSquare as a Business Associate.
For someone without any previous finance and banking experience, this internship experience with BizSquare so far has been quite an eye-opener. Through this internship, I have come to gain plenty of insights about how banks in Singapore operate for SME banking and lending, such as how banks hedge their risks against customers for various reasons or how banks assess clients and do scoring for lending. Having such close contacts with Relationship Managers from different banks has also allowed me to better understand how they will mitigate concerns and questions arising from their credit departments. All these are not information that can be easily obtained by the general public.
At Bizsquare, our funders are not just limited to banks, but we also frequently obtain financing from private funders and they are not very prominent to the public. Most of our clients are not even aware of their existence. Over time through the sharing from the funders themselves, I got to learn that they operate very differently from the banks – significantly simpler company structures which results in faster processing times. However, they are still selective in their clients too despite their seemingly less stringent due diligence and they do charge significantly higher interest than the banks to account for their risk arising from a smaller pool of available funds.
As we service clients from different industries, it is also an eye-opener to be able to visit facilities that are usually prohibited to the general public, such as industrial cold rooms or equipment warehouses. I also get exposure to the different industries and their way of operations during our client meetings or site visits.
Some of the other skills that I have learnt so far are:
- Project management and people management skills:
Communicate with multiple parties, such as Relationship Managers and Clients, for updates and documents and in a clear and concise manner to avoid misconstrued understandings. Also answering all queries from our clients in a timely manner as well.
My role has also taught me project management skills as my job is also to actively track the status of applications that we put up for each client and subsequently update our database properly via Hubspot’s Deals dashboard for records keeping.
My role has also taught me project management skills as my job is also to actively track the status of applications that we put up for each client and subsequently update our database properly via Hubspot’s Deals dashboard for records keeping.
- Cold calling skills:
Skills to convey messages to potential leads properly and yet be firm while being friendly and persuasive on the phone to secure meetings with the leads.
- Skills of using CRM software:
Getting the experience and know-hows of using CRM software in the market like Hubspot, which we use to keep track of our applications to different funders across all our clients.
Every experience with our clients is different and I’m looking forward to interacting with other clients during my remaining time at BizSquare.
BizSquare is a one-stop business consultancy firm providing Loan Consultancy Services, Accounting and Corporate Secretarial Services, Branding and Marketing Consultancy, Strategy Management and Start-up Mentorship.
