Surprise Promotion!

As some of you may know, I work at a bank and generally refer to myself as a "banker."

Banks and other financial firms are notorious for having many different layers of titles and ranks; it seems everybody is a vice president or a senior vice president or an executive vice president (or a chairman or a president or a vice chairman...). Still, each step up the totem pole represents a bit more respect and at least a bit more money, depending on the company.

I am not any sort of VP yet - I am merely an "officer." There are four levels of "officer" (I, II, III, an IV), and then you become Assistant Vice President (and there are four levels of that, and then you become Vice President, and so on).

In my department we are all ordering new business cards, and I asked the new President what title I should put on mine. We kind of get to make up our own, since our internal titles (PFS Officer III, for example) are not what we use for marketing. Some people put "relationship manager," others put "Senior Vice President" or whatever VP level they've achieved. I've had "Private Banking Officer" on my cards, to distinguish myself as part of the private bank. Since now my new cards will have the logo and name of the Private Bank on them, I don't really need to do that anymore.

The Prez suggested "Private Banker" because he wanted me to be able to convey as much credibility as possible in the marketplace, and "officer" can be synonymous with "junior" or "bottom of the totem pole." But when I tried to submit that I got an email back saying that we are now standardizing titles accross all markets, and people at my level (non VPS) would have "Banking Officer" on their cards. I forwarded that email to our market President to let him know.

So this morning I arrived to find two emails. One was from the President to his regional boss (I was copied on it) explaining that he wanted to give the young officers as much fire power as possible up against older clients and bankers, and he doesn't want the business cards to make a statement other than “I am experienced and capable of handling your business” and that it was no big deal but maybe something to consider in the future to drop the "officer" and leave a more generic "private banker" title which wouldn't change pay grades or anything.

The second email was directly to me from the President: "I hate to do this by e-mail, but I am very excited to promote you to Assistant Vice President. Forget about Banking Officer titles on business cards. There will be no immediate comp change as we are not in a comp cycle, but I will work on that as well as time progresses. I fully support you and your growth on our team. Thanks for all you do!"

Huh! Glad I brought up the issue in the first place. :) Moving from officer to AVP is the biggest jump both in compensation and in recognition in the banking food chain (except for maybe moving from regular employee to officer in some cases). I was not even expecting to get it at my next review! This should mean that my compensation will go up 10-15% at my next review.

I told my immediate manager this morning - the Prez hadn't even asked or told her yet! She said she was wanting to talk to him about promoting me at the next review anyway, and that maybe now they can get me a Blackberry as well. Ha!