Maybe it's because it's more of a Euro bank thing but I don't think I have ever seen commodity trade finance discussed on WSO aside from somebody asking about a job opportunity years ago. It's one of my default recommendations for people looking for internships before applying to physical trading jobs but I must confess I don't personally deal with commodity bankers much because I'm at a larger player.
Does anyone on here work in the field? Any idea what lifestyle, comp is like? I would think the more vanilla stuff ends up being like general trade finance (Citi TTS style) that is becoming almost entirely automated, but structured products like pre-export financing, borrowing bases, inventory financing... is that reasonably interesting and ok lifetyle-wise?
I'm just kind of surprised this field has gone so under the radar on here even if it's not super sexy.
Have been in commodity trade finance desk with an European bank as a front office role (commodity banker track basically) for close to 3 years - thinking of moving out every single day yet realised there are very limited exit opportunities after few attempts to escape.
Flat learning curve, tedious and repetitive daily workload, no hard skillsets to be developed, ultra vanilla product suites, relatively slow paced, low margin, etc etc - personally, for recent graduates / young professionals, my genuine advice to you is to think twice before starting off your career here, assuming you fancy something more dynamic and allows you to sharpen your analytical skills, which is more transferable and could be leveraged in your next role. With said, it is still considered a good option for your pre-retirement career when you just want to stay chill.