What are my chances to move to M&A?

Last year, I recruited into a BB in a credit lending / structured finance team focused on real assets & infrastructure. The bank has been building its balance sheet lending platform for a few years and it’s achieved relative success especially given its fluidity as a team. It doesn’t sit anywhere specific; it gets M&A, CB, and cap markets clients in addition to clients sourced by the team itself. Most projects are sponsor side greenfield with a small chunk of PPP. 

Coming into this role, I thought it was a regular credit risk position but functionally it’s very different. Firstly, this is a distinct team with its different products. Because the team does actual structuring and underwriting in addition to having its own clients (mostly from the PPP chunk, as our MD is alum from a European lender), work gets harder than the average credit risk team. Means full model ownership, memos, client presentation with other teams and so on. WLB is not good, most weeks falling between 75-85h range. Wouldn’t be a problem if the bonus wasn’t this low, honestly.

There have been multiple acknowledgements by our seniors regarding this chaotic dynamic. They have said they’re working with other teams to figure out a better placement for our team. I get that the team is new and will need time to find its place. So it’s reasonable to expect changes soon. 

Like I mentioned, the technical depth of this job can get pretty intense. Project finance modelling and grunt documentation work are no joke. I sacrificed a MM IB position last year in renewables (same base, vastly bigger bonus), thinking that I picked a better WLB, and I’m regretting it.

Question here is: is it possible to move to M&A from here? There are infra advisory and natural resources advisory teams (we work with them a lot). I connected with them but never broached the idea of moving yet.