Are spring weeks even important?

Heard a lot of people talking about spring weeks recently and brought me back some memories. 
 

I had two, one in a bank. It had a near-zero conversion rate, and didn’t teach much new. I’m going to make a (perhaps risky) generalisation - if you are getting a spring week, you most likely have to write a cover letter / interview and have a reasonable level of knowledge of the industry.

This reflection made me wonder what the actual point of the non-convertible insight programmes are?

I can see the ‘network’ aspect being useful, but AFAIK that is not nearly as important in the UK as it is in the US.