[PasstheCPA23]

Hi guys, I’ve been a long time member of this website and I’m a CPA. I have been a little sad and depressed lately because I am NOT sure what career is the best suit for me. I had some questions regarding career options and choices. Basically, long story short, I have about 1.5 years of public accounting experience in audit and I am starting to realize that I hate the Manufacturing & Distribution (M & D) industry for audit in public accounting. I NEED to let my team partner know soon which industry I need to specialize in and wanted your thoughts on which industry would interest me the most. I’ve worked on real estate, healthcare, and M & D, but, not a fan of any of those industries. What I do know is this: I still want to stay in public accounting for hopefully another 3-4 years and then reevaluation if I want to stay in public longer than that or not. But, I’ve done some research and have been interested in the “Financial Institution” industry specifically in banks and community banks. I think I would love to do the internal audit for banks in the summer months, and then when year-end rolls around – do the year-end bank audit. So, I think I would love to be staffed on bank jobs all year long. Now, the reason why I think banks would interest me is because prior to public accounting, I used to be a personal banker at Chase Bank selling Checking and Savings Account. So, I am very familiar with bank policies and procedures. The banking atmosphere just really interests me.

My question is this: Has anyone here worked in public accounting and specifically worked on “banks” as their clients doing either the internal control audit and/or year-end bank audit for banks? What are your thoughts? Do you enjoy those types of clients? What are the pros and cons? Another issue I hate about the other industries (besides financial institutions) is that I work at a top 30 accounting firm and we service the middle market clients. So, all of these clients have been disasterous because they are never prepared and they take forever to give us supporting documentation. Now, with banks, I guess my question is are most banks prepared and give you (the auditors) stuff you need and it’s accurate? I would think it is since banks have to adhere to so much scrutiny and they need to be compliant with rules, procedures, and regulations? Is that correct?

If someone can provide your honest thoughts and insight about servicing public accounting banks and/or community banks, I would really love to hear your experiences as I need to make a career decision soon. Thank you guys for the advice!! God bless.

[Stew]

Hi PasstheCPA23,
I worked for three years in a small public accounting firm that audited mostly banks and a few credit unions. I found the work to be very interesting and gained a lot of experience. I know work in a bank in accounting and finance because of my experience. Most bank clients do have more than adequate backup for their numbers as you hinted at. Because it was a small place I got to do all the sections from cash to loan review in my time there that helped when I wanted to change to banking. Banking is not taught in school so it really is a skill that will benefit you if you want to change jobs. The only con I would say is that if you are at a bigger firm then you may be stuck in the same audit section for a long time. We would do what we called, interim audits which were just test of controls similar to an internal audit. We would also be able to use this testing at year end so that we didn't have to audit the whole year. Most of our banks were community banks so we would prepare their financial statements. We also had larger public banks that we reviewed an audited their financial reports. I would be happy to answer any other questions, I think it is a good career path to follow.

Thanks
Stew

[PasstheCPA23]

Thanks Stew! I really appreciate you taking the time and answering my question. I am very interested in that line of work. After all this time, I think I realized that is the path I definitely want to go after trial and error and figuring out what I like versus what I don't like. If you don't mind, can we exchange email addresses or do you have a LinkedIn profile? I can send you a request. I'd love to talk to you more about this career path. Thanks again Stew.

Anyone else have any input or experience working in public accounting on small banks and community banks? Thanks!

[Stew]

Stew

[PasstheCPA23]

Anyone else have any input or experience working in public accounting on small banks and community banks? Thanks!

[IwannabeaCPA2017]

Wow what a coincidence my friend! not only we are both Another71er we both work for same company! 🙂 I was an audit intern a while back and did some financial institutions- can tell you I hated it because I was so lost! Tax isn't that much better as I feel like I'm stupid everything dang day.

[GAPilot715]

@PAsstheCPA23 – I did external auditing of financial institutions for a few years and now work in a publicly traded bank. I second what Stew says. Banking is a unique industry and if you can learn banking, there are a lot of opportunities. You'll find that financial institutions keep more detailed support and backup than clients in other industries. This is primarily due to the oversight of regulators. The regulators typically require a greater detail of support because they are looking at more than just materiality and the financial statements. Depending on the size of the bank, you can easily get involved in different audit sections and be able to gain a lot of knowledge regarding the industry and accounting for banks. This knowledge is valuable if you ever decide to switch from working in audit to working in the banking industry. I'll also reach out and connect with you via LinkedIn and you can feel free to ask me more specific questions there if you'd like.

[PasstheCPA23]

@ GAPilot715: Yes, I really appreciate it. What is your LinkedIn? I have mine in my signature. You can add me or I can add you. Let me know. I look forward to hearing about your experience! Thanks again.

[PasstheCPA23]

Anyone else that would like to share their experience? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

PasstheCPA23, I've worked primarily on bank audits the past several years: community banks and small regional banks. You do tend to work with clients that have higher financial background and also the testing support tend to be more organized and smooth. I think it's a good industry, and CECL has really impacted the FI industry. So all the more need to get more into it.

[PasstheCPA23]

Hi Brett, thank you for the insight. I'd love to talk to you more about this. Do you have linkedin? Mine is on the bottom or an email address? Thanks.

[PasstheCPA23]

Anyone else have thoughts? Thanks!

[cantpassagain1]

About 97% of my work is in banking and capital markets and I love it. However, I am in tax. I would imagine audit would be even more interesting and challenging though.

[PasstheCPA23]

@cantpassagain: So, you don't do internal audits or year end audits for banks or community banks?

Anyone else have thoughts? Thank you so much.

[PasstheCPA23]

Has anyone else here worked on Banks or Community Banks and done either Internal Audits or year-end audits for banks? I would really appreciate to hear someone who has worked in this type of industry in public accounting! Thank you!

[Author]

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