UMB Financial Reviews

Pros

increasingly competent people, doing a good job with executive development, working on best places to work initiatives, working to improve internal business structure

Cons

few cross departmental training or learning opportunities, lots of tenured employees... not necessarily bad in itself, but gets in the way of needed cultural change

Pros

Working with a lot of fun younger people. Good starting experiece out of school.

Cons

difficult to get promoted beyond a certain point. The old guard stayed in place.

Advice to Senior Management

keep investing in people.

Pros

UMB has a culture that inspires excellence internally. They promote community involvement, sustainability, and have great benefits like transportation, adoption and education assistance.

Cons

If you have any issues working at UMB, management will find a solution for you. One downfall is the formal business dress code and no non-traditional work schedules.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be fantastic to drop the formal dress code for non customer facing positions. Non-traditional work schedules would help improve the work / life balance.

Pros

People who need an enviroment with little support, negative attitudes, dishonest co-workers, and a desire to be around individuals who are unprofessional and lazy would enjoy working for UMB.

Cons

If your desire is to work hard, do activities that make the bank more profitable, and be treated fairly UMB is not the place for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house. Find the obstacles to your success and remove them. Pay higher salaries for quality employees. Invest in high quality people if you want high quality results and growth. Provide the support and tools necessary for develoment and performance. You can't get to the World Series with little league players.

Pros

Organization is under stronger management

Cons

Very corporate culture which can be challenging

Advice to Senior Management

Take time to get to know your staff.

Pros

UMB has great people, and a general positive culture of camaraderie. Additionally, the company has a slower pace than comparable financial institutions

Cons

UMB is very conservative, both in terms of the products that it sells and the financial risks that it takes. These qualities have served it well in down economies, however it does prevent it from being an exciting place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of your under-performing middle-managers and replace them with strong competent leaders. Spend resources building a world-class retail online banking and investment platform to compliment the stable, secure "worlds strongest bank" mantra

Pros

Good Hours, Made great friends, Offered me a promotion after only 6-8 months

Cons

Manager was terrible - she made us work off the clock. The pay was awful, close to what I was making in high school.

Advice to Senior Management

Train your managers/supervisors better. Raise your pay or you will keep losing employees. Almost everyone I was working with has quit, and all because of the terrible pay and management.

Pros

Easy place to slide by for those who are content with below avg individual performance. deSilva and Kemper are making improvements in the long-time chomatose system, but still have a long way to go.

Cons

Outstanding performers are not fairly recognized. They are very cheap and very old school. Lots of politics and plenty of perks for the good old boy network within.

Advice to Senior Management

Look at your Sr. Commercial Officers. Very poor leaders and have been the beneficiaries of being compacent in the Kemper system. deSilva and Kemper should drop some of the dead weight directly beneath them if they want more upward movement.

Pros

Good company with a strong conservative foundation that sets the stage for long-term success. Have a strong focus on technology and have always focused on diversified revenue streams through fee income products and services. Stayed true to their core geographic footprint. Good place to work if you're looking for reasonable stability (nothing is guaranteed forever), but not necessarily if you want to launch your career rapidly.

Cons

Smaller than bigger companies so opportunities for advancement are more difficult. Like all companies they need to make sure organizational walls don't get in the way of doing business correctly. Have always been a little cheap when it comes to rewarding employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Talk to employees more. Make sure employees are all focused on the vision of the agency and the role that everyone can play in making it come true.

Pros

Honestly, there are not a lot of good reasons. The 2008 Employee Satisfaction Survey showed another year of generally dismally unhappy employees. Less than 40% said they would recommend a friend or family member to work at UMB. There is always a big flurry of activity right after the survey comes out - management talking about the changes, etc. but very little actually gets done to improve the situation. The best I can come up with is that they do offer some flexibility for work life balance.

Cons

Where to begin?! As a regional midwestern bank, the firm's footprint is small, and name recognition for some of their businesses that they try to market nationally just falter because of their low name recognition.

Advice to Senior Management

show more respect for your employees - not just lip-service.