Pros
The seasoned employees are nice, professional, and seem to truly believe in the company mission. The physical banks themselves are nice, spacious, and well made, providing a classy and professional atmosphere. Products and services offered are high quality and generally pretty straightforward. If you end up staying for a year or more, there is plenty of opportunity to move upwards. The bank itself is growing into new markets, building more branches, acquiring new financial services (retail banking + mortgages + all kinds of insurance, etc.). The bank prides itself on its customer service, and trains employees extensively to deliver a strong "IBC experience". It also regularly monitors the quality of customer service employees are giving to its customers by using frequent management reviews, coaching, and mystery shopping. IBC, as they put it, has never had a "down year", and follows federal regulation and policy well. It ranks high on bank transparency lists, and has been scandal-free since its inception. Lay offs are not a concern here.
Cons
IBC is very behind on the times. The computer software has not been updated in quite some time (Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2007) and the account management systems also need major updating. The internal website is not as intuitive as it should or could be. Internal information systems are very fragmented and thus inefficient. High employee turnover is the company's major issue. IBC requires no tertiary education for new hires who work in their branches. It appears that it is so desperate to staff its branches that it hires low quality people who lower morale and spread negativity in the workplace. Often, new hires lack maturity, social skills, and professional experience. Another problem is the salary, which is so low that the few people with professional experience and college education frequently leave for better pay and to work among peers. Additionally, the sales goals can sometimes be too high for even experienced people to achieve, and thus they quit before they are fired, leaving branches for new trainees who have no experience or expertise. As I stated in the pros section before, there is opportunity to move up. This is largely due to the high turnover rate. If you manage to make it there for more than one year, consider yourself promoted. The question is, promoted to what? There are plenty of lower management positions, but the pickings are slim if you want to move above lower management, and even slimmer if you want to move into a department outside of retail operations. IBC offers extensive training to its new hires (great), but the classes are way too long and drawn out, and often focus on topics that any mature professional would already know (a four hour lecture on telephone etiquette and a thirty minute exercise on proper hand shaking were completely tedious and unnecessary). The trainers tend to treat the trainees like children (as many of them unfortunately act that way). The communication system is extremely fragmented. People are often misinformed or uninformed about events and procedures that pertain directly to you, causing annoyances and resulting in wasting people's time. Lastly, as the company is a bank based out of Texas, it is unsurprisingly conservative. This would be fine, except that the CEO has recently attempted to push his political agenda onto employees, which has made some very uncomfortable.