Vantaggi
Good exposure. Analysts are typically well respected outside the firm for their experience. You build critical skills that are comparable with front-office finance roles elsewhere.
Svantaggi
The salary is beyond terrible. 2-3 year emploiyees are underpaid by up to 100% for similar risk roles at banks or elsewhere. People leave as soon as they can (typically 2 or 3 years). Fitch thinks promoting people to associate director with a small nominal pay bump will keep them there but they leave anyway. All but 2 young analyst from my group left within the last 12 months (50% group turnover), which not only speaks of the money pinching firm, but also places stress on both the younger analysts remaining but also upper management who have zero leverage in keeping other firms from poaching the analysts. They start over in training every single year (not how the company is supposed to run) Work is piled onto a few analysts when people quit and the result is less quality reviews. Previously I would have recommended to come to Fitch for the experience and skills development (and this is what they ride off of and why they think they can get away from not paying reasonably), but it's not worth it anymore. The salary is equivalent (living cost adjusted) to living and working in another city like Stamford and making 35K per year; it's flat out insulting. To add insult to injury, Fitch is making record net income and boasts about it in employee emails. In summary, you get excellent training at Fitch and the analysts move on to much better jobs elsewhere, but it's not worth it because of the extent to which they disrespect their employees. Do not work at Fitch.