Summer Intern Spotlight: Brooke Levengood
As an Underwriting & PM intern with Citizens Bank, Brooke Levengood found a love for live loan underwriting.By: Sally Hopkins ‘26, student correspondent
Brooke Levengood ‘25 interned in Underwriting & PM for Citizens Bank in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, where she did analytical writing, financial statement analysis and company research.
Levengood, of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, is a corporate finance major with minors in accounting and business Leadership. She discusses her interests in loan underwriting and her hopes to join Citizen Bank’s Commercial Banking Development Program after graduating.
Describe a typical day at work.
“A typical day is started by reading the Wall Street Journal and other news to stay current with what is going on in the economy. I then will work on ongoing projects such as doing credit analysis and research for portfolio managers. Other projects I worked on were analyzing the Commercial Banks client’s Quarterly and Year-end Financial statements. A few times a week I have networking phone calls with analysts and other employees who sit on various teams around the bank to learn more about different opportunities in the bank. I would end the day by working on a credit analysis project that I will present to a panel of judges at the end of my internship."
What are some skills you have learned?
"Some skills I have learned at my internship are analytical writing, efficient time management, financial statement analysis, and effective networking skills."
What do you enjoy most about your job?
"The thing I enjoy the most about my internship is that I get to work on live loan underwriting. Every loan underwrite is different, so it makes it interesting to see something new and different every day. I also get to work with different portfolio managers for each loan so it’s interesting to see how they each do loan underwrite differently."
What was your expectation going into the job? Does it match the reality?
"My expectations going into the job was that I would be doing mostly research on clients, but in reality I am working on live deals where I am doing company research but also am working on financial statement analysis and credit analysis. Working on live deals has helped me learn the loan underwriting process for large, publicly traded companies."
What drew you to Banking?
"I was drawn to banking because of its analytical nature. In banking, you have to be able to critically think about what is driving your client’s financial success. To do that requires you to be able to analyze and break down financial statements to understand what is driving the company’s success, which is very interesting to me. Also, I was drawn to banking because of the fast-paced environment. For loan underwrites there is a lot of due diligence that goes into evaluating a company and making a decision on the loan which creates a fast-paced environment."
What made you choose to intern with Citizens Bank?
"I chose Citizens Bank over some other companies because of the culture and the opportunities for young professionals. From my interviews with Citizens I got to interact with many different people and they were very welcoming and nice people. I could tell that these were the type of people that I would want to learn from and spend my days closely working with.
"I also chose Citizens because they have a lot of programs and analyst roles for students coming right out of college. The Commercial Banking Development Program (CBDP) is a program that I am looking to join after my internship because it is a year-long program where you get trained in areas such as Accounting, Credit & Excel Modeling. After training you then do two rotations in various business lines across the U.S. in the commercial banking side of Citizens. This program would allow me to learn new skills while also getting to rotate through different teams in the bank to figure out what career I want to pursue."
