Investment Banking interview preparation
Every question below is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it. Answers are written the way you would actually say them out loud — answer first, then the mechanism, then the limitation.
100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them
- Questions
- 100
- Traced to a firm
- 100
- Firms
- 46
- Updated
- September 2026
074What is the biggest challenge facing banks today?RBC Capital MarketsInvestment Banking · London · 2025UBSPrivate Wealth Management · New York · 2026
Say this
Pick one and defend it rather than listing five. I would argue disintermediation: private credit has taken a large share of leveraged lending, and the balance sheet advantage banks used to have is worth less than it was.
Then walk it
- The structural version: private credit funds now hold loans banks used to underwrite and syndicate. That removes fee income and weakens the cross-sell that won advisory mandates.
- Regulation compounds it. Capital rules make balance-sheet lending expensive for banks and do not apply to the funds competing with them, so the business migrates to where the capital is cheapest.
- Then the cyclical layer: deposit costs and the funding mix. The 2023 regional bank failures showed how quickly deposits move when rates rise and how unhedged duration in the securities book can be fatal.
- Then technology and cost: legacy systems, payments competition from fintech, and now the cost of building AI infrastructure while the payoff is unproven.
- But I would come back to the one point: banks are being squeezed out of the middle. The answer they want is a view, held with a reason, not a survey.
Where candidates lose it
Listing regulation, technology, competition and cyber in one breath with no argument. The question is an invitation to have an opinion. Pick the one you can defend, make the case in three sentences, then acknowledge the strongest counterargument.
Expect next
- Why has private credit taken share?
- What should banks do about it?
- How does that affect the division you are applying to?
Reported by candidates at RBC Capital Markets (Investment Banking, London, 2025); UBS (Private Wealth Management, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.