The first specialist agricultural banking internships have been launched by Lloyds Banking Group in partnership with the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) in Cirencester.

Aimed at penultimate year agricultural students and post-graduates, the agricultural placement scheme is being offered as part of Lloyds Banking Group’s wider Mid Markets and SME business banking internship programme.

Kicking off in 2017, it offers a 10-week paid summer placement within the agricultural banking team that could lead on to a two-year graduate programme, which starts the following September.

Andrew Naylor, head of Lloyds Bank Agriculture, says the bank looks to recruit people with a strong technical or economic knowledge of farming, to meet the needs of its broad client base throughout the industry and its supply chain, and that developing this scheme was a good way of securing the right skills.

He says: “We remain committed to supporting the agriculture sector, and while we continue to put talented people coming into our team from other sectors through an intensive agricultural training course, we also want to recruit direct from the industry.

“The attributes we are looking for are mainly strong people skills and numerical reasoning. Candidates should also be self-motivated and set high standards, and be on track to obtain a 2:2 degree or better.

“If a student successfully completes the agricultural internship, they will be guaranteed a place on the graduate course. From there, the opportunities are endless with openings longer term in other commercial banking sectors, digital, risk management, consumer finance, marketing and HR.”

Rita Walsh, head of the Business and Entrepreneurship Centre at the RAU, says she is delighted that Lloyds Bank has created this opportunity for students to gain work experience within the agriculture team.

She says: “This will allow students to gain valuable skills and to put their knowledge of agri-business into practice. We anticipate that some of them will decide that a career in agricultural banking is something they wish to pursue and hopefully become part of Andrew’s team in the future.”

For more information, visit www.lloydsbankinggrouptalent.com/internships.