Phillip Securities Reviews

2.9

33% would recommend to a friend

(569 total reviews)
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Lim Wen Jiang Luke

56% approve of CEO

31% positive business outlook

Phillip Securities has an employee rating of 2.9 out of 5 stars, based on 569 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Phillip Securities employee rating is 22% below average for employers within the Finance industry (3.7 stars).

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569 reviews
1.0
29 Sept 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pros Free MCs that you can take if you feel sick and tired of your incompetent managers and bosses Work is a no brainer here. Therefore, you have a lot of free time to pursue your interests. Improve yourself or binge watch squid game. The highway or the quicksand! Its entirely up to you! 300 SGD of resilience allowance for staff till year end! Very generous from a cheapskate management that wants justification for tissue paper claims. I wonder is this because of the very high number of resignations + competitors coming to Singapore to poach their staff? Hmmmmmmm For those working at Sims Lane, Sims Vista Market has very nice and affordable food! Try the duck rice or the carrot cake there. (Might be your only option given your 20-30% lower than industry salary) For those who need to OT, you are eligible to get one free packet of tze char rice packet. Thank your generous Managing director! Great colleagues here in general. The low salary and incentives make fighting or competing for anything here futile. Your greatest takeaway from this cesspit will be the colleagues you meet. Chances are that the more capable ones (usually fresh grads with no working experience) will end up in some big company and pull you over. The 2-hour lunch will be spent with them trying to brainstorm ways to leave PSPL. Flat hierarchy and working level colleagues here generally treat each other with kindness and respect. Managers here are generally helpful and nice with no airs. (With the exception of some very nasty people) Chairman is sharp and logical. He is probably the only visionary you can learn something from. BUT PLEASE READ ON!

Cons

Cons This will be the main course. I will use Phillip Capital’s Corporate code to describe my experience with this company. 1) Man is created in God’s image and therefore has tremendous potential Yes agree. But your God given potential will be wasted in Phillip. Frankly, a lot of what you do in Phillip Capital will not be recognized outside. Your managers will ask you to undertake many projects to get higher increment and bonuses. So newcomers, please pick your tasks wisely. Ask yourself if this task can be carried forward and compounded upon. Chances are your work will be menial and low value. If you choose to do more projects because of higher bonus and increment, you are only shortchanging yourself as there are really a lot of better offers out there. The bonus is only a drug to keep you in Phillip and gives you the illusion that you are treasured and valued. My managers were not role models and I could not look up to them. They were insecure and looked to withhold information from their workers worrying that they will surpass them or steal their rice bowl. Quite frankly, I don’t think they can even leave Phillip capital for a better offer. Phillip Capital is the epitome of a local nasty cheapskate SME. Every extra second you spend here you are wasting your human potential. Get out for better exposure and training. What training have you given your staff to help them unleash their human potential? Any sales training? For those people doing B2B or B2C, is there anyone to train you? CRM training? Do you have a proper curriculum to train your staff? NOPE. Only give 50% of information to your staff and get them to figure the rest out? YEPPPP (Refer to point 2 as well) 2) We prevail upon man to develop his gifts by provided opportunities in training, service and responsibility Yes Yes. You overload them with tasks that have no value outside of your small well. (Please refer to point 1). Managers asking you to defer gratification, work harder and take on more responsibility so they can push work to you while they enjoy their free time cycling and running outdoors. Asking your staff to defergratification is no different from a cheapskate asking a freelancer to work for exposure. The more capable staff will be overloaded with work while your comfort zone manager’s hold back information from you in fear that you overtake them and load you with work. The cruisers and slackers will be paid the same as you or slightly lesser than you. And guess what? Don’t be surprised if your increment is only $100-$150 (Please refer to point 4) What training? Courses that you are allowed to attend must be below 500 SGD. What can you learn besides collecting a piece of cert that is only good as a food mat for your hor fun. You creating some wall of fame for learners only encourages cert collectors not people who can apply what they learnt. Your systems are outdated and offer no training to your staff. Garbage in garbage out no? Most of the capable talented people have already left the company. Therefore, there will very few if not no one to train you. Don’t waste your time with this company. 3) We uphold integrity in our conduct. Honesty is telling the truth; Integrity is fulfilling the truth Yes. Honesty is telling the truth. I love how honest Chairman is. Like how Chairman berated an entire audience of new staff saying that their low salary is justified because you are a monkey that’s why you are being paid peanuts and not the other way around.(Pay peanuts you get monkeys)How many times has Chairman shouted at people calling them degrading names and terms? So much honest truths I guess. Speaking of telling the truth, Chairman once asked a female staff if she is married or is she attached. The staff replied no, and Chairman said that it was because she was ugly in front of all the people in the meeting room. (Verify this fact with your seniors) Woohooooo! I hear that the license fee for dealers is now a few hundred bucks. So why make your staff pay 2.5k to 5k for breaking bond when the amount is no longer the same? Where is the integrity and honesty? How about the money you paid out in 2020 citing to motivate staff but actually came from the government subsidy to retain workers? Why aren’t you open with your staff? I personally loved how managers of Phillip would meet up and rehearse before department meetings like some professional wrestling soap opera. These people will prepare questions that they themselves will answer with the agenda of hoodwinking the boomer directors. Department meetings are like standup comedy to me. Since WFH is the default, you may want to get some popcorn and food. It’s just that affording high quality popcorn may be difficult because of the low pay. So much for honesty and integrity. TBH I don’t blame the managers. The root cause is that the rot has already to set in and started from the top. 4) We believe in process of deferred gratification that rewards comes only after performance. A work well done brings intrinsic satisfaction My favorite part of the corporate ethos! I see managers waiting >5-10 years for their deferred gratification and only paid slightly higher than fresh grads in similar industries. Wonder when will it come? Don’t be shell shocked when you receive $100 increment and your managers tell you to take on more projects and defer gratification while they take the lion share of the bonus pool (Refer to Point 2) I implore current staff to ask the question of how much of the earnings from the company is being reinvested back into the company or taken out by the “family”. Is that your staff’s deferred gratification or your instant gratification at your staff’s expense in terms of property and overseas listed companies? hmmmmm If deferred gratification is what you seek, why ask your underpaid overworked IT team to build platforms from scratch when they are already available to buy off the shelf? How much are you reinvesting in your own company and staff? Hypocrisy all over. 5) We prefer to build business rather than trade and therefore would go for the long haul Yes. Agreed. Like how you don’t invest in your staff nor reinvest back into the business and get your understaffed IT team to build applications from scratch. Your IT is in a mess resulting in competitors being able to steal your market share. Could this be that wise chairman already knows that this is a sunset industry and therefore is trying to milk the company as long as he can? (Just my assumption)(Refer to point 4) 6) We see ourselves as stewards to one another, to our families, to our community and to our environment Yes, like the stacks of paper you have in your offices. It reminds me of the 1980s. People should check out their remiser’s office. Stepping into the remisers office is like going back into the 1980s. Boomer music and stacks of zaobaos all over. So much for being a steward for the environment. The papers in those rooms costed at least 20 trees. 7) We are our brother’s keepers There isn’t even a pantry in your office and even buying tissue paper claims get rejected by you. Ever heard of the horror stories of Phillip staff going on overseas trips? Claims taking 6 months, some being unable to claim their tickets,asking to justify why dint we take the cheapest airline, making us stay in dubious looking motels etc etc. Lets say I have a business trip in Bangkok, why not I take a bus to woodlands and walk over the johor train terminal, take the train to southern Thailand and tuk tuk all the way to Bangkok? If you were my keeper why do you keep stretching and packing my overseas curriculum to the brim? Are you trying to squeeze me like a sugarcane? Cheapskate max. So much for productivity and being my keeper. 8) We will play only positive sum games The only positive sum game I got from Phillip was the free MCs. The aircon was faulty and the room was very congested.

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Phillip Securities Response
4y
Thank you for sharing your views. We will be sure to share your perspectives with our Senior Management team for consideration and improvement. We hope to support our employees during challenging times such as the COVID-19 pandemic through initiatives such as "resilience allowance", daily lunch catering for employees who are required to work onsite, and our Work-from-Anywhere policy. To clarify, we do not impose a cap on course fees, and in fact have sent many employees for courses which cost more than $500. We also value integrity and do not support nor condone posting of false positive reviews on our social media portals. We would like to assure all that PhillipCapital does not condone any forms of workplace harrassment. We sincerely apologise for the discomfort you might have felt due to miscommunication. We will exercise more mindfulness in our communication with staff going forward. We wish you all the best in your future endeavours.
1.0
7 Mar 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Can't think of any Pros but if really want to say: 1. Quite chill if you don't mind being underpaid. Oh ya also a lot of free MC can be utilized. 2. Can easily get promoted as long as your boss like you (since they do not have a clear or attainable KPI, they can anyhow change or inflate your KPI ) 3. Joining a "Good" name company which having "average rating" (Fake review rated by internal staff). 4. Let me think. I think don't have already! Oh ya maybe you can train your willpower by tanking extra work that does not give credit, let chairman calls you monkey and your boss brainwash you while giving you about $10 increment only...yes you never see it wrongly, it's roughly $10 increment for you while you see your team member who hit lower target than you but getting approximately $150 increment (although still pathetic). Admit it, your boss treat you like someone who asking people to donate you a few dollar for a meal. Remember, YOU ARE A BEG GIRL. Not just saying but proudly actioned by Phillip Securities.

Cons

1. Well known: Super low salary, bonus and increment - Actually the Human Capital (HR) and top management is really super "SMART" and incredibly "CLEVER". I really want to give them a big clap to compliment them. After the company realized that they having difficulties to attract new blood due to low paycheck, they decided to INCREASE NEW JOINER's SALARY close to par while MAINTAINS UNDERPAYING SALARY FOR THE CURRENT EMPLOYEES! New joiner who has lesser experience and do lesser thing but receiving higher pay than his/her senior. Guess what? Most of the experienced staff left the company, oops. Brilliant Brain Phillip Securities! Smartest move ever. - Based on my past observation, Phillip Securities will just lowball your salary as much as they can. 2. "Developing" people's future - When Phillip Securities is giving its employees low starting pay while the bonus and increment are so little, it is indirectly (actually it's directly) affecting your future career. A lot of good and talented employees are facing difficulties when they are searching for a new job. Those companies that did not know Phillip Securities is underpaying its staff will actually thinks that candidates from Phillip Securities are incapable by looking at their pay slip, which is a wrong perception. But Phillip Securities is the culprit who create this kind of false appearance as it is not rewarding its performers/good employees fairly. - Another impact is if even the candidates are getting a new job successfully, candidates have to accept the new job at lower salary as compare to their peers because previously got lowballed by Phillip Securities and yet the increment was so pathetic. Philip Securities is literally "Developing" your career from top to bottom. 3. Roti Prata culture (False Promise/ Anyhow Inflated KPI) - Bosses (HODs) tend to overpromise you something but never deliver their promises. (Perhaps it's not that they never keep their promise, but they need some time to deliver their promises~ maybe 2000 years later. Why can't you just wait? So young only but already impatient?) - During good earning years in 2019-2020, company's revenue spiked up and hit almost historical 10 years high due to high trading volume from customer (revenues including commissions charges/ trading profit) caused by pandemic. When everyone is over hitting the KPI, company suddenly inflate it's KPI to another unsustainable level. Reason (Excuses) being why is because we managed to hit the KPI is purely by luck due to pandemic, it's not our effort/capability. Hello, Directors, are you awake? Who do you think that are working non-stop to handle your high volume of customers' call/ trade/ order during pandemic? Also, during those normal or bad day back then before pandemic, when everyone is not hitting KPI for many years due to a lot of customer shift their trade to other companies, dear directors , have you adjust your KPI to a more reasonable level or do something to improve these kind of situation? Probably have, by shouting and scolding your staff. Well, during normal/bad day, the company never lower its KPI, when good day came and everyone hit their KPI then the company anyhow inflate it, awesome. Sounds so fair. 4. "Honest"/ "Very Honest"/ "Really Honest" - Boss will keep brainwashing their staff say that they can't control how much they allocate to your bonus or increment, it based on the employee's assessment (something like tiered by bad/below average/ average/ good/ performed) and HR is the one decides how much to give. Say things like I can't guaranteed whether HR will pay more to us in the future but I can assure you that if you stay and perform, we will reward our staff fairly! Although it might be a bit delay (Delay Gratification that really delay until forever one). Let's think properly, who is the one doing/approving your assessment. -Well, at the end we've found out a few colleagues who having similar tier in their assessments actually having slightly differences (about $20-$30 different) from their increment. Decided by HR? Bosses, good try to brain wash us. Really honest. 5. Company neither invest in people nor retain its talent - You can't believe that such a big and old local firm can't even send it's employees to a course that is less than a thousand. Any courses above a few hundred dollars only already need to get Director approval then only can go for the course. Usually, the directors like to challenge its employees by saying things like "after you go for this course, how much you can generate for the company? Do you have any statistic to prove? How can you guarantee?". Dear Directors, you are the directors of an investment firm, you should know investment come with risk and that's why the return is attractive right? You should also know that you have to invest first then only will receive returns right? 6. Projects! Projects! Projects! - Chairman always have a lot of projects for his people to do one but, your experienced talents already head hunted by your competitors, what do you expect a new blood who having limited experience and skillset to do? - By the way, those projects that Phillip Securities is going to launch, or I should say they wish to launch such as Crypto, NFT, fast and problem-free trading platform and etc. Well, for me it's not a project to be honest. All the projects that you want to launch is already widely available in the market since long time ago, offered by your competitors. Your project is basically copy and paste only. - Nevertheless, even copy and paste job the company also can't carry it out properly. These thing happened is because those capable talents had already left and when your IT is pretty "Capable" (caught in DDOS attack in 2018, the POEMS trading platform always have issue and can't even solved until now) while the company still don't want to outsource a dependable organization. 7. Monkey Management - Chairman told his staff in webinar 2020/2021, because you're monkey! That's why I pay peanut! Well, why you still recruit so many monkeys? Oops. Congrats, now you have full house of monkeys in your company. - Dear bosses, whether you staff is a monkey is really decided by you. You carrying out monkey management, then you get monkeys to work for you.

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Phillip Securities Response
4y
Thank you for sharing your feedback. As a leading financial services organisation in Singapore, PhillipCapital sets and strives for ambitious yet realistic goals, which are communicated in a transparent manner through company events and our internal global community site. All employees are also encouraged to set their team and personal goals, in line with our company strategic directions and provide feedback for continuos improvement and fine-tuning for an ever-evolving landscape. For clarity, we value integrity and do not support nor condone posting of false positive reviews on our social media portals. In support of a performance-based culture, we differentiate the rewards for stronger performers in their performance bonus and increment during our annual remuneration review. As a learning organisation, PhillipCapital encourages and sponsors our employees for relevant short courses with no cap on sponsored course fees; many employees have attended courses costing more than $1,000. We wish you all the best in your future endeavours.
1.0
28 Jul 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

This review will be relevant to you if you fulfil the following conditions: - Fresh graduate - Desperate for an FT Job in this economy - Came across a role from PSPL and decide to give it a try. My answer to you is "Please don't, don't even bother trying your luck at this company." Look at all the other reviews said in this company, and you will definitely see some common points that are being frequently raised, and if you think it will be different for your department, your role, then you are severely mistaken. From one fresh grad to another, I've been there, done that, and it was exactly the same, if not worst as what was described in the reviews here. The issues with this place are deep-rooted within the company and the main ones are among their upper management which is the cause for the toxic work environment and non-existent culture, and your role won't be totally unscathed from them either way. Before I elaborate on the problems, here are the pros if you really want to weigh your options. - Work-life balance is great (Except for events or seminars, since those are usually on weekends/weekdays nights) so there isn't OT culture - You get money (Not unemployed hurray) - Some basic job benefits like 18days Annual Leave (for entry-level) and some healthcare coverage - You can train your tolerance and explore your limits on the toxicity of mankind - If you can tough it out for a year or more (at the expense of your sanity and mental health), you can put it on your resume and jump ship to another better financial company in the sector - You can find some similar fresh-grad people in this company and you can bond by complaining together about how bad this place is

Cons

Like I mentioned above, the issues with this company is in the upper management, but TLDR this place essentially is a very very traditional hierarchical Chinese company, ran by boomers with outdated mindsets and among the upper management, they are all buddies with each other because they all belong to the same family. It's literally an expanded family business, with people having familial ties to one another, and should you make that decision to join, you will have to protect yourself because you do not have the family protection your colleagues may have. This means if things go wrong, you have a chance of being held responsible for someone else's mistakes because they are family, and you are not. Other cons include: - Toxic environment where the superiors are not capable, but yet can scold and treat their subordinates harshly with their verbal attacks. Expect rude people with no sense of respect. - Be prepared for confusing signals and non-existent support from your superiors because they expect you to contribute to the company immediately upon joining, there's no environment for you to try and grow. I guess you can still grow, but maybe through all the scolding and stress as you fumble and learn through your mistakes. - If you want opportunities to learn and take charge of your work, you can take charge when the higher-ups throw you projects to do and expect you to make a miracle, then get your credit taken when you do well, or get the lash back if your project is not so much of a success - Career progression? Your bonus is based on how long you stay here, not based on the work you do. What you achieve do not matter, and will be used against you because "XXX has experience with that, why don't we leave it up to XXX to handle this again" - Don't bother giving your opinions even if it's useful. The higher-ups just want to hear what they want to hear, and anything else is useless to them, even if it's a better opinion than their outdated views. - A little sexist as well, get ready for unwarranted comments that no one wants to hear, especially not in the 21st century, year 2021. - Be careful of being lowballed for your salary because they love tricking gullible young people. Apparently its lower than market rate as well, but its a little hard to gauge with the pandemic. In short, join at your own risk, even after reading all this. I wish I was exaggerating, but unfortunately, all these are based on my own experiences in this place. I do not wish this experience on anyone, especially not on other fresh graduates whom I presume are really stressed about finding jobs in these pandemic times as well, but seriously, don't even waste your time here. There are 100x times better places out there, no matter how desperate you are, don't do this to yourself by joining this toxic place.

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Phillip Securities Response
4y
Thank you for sharing your views. At PhillipCapital, we adopt a flat organisational structure to create a supportive and collaborative workplace across all levels where everyone learns from one another. For related employees, we have an established policy which is published in our internal platform accessible by all employees. We note your opinions on leadership transition, and a stronger marketing presence. We will share your perspectives with the relevant stakeholders. Should you have more specific suggestions, please do not hesitate to approach Human Capital. Thank you.
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