PCA Credit Risk Analyst Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement with Lloyds Banking Group. I worked in the Personal Current Account Credit Risk team and was given a huge amount of responsibility which was very rewarding. My hours were typically 9-5, I did have to work outside of these hours on rare occasions, but I never felt as though my work/life balance was impaired.

We were a rather small team with a very high staff turnover rate below manager. This meant I had to step up and try to fulfil a senior analyst's responsibilities on numerous occasions. This allowed me to gain so much more from the placement due to the challenges offered to me and appropriate praise was given when I did well.

I had 3 line managers during my placement year and each had their different style of management. The first one was based in Bristol, when I was based in Halifax. So support was all via email or over the phone. However, we worked really well together because I work best independently and it allowed me to get on with what needed doing. The other two were both based at the same site of me and they were much more hands on, so support was in an abundance.

The majority of days I would have very full days, it was rare for me to be sat twiddling my thumbs. The workload was typically always a little bit more than you could actually achieve in a day, but this presents a challenge in itself. There was no harm done packing up at 5 if you didn't have a strict deadline and carrying on the next day. Pressure was there, but if you needed it relieving a little bit a chat with your manager always helped.

Loads of responsibility. In my first role I did a lot of monitoring of authorisations and if any were not as expected it was up to me to resolve them. I had my own contact list and used to resolve everything by myself and then send a summary to my line manager for reference. I also had 2 major projects which were either solely my responsibility or majority.

My placement allowed me to use many of the skills I had learnt in my first 2 years of university in a practical sense. This gave me a greater depth of understanding. For final year I am sure some of the work place soft skills will help my studying, without a doubt discipline will (getting work done). Also, I think the placement year will aid in getting a job after university too.

The office had a range of staff. From Senior Managers down to Interns. Everyone in the office was very friendly and approachable. I even had a few table football rivalries with some people in the office! As long as you got your work done there was no harm in having a chat with someone about the weekend's sports or anything else.

The overall work placement were very well set up. From day one, the previous placement student had already organised to come up to Halifax from London to do some handover tasks with me. I joined the team fairly seamlessly and my work responsibilities grew at a steady rate to the level to a level I could handle. There were a couple of training courses I went on too, which rapidly developed my skills for the job.

At the beginning of my placement year I went on a Teradata SQL course and a SAS course, both of these developed my data coding skills, which were effectively non existent before. There were lots of other training sessions throughout the year that the whole team benefited from. I also managed to organise a few shadowing opportunities in other parts of the bank, this allowed me to discover other opportunities at Lloyds Banking Group.

There are multiple different types of graduate schemes you can apply for and each appear to be a good place to start a positive career. My team have also mentioned that I may be able to go back as a full time analyst if I choose not to go on a graduate scheme. So there are plenty of opportunities.

At the beginning of the placement year we all set up a group and used to have lunch together. However, as the year goes on everyone gets busy and has different things to do in their lunch break. We did have quite a few nights out too, but it was all organised by ourselves.

I lived in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Compared to some friends who lived in London for the year, my cost of living was peanuts. I shared a 3 bedroom semi detached house with a garden and garage with one other placement student for just £325 each per month. We were just a 40 minute train journey from Leeds, which has almost everything you could want to do.

In the direct area of Halifax the night life was not the best. However, for nights out we used to go to Leeds and you could get a train back to Huddersfield any time of the night because its on an airport route. And just get a taxi from there to home, which was never more than £10.

Our wider team organised an annual sports day which was good fun and got a lot of people involved. When we had our face to face team meetings we have been to ping-pong and table football bars. And I started playing squash at the office with different colleagues, because we had a squash court in the basement of our building that was free to use.