Rates Trading Intern Review

The internship with the Lloyds Banking Group in the Financial Markets department was a very enjoyable experience which also provided me the valuable opportunity to learn about trading, specifically rates trading. Shadowing traders in different product areas was extremely insightful and provided me with an excellent exposure to what they did on a day to day basis.

Naturally to the nature of their jobs my colleagues could not always aid in my learning on the internship, but this was something I expected and understood. However, with that being said I still felt well valued as my colleagues would take their time out to help explain to me thoroughly about different concepts.

As with the above comment being well valued meant that I was given excellent support by management, who would always try to ensure I had maximum exposure to as many desks as possible and support me in my understanding of the department and what the department, which was rates trading did.

Dependent on how busy the markets were, the traders could sometimes be too preoccupied to give me tasks or go through concepts with me but I had a few daily tasks to carry out on a daily basis but nothing which would make my day too busy. But overall, I would say even due to the nature of this department and internship I had a nice balance.

In terms of responsibility I was thoroughly surprised of the responsibilities I was given, especially as due to the nature of a trading internship I'm not allowed to do much in terms of trading, I was handed the daily task of collecting P and L numbers to give to management and booking in some trades. Overall not given too much responsibility but certainly given some.

Undoubtedly the concepts I was taught here were extremely valuable. The financial mathematics sides of things I learnt a lot and will certainly be applying this to my study of economics in the next academic school year. The skills of prudence and accuracy that the tasks I was given will be something that I will be using professionally in the future.

The general atmosphere of the office was very good. It had a nice vibe as the people were genuinely very friendly and helping, but understandably they were far less interactive when engrossed in work. However, if you had a question and you asked at a bad time they would just tell you and all I had to do was come back later. It was a very nice atmosphere to be in.

Overall the internship was organised fairly well, with me. The first day was very pleasant in the way they bought all the interns across all divisions together for the induction event. My transaction into the department was very, very smooth and everything was sorted for me by my first day.

I felt I was well invested in, even as an intern, as I was provided with my own Bloomberg account along with the time and effort people put in to ensure I understood things and had stuff to do.

Cannot comment on this as I have yet to be informed on any outcomes.

Amongst fellow colleagues not as much, which is understandable but amongst intern it was a very good social scene.

Obviously it's not cheap to go out in London, and I lived at home but the other interns lived in paid for accommodation so that must of been brilliant for them.

It's London so there's always something to do.

We had to complete a mandatory 'Responsible Business Challenge' as part of the internship. This is basically just charity work and was the main activity when not focussing on work in our department. This was a great opportunity to think for ourselves and within a group (as we worked within a team) to help raise money for a good cause.