Insurance - Actuarial intern Review

I was part of the insurance arm of Lloyds Banking Group and managed to work under one of the actuarial teams. I was given little responsibility at the beginning but I asked for more work and when they saw I could pick it up well they trusted me with a lot of their important tasks. I thoroughly enjoyed the internship.

Extremely - my colleagues would always take time off to explain the problem to me, and if I had any issue I could just run over to their desk and ask. I've never had a colleague tell me that they were too busy, and I've even had senior managers take the time to explain problems to me.

I think my case is slightly different as I was originally to be put in a propositions team but moved to an actuarial team. Support from my manager was there if I needed it, but I never had to ask my manager for work, I'd usually just find the work by asking colleagues or in our morning meetings.

It depends on the day - earliest I've left is around 5:30pm and I try to get in for 8:30am. Latest I've left is 7:30pm but no one asked me to stay that late, I just put extra work on myself and wanted to finish it all that day. Most of the time I'll leave the office before 6pm - but it's worth noting that most interns went home at 5pm, at least in the Edinburgh office.

Quite a lot. I was in charge of many daily processes of the team which included a lot of work in excel. Additionally I helped developed some of their models so I was required to use VBA/SQL quite often. I think this was really because I was keen to get into the technical aspects.

I study mathematics so for my degree the skills will not be useful at all as we don't really use any programming languages in my degree. However, for other positions in actuarial, or even finance, I've picked up a ton of skills such as VBA/SQL and Excel skills. Additionally, being involved in important meetings every week has really given me an exposure to corporate and office life which may sound small, but I thought it was important.

Very laid back and friendly, we'd have moments where we would talk about football or something in the news for a good 30-60 minutes. Additionally as mentioned before, everyone is willing to help. I could go up to anyone and ask for assistance on what I was doing and they'd come over right away.

It was pretty difficult to get to the position I was in but I was proactive from the start. I made it clear what role I wanted to do and what I didn't want to do and was very fortunate in that HR were understanding and my line manager agreed to take me on very short notice. I'm very lucky, but it was difficult to get set up.

They had a development training programme which went through some basics about insurance but to be honest, I found it useless and a waste of time. I allocated 3 hours to complete the training and just got it out of the way. I know for the actuarial team there is excel training in the first week, but I did not complete it so I am not sure how useful that was. Most of my learning was on the job and me taking the initative - for instance I would learn about SQL/VBA whilst I had a little down time rather than doing nothing, and this came into use when they asked me to do a task.

I am extremely interested in their actuarial graduate scheme. The benefits for it are great, and the support given is extremely good - however, there is currently a lot of HR bureaucracy around it and despite both everyone on my team and my manager strongly recommending me, there is not a sure chance of a job - if I was offered it I would most certainly take it however.

For the interns there is something going on almost every weekend. The social scene is great as we're in Edinburgh and right next to all the bars - as for with colleagues we would go out every now and then for lunch or dinner and sometimes for drinks. I think this depends on your team but mine were pretty social for actuary standards.

My accommodation was fully paid for by Lloyds Banking Group so that was great. The location of the place was around a 40 minute walk which I found very acceptable. I would usually catch a bus in the morning though and walk back home, depending on the weather. Sharing with 2 other students around Edinburgh is usually about £300-450 a month.

I only had one proper night out near the start of the internship and that was good fun - however, it's not London. The food places close really early I found, and the clubs aren't the best but you can't really complain. The bars however I found to be really good; it was easy to go out and just have a drink with someone and actually get a seat so it has London beat on that front.

Yes, there were emails for weekly football club, basketball etc. Additionally golf was very big in the area so there were a ton of opportunities for that. Other than that we had team activities such as paintball or football club which were just for the team or for other actuaries which were always good fun.