Digital Advisory Review

It was very good. I got a lot of insight into Risk within the bank and gave me a new understanding of life within a bank. For me banking always seemed very boring and repetitive but my experience shows the exact opposite – its actually a very dynamic and varied experience but I think it does depend where you are and what team you’re in

I felt very trusted by my team. At the beginning they were giving me easier work to do in order to ease me in but as the weeks went on they gave me more volume of work that ad tighter deadlines and of a greater complexity. It was quite challenging at times but it did mean I learnt a lot

My managers were extremely supportive to me. Whenever I had any questions or queries they were more than happy to help out and assist me. In the beginning they expect you to not know anything when everything is alien to you but even later on once the work got more complex, they understood that I would probably struggle and helped me along the way

It varied day to day. For some reason all the work seemed to come in waves. So there would be days when I had very little and I’d be sat twiddling my thumbs or doing fairly meaningless activities but then there would be days where I would be rushed off my feet trying to balance meetings in different offices whilst still hitting my deadlines

From the beginning I was trusted quite a lot and given responsibility. In the first few weeks I would be given work to do a first pass of, which mutually benefitted both me and the team. I was able to gain insight into the type of work they did and it would save them a bit of time which they could use to talk me through other more complex pieces of work which I was then able to own later on into the internship

In terms of my degree it has done very little. I do maths so the type of complexity I do on my course far outstrips any maths I did on my placement however there are other parts of the bank which do use more advanced maths. However that doesn’t mean to say what I have learnt won’t be useful in future work as it has been a real eye opener and helped me succeed in an office environment

It was very formal in my office. In the rest of the bank you have casual Fridays where you are able to come in in everyday clothes but my office was never one that did this. It was always shirt and tie type thing but everyone was really friendly and very approachable, if a little unsociable outside of working hours.

Its been running for years so there isn’t ever anything major that goes wrong but there are still hiccups and miscommunications that can affect you. The only half issue we had this year was with our accommodation in the sense that none of the rules were made clear an there was far too many conflicting reports regarding the staying of guests which lead to a lot of negatively towards the organisers.

A we were only here for 10 weeks there wasn't any major investment in us qualification wise, however my manager and team did invest a lot of time into my development and really tried to help me along with my work. From a wider perspective there are now so many interns and scholars doing summer placements that no one apart from managers are really able to invest that much time into you

The prospects are good. Based on how the internship (and an interview conducted by my line manager) went determined whether I got a placement onto the graduate scheme. So for me as a student who has just finished second year to already have a graduate placement is almost unheard of – it’s a brilliant scheme!

With the colleagues it was virtually non-existent. The first and last time I went out with my team was in my last week which was my leaving do and even then it only consisted as of a few pints in the pub round the corner. The interns it was a lot more sociable as we went out at the weekends and hit the pubs after work. It helped that it was lovely weather and we had a bar with a roof garden round the corner though

We were in central London (Pentonville Road) so it was never going to be cheap to lie. Thankfully Lloyds sorted out accommodation and paid for it (as we are on a social mobility programme and wouldn’t ever have been able to afford those prices!) but living wise it wasn’t too bad. We spent a lot of time cooking in the flat and when we did go out you just had to be prepared for the fact it’s not going to be £1.50 a pint like it is at home

It was good. There was always plenty of pubs bars and clubs never too far away. London is obviously one of those cities where there is always somewhere to go but you just have to be prepare to pay over the odds sometimes. I've been saying this the whole time I've been here - London is an amazing city but to live long term its just not sustainable.

Not really. Anything we wanted to do we had to organise between the other interns. There was never any sports or social perks that came with the internship so it was just a case of talking to other interns and going from there. This wasn’t as bad as it sounds though as we were all living together so getting enough people together to go and do something often wasn’t too difficult