Summer Student - Actuarial and Benefits Review

I very much enjoyed the internship as it is an all rounded experience. The work life balance is great and there are a lot of social activities in the firm and across the practice. The friendly culture is amazing and truly friendly as there are encouragement and support from everyone in the office and no pressure to work extra hours. The work is challenging and interesting to gain insight into the industry.

A great extent. Everyone's really friendly and welcoming to make sure I settled in well in the firm. The interns also take on real responsibilities on client work as we are doing the same work being done by a new graduate coming in, so we are treated in the same way as a graduate employee. The socials are good experiences to connect with everyone in the firm and the colleagues valued interns' presence outside work environment as well.

All the interns have a people manager who's responsible to make sure you are settling well and making good progress; also a buddy who's a graduate from last year to give support on smaller things. My people manager is amazing with lots of positive qualities, we can have casual chats as well as serious work discussions and she's given me a lot of constructive feedback and support on my client work and project work. She also allowed me to make connections to people in other practices for me to find out more about the firm and the business.

Since the work is client-oriented, it depends on how much client work is coming in, but in general I would be kept busy by my client work, my project work and some internal training such as the inductions I had in the first week, team meetings, catching up with people managers, etc. Sometimes I can be very free and work on my project, other times I can be stuck with client work for the whole day and be very busy, but I can always manage to finish work around 5 which is the time to get off work and go home.

I essentially feel like a team member for my client teams (I am on 5 client teams) as the work I do eventually end up being send back to the clients. Although there are some more complicated work that I couldn't pick up because of the time scale, I had the chance to get an overview of these work and go through some final documents which were really helpful.

The skills I developed will definitely help a lot, especially the communication skills and presentation skills. Now I have a better idea of how to communicate effectively and efficiently with others to get tasks done faster and better; I also developed good methodology and a logical way of thinking on how to approach a problem.

Friendly, energetic and fun. The work life balance is great, and the people are extremely friendly and funny. The holiday package is great and being used effectively as my colleagues often go on holidays from time to time, and they always bring back treats to be shared by the office afterwards. There's always time and space to chat to other people casually. The socials are fun and engaging and people always go to pubs for drinks together after work.

Very well organised as we have training and inductions while picking up client work and project work in the first week, then over the internship we will be focusing on client work, project work and anything that we are interested in about the firm the business. Half way through we will get some feedback from people we worked with. At the end we will have the presentation on our project and final feedback.

A fair amount, I completed all the compulsory trainings and inductions every employee has to go through, and I was taught about have to do the actual work for each client by the client team members. My people manager also put a lot of effort into showing the interns some interesting work that are going on in the business and the firm, and seeing the work of other practices.

There are intake places for every intern, and if the assessment and feedback are well there's a high chance that they will give a return offer.

Yes, all the interns and colleagues are extremely nice as well. As interns we often have lunches together and go out for dinner/drinks as a group.

To be honest, London is really expensive to live in, especially the rent. However, there's a Tesco nearby the London office so you can get a meal deal for 3 pounds, there are also other chain places around for you to get a lunch for about 5 pounds, or you can bring your own lunch in as there's refrigerators and microwaves at the office. In terms of socialising, there are quite a lot pubs around that does cocktails and drinks for decent prices.

There are pubs, bars and clubs that open till late, and public transport is really convenient as well. So there are good places to go on Friday night. The office is really close to central London as well, 2-3 stops on the tube gets you to Soho with lots of good restaurants and bars.

There were social nights when a sports day was organized but turned into a board game night due to the weather, however it was still really fun. There were some social events such as the boat party to attend and have fun with colleagues. My team also went on a volunteering day together where we did gardening for a community centre. However, the sports side is quite limited as there are no company gym (although there's a gym next to the office but you will need to pay for yourself) and no sports team.