Trustee and Consulting Actuary Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my time at Barnett Waddingham on the 8 week Trustee & Consulting Actuarial Summer Internship as you get involved with real work early on but receives enough guidance to make it manageable. Furthermore, the rotation between trustee desks to the investment desk gives you a lot of exposure to the wider actuarial field so you can decide which field suits you better. Finally, all the staff are very friendly and approachable and that applies to every one from the receptionists to the actuaries on your desk and all the way up to the partners.

Your colleagues treat you like a member of the team from the get go by involving you in the weekly team huddles and by inviting you to social events from the first week. Also they provide you with sufficient work to keep you busy whilst providing enough support to make it manageable. You receive feedback on every piece of work as part of the peer review system and this helps you to learn very quickly and come to grips with the work at a rapid rate.

Your manager checks in on you regularly to make sure that you are keeping up with work and are getting a good variety of work representative of a days work at the firm. They also guide you on any work that you have if the people near you are busy or away from their desk and you find yourself stuck.

On a daily basis it varies but tends to be quite a full day with a bunch of deadlines approaching. As long as you manage your work efficiently and are prepared to ask for help when you need it you will not struggle with the work load at all. They key aspect is asking for help because the actuarial work can be quite intuitively hard but can be easily clarified by an experience peer.

You are given client based work immediately after your training giving you plenty of responsibility. All your work is checked before it goes to the client, as per the company policy of peer reviewing every piece of work before it is sent, so the responsibility is enough to make it feel real without making it daunting.

These skills will be very useful for my degree as it developed my ability to organise my work load efficiently as well as how to go about a task without as much as guidance as you would receive in education. Also it taught me key skills that will give me a good head start if I am able to secure an actuarial graduate scheme at the end of my degree.

The office struck the perfect balance between casual and productive with work being completed efficiently whilst not elevating stress levels within the employees. Furthermore, the café area provided a good place to relax at lunch times with free coffee and plenty of seated space. Also everyone is very approachable ranging from the receptionists, to your peers and even up to the senior partners especially with the open plan office in Amersham.

The firm has organised a very well set up internship programme with a clear rota in place so you know exactly where you are going on each rotation. Furthermore, explain to you very early on the exact details of the tasks that you will need to complete over the internship and provide you with the dates and advised time for completion of each task. Finally, the mid and end of term review process lets you know how you are getting on and provides a good opportunity for you to better yourself in the second half of the internship given the feedback at the midterm.

The firm fully invested in me from the beginning with training commencing with a two day programme in the Liverpool office (paid for and organised by the firm) and followed up with further training in the first and second weeks of the internship in your respective office. The training is provided by qualified actuaries and is incredibly useful providing quality teaching and useful resources for reference at future dates.

Yes there was a good social scene amongst the fellow placement student and colleagues with numerous pub trips, lunch outing, clubs and societies and organised activities. Not only did you get the opportunity to mix with student peers and colleagues from the Amersham office but a lot of the events involved both the Amersham and the London office meaning that you got to mix with members from both offices regularly.

As the office that interned at was on the outskirts of London it was reasonably expensive to live in the area. The accommodation I found was not too costly as it was the New Bucks University Accommodation which can be rented over the summer at a 10% discount for students of any UK university. Socialising is quite expensive as pub meals and drinks are more due to the London proximity but if you were located in an office such as the Liverpool office then the cost of living and socialising would be much lower.

There was a lot of nightlife activity at the firm as a lot of the actuarial students passed exams or were qualifying which meant a trip down to the pub on them! Also there was the SIAS boat party, a golf social and a poker social followed by a pub quiz. All of those event were very good fun and provided an excellent opportunity to get to know the wider firm in a relaxed environment.

Yes there was a good social scene amongst the fellow placement student and colleagues with numerous pub trips, lunch outing, clubs and societies and organised activities. Furthermore, there were many opportunities to get involved with charity work as there were many charity runs or general fund raising activities. Many of the events had excellent turn outs making them fun to attend a great chance to meet new people or further get to know people you knew in the office environment.