Summer Student Review

I found that I really enjoyed my internship at Barnett Waddingham, more so than I had expected to! I was commuting quite a long way in as I was living at my family home in Oxfordshire. I therefore found it a little tiring spending so much time travelling before and after work, but the work itself was really good. I was never bored as the mentors made a real effort to find work for us all the time. Barnett Waddingham treats its employees really well, and went out of their way to make sure that the summer students were well looked after.

I did feel really valued by everyone in the Barnett Waddingham insurance team. Whenever I did work for anyone, they were really grateful and praised me on what I did well, as well as offering constructive criticism for future tasks. We were invited a long to a number of social events by people from various teams in the office, and it seemed that everyone was really keen to get to know us and make us feel like we were part of the team.

We did not really spend much time with our supervisors on a day-to-day basis. However, I don't feel that we needed to because we each had a more junior member of the team assigned to be our mentor. From them, we were given a lot of support and guidance and every day they would speak to us to assign us work or give feedback on previous tasks. I met with my supervisor on two occasions: my mid term and final reviews. On these occasions she did make an effort to offer support and guidance, and it was a good opportunity to speak to her. Other than this, I did not spend much time with management. However, I do think that the system of having a junior team member directly in charge of the summer students is a better idea than a more heavily involved supervisor/manager.

Most days a I was kept busy, and this was really good as it stopped me from getting bored. The mentors always had work for us, and all we had to do was ask if ever we did find ourselves running low on things to do. We also had an exercise given to us every week as part of our assessment, so this was a good thing to focus on when we weren't busy, and it gave the internship a good structure. As in any job, some days were busier than others: I would occasionally have a number of tasks to be completed in one day, and then the next day have much less on my plate. However, overall the balance was good.

We were given real client work a lot of the time, and it was nice that we were trusted with this. However, given that we were very new to the company, it was reassuring to know that any work we did would be checked by more experienced members of the team. Therefore, in my opinion, the level of responsibility we were given was appropriate: enough to feel like a useful member of the team, but not so much that we were panicking or being put in charge of tasks beyond our capabilities.

The skills I learned will not be particularly useful in my degree, because the maths I will be doing in my final year is not going to be statistics or financial based maths. However, beyond my degree, if I go into an actuarial career or similar, I believe the skills I have learned in my Barnett Waddingham summer internship will be useful. For example, Excel skills, writing macros, and the training sessions we had on the different aspects of actuarial work.

The people working for Barnett Waddingham in the London office are very sociable and they get on well with each other which makes the atmosphere pleasant. Everyone was approachable and eager to help us out with our work. However, over the summer we were working with Barnett Waddingham, a number of the staff moved off to new jobs. This meant that, during the latter half of our summer internship, the insurance section of the office was a little quiet, and some of the remaining actuaries seemed to be quite busy and therefore stressed. Despite this, they were always incredibly friendly to us, and still managed to make time to train the summer students. The socials were fun and a good way to get to know people from other departments of the office.

The internship was excellently organised. It was clear that our mentors and supervisors had spent time planning and organising how the summer programme would be run, and it was well structured. We had an exercise to do every week, and a number of training sessions nicely spaced out at the beginning of the programme. We were told that in previous years, all of the training sessions had been out together over a few days but that the students had found it difficult to take everything in at once. It was clear that they had listened to this feedback, and improved the programme. I think the improvement was successful, as I really enjoyed my training sessions, and they were evenly spread out. The only thing that could have been improved is that we did not get feedback on some of our exercises until the final review, and it may have been useful to get this sooner. It is understandable that this was not possible though, as people may have been too busy to prioritise marking our work.

Barnett Waddingham put on a number of training sessions especially for us, and made an effort to explain everything to us clearly. They invested a lot of time into training us up and teaching us about the important aspects of the job. They even put on sessions for us to learn about what other areas of the company did outside of insurance.

After having spent eight weeks at Barnett Waddingham, I would definitely consider a future career with them. However, I am still undecided about whether or not it is the right line of work for me. Barnett Waddingham seems like a really good company to train with, as it appears they offer a great deal of support to their actuarial students, and there are plenty of social opportunities too.

There were so many socials on offer for us that I couldn't even attend them all! All departments of the office organised events for us and we were also given free tickets to the SIAS boat party. In addition to this, every Friday a group from the office went to the pub after work. We were invited to join all of these socials and it was a great way to get to know everyone. The summer students were also given the task of organising two socials for the team while we were here.

The cost of living in London is notoriously high, so I lived at home for the entirity of my internship. Travel costs were very expensive. On top of this, we had to pay for a lot of the socials we did which added up. However, we were being paid a fair salary which was more than enough to cover this.

There a plenty of pubs and bars in London, some of which we visited after work, for example at the Friday night socials. I did not go on any particularly late nights out as I had trains to catch home every night. However, the pubs and bars that we did visit were fun, as well as the SIAS boat party.

There were lots of opportunities to play sport, such as cricket or golf. I did not attend either of these myself, but I was invited along and I heard from others that they were fun. It was a shame that the sports on offer over summer weren't sports I am particularly interested in, but I imagine that for full time employees, there is something for everyone over the course of the year. We also had plenty of social opportunities, such as a beer festival, pool and darts nights, and a gin tasting party.