Business Support Assistant - Retirement - Actuarial Review

I really enjoyed the internship as I thought it gave an amazing insight into the actuarial profession as well as what it meant to be part of the team in the Leeds office. The people in the office were very friendly, accommodating and more than happy to answer any questions I had on any of the work that I was doing. The training sessions put on by the team were very informative and useful in helping us to learn more about the retirement team, as well as the roles of the other areas of the business.

I felt that I was making an impact from day 1, since I was doing real work that the graduates would otherwise do. Being part of the process rather than being on the fringes of the work made me feel like a valued member of the team. Also after each piece of work was completed, I was given feedback on it which showed that my colleagues cared about me and my understanding of the work.

Whenever I was given a new task to complete, the person giving me the work would always encourage questions on anything that I was unsure on. I was also assigned a line manager for the internship, and had 3 meetings with her. We discussed how I thought the internship was going, anything they could do to improve my experience and any areas that I could improve upon in my work.

As with any job I had busy and quiet days, however even on quiet days I usually had lots of work to complete from previous busy days. We had weekly meetings in which we discussed how busy we were and were assigned tasks if we were quiet. If we had nothing at all to do we were expected to go and ask people for work, however this didn’t happen at all often as I usually had something to do.

I was very impressed with the level of responsibility I had in the team. From the first day we were given our own laptop and phone line in which we were expected to manage. The wide range of different tasks for clients we were assigned over the course of the experience was outstanding, and in truth I was given more responsibility than I thought would ever be possible for a company to give an intern with no prior experience.

Whilst what we learn didn't have a direct impact on what I study at University, the pensions knowledge that I learned about over the course of the internship should be really helpful if I get the opportunity to work at the firm in the future, as well as for the Actuarial exams. I also used Excel quite regularly and so my understanding of this software improved quite a lot.

Everyone in the office was super friendly and more than happy to help / answer any questions that I had. With everyone in the office hotdesking, I got to know everyone fairly quickly, and everybody gave different pieces of work to me, which was nice to get different perspectives and feedback. At lunch times, most of the retirement team would take lunch together and this was a great way to talk to different people.

The internship was incredibly well organised, and at no point did I ever feel like I wasn't doing something useful with my time. They put on 2-4 intern work sessions every week, which were logged in our calendar at least a week before.

On the first day of the internship, the company paid for me to travel to central London, in order to meet all of the other interns from around the country and have an all day introduction to the company, as well as talks from senior members of the team. As previously mentioned, we had at least 2-4 intern sessions a week on various aspects of the work that we do in the retirement dept in Leeds, so I felt that the firm invested very heavily in me over the course of the 8 weeks.

Over the last few years, all interns have been offered graduate jobs at WTW, so overall the job prospects look good.

There were many great social events over the course of the internship. I attended a BBQ at a senior manager's house, we had a sports day after work, we went to local pubs when the world cup was on, as well as when colleagues passed any exams / qualified and we had exercise classes after work sometimes and more.

I didn’t actually stay in Leeds during my internship, but I know from the work outings there that the prices were mostly reasonable. As with any big city, it depends where you go. When colleagues passed exams / qualified they kindly bought drinks for everyone with a tab on the bar.

Being quite close to central Leeds, there were lots of pubs and bars quite close by to go to. I didn't quite see all of Leeds but what I saw looked good.

On the internship, I did a Corporate Social Responsibility day where I volunteered for the entire day with other WTW colleagues at St Martins Hospice in Wetherby, where we helped them by tidying up their garden area.