Intern Review

The internship has been a truly amazing experience. I haven't been well-aware about finance and banking industry and it was relatively a new area of interest for me. During the course of 10 weeks, I learnt more that I could ever imagined and acquired profound understanding of financial world alongside the actual technical knowledge on the subject.

The people I was surrounded with were incredibly helpful and willing to take an hour off their busy schedules to share their knowledge and experiences. They have always treated me as a full-time member of the team and therefore got me involved in all the things the graduates (analysts) would be doing.

I was lucky to be placed in a great team, so I felt lots of support and experienced a very friendly working environment. I had a chance to always ask questions and clarify possible confusions encountered. I have also observed other teams and the culture of support and learning seemed to be consistent throughout the business.

I was kept relatively busy but was never asked to stay later to finish my job. The good thing about this internship is that you can pick up more responsibilities and ask for more work in case you feel you have spare capacity. That allows you to understand the core of the time management and prioritise what you should be doing.

A lot of responsibility. I have started off reading various historic client papers and completing training of the core systems and databases. Consequently, I got to support analysts executing the client deals and mid-placement I was given tasks with a substantial degree of technical understanding required to perform on my own.

We were given a variety of different learning opportunities, including introductory sessions about other bank departments, online learning portal, systems training (including visiting Bloomberg HQ!). The most crucial learning piece for me was the depth of integration into the financial world, getting a full comprehension of bank's products and offerings, client relationships and operations.

The atmosphere was really friendly, and taking into account I was sitting in Front Office department (Client Coverage team) - my colleagues were predominantly very busy people. Nonetheless, everybody was very approachable and kind. There are many wonderful initiatives on the floor, such as free fruit boxes - so everybody can have a vitamin boost anytime. Also, there were great departmental events and team socials.

I think it was well-organised. Alongside our day-to-day jobs, we had other internship-related activities, such as Business Challenge and Charity Challenge. On both occasions we were placed in the randomly-allocated in teams and were working together towards the completion. Such initiatives allowed me personally to socialise with other interns and network across the business.

Lloyds Bank offers a very attractive graduate scheme in my department - Commercial Bank (CB) - but there are also many other options in different other areas of the bank(e.g. Group Transformation, Retail Bank etc.). CB grad scheme consists of four rotations - all in different parts of the Commercial Bank - so it provides a number of opportunities to experience within the business and decide where you fit best.

All interns were of very high calibre, interesting to talk to and I met many nice people I would love to stay in touch in the future. For example, during our internship charity challenge, we genuinely enjoyed fundraising together and socialised outside work as well. Also, interns here are all from different educational backgrounds (rather than Business/Economics only) and that made it even more interesting.

Lloyds provided us with accommodation in Central London, Angel tube (completely free of charge) which is a short walk to work - 20 mins - and very close proximity to many night clubs. There is a number of places in Angel, Old Street and Shoreditch all within a short walk.