Wealth Management Intern Review

I enjoyed my internship a lot. I feel like 4 weeks is a great length for an internship as it is not too long so I still had a lot of summer to enjoy myself and go on holiday. The work I was doing was in general interesting, and the work hours suited me being 9:30am-5:30pm. Furthermore, the office is in a great location near St Paul's so I had lots of friends who worked in the area or in the City which is very nearby who I would meet up with at lunch or after work.

I felt very supported by everyone in the office. If I was ever struggling to understand some work or needed help then I did not feel like I could not ask for help. My colleagues were all super friendly and were always happy to help whenever I was in need of aid.

The intership was 4 weeks long, and the workload never got so much that it was stressful, but also there were no more than a couple of days in total where I felt like I did not have enough work to keep me occupied. I got in to work just before 9:30am each day and left promptly at 5:30pm each day.

I was given a fair amount of responsibility. If I was given a task that would produce a document for a client, then I would do the work and then someone more senior would check it before sending it out. But if I was doing work that would not be directly sent to a client, then often I would be trusted to be able to do the work to an appropriate standard without the need for it to be checked.

In the Wealth Management department that I interned in, there are about 20 people in the office. It is open plan so there are no walls or barriers stopping people from talking. The senior people such as the partners sit in the same area as the more junior employees, which encourages good vertical mixing. The general atmosphere is light and friendly; there is plenty of chat and fun.

I think this was the first time that my department had run a summer internship, so I think the program will become much more organised in the future. On the first day, half the day was an induction learning about the firm, then after lunch I met my buddy and started working in the office. I did not have any meetings about goals or feedback for me throughout the internship, and I did not really feel like anyone was monitoring or assessing me.

I was told at the end of my internship that if I decided to apply to the graduate scheme at the firm, which sounds like an excellent graduate scheme, then my application would be fast-tracked as a result of having a successful application. However, I will not be offered a job immediately at the end of the internship unlike in some internship programs.

I was the only intern in my department. There were two other interns in the office but they worked on other floors and I only met one of them once after the initial induction day. Amongst colleagues, there seemed to be a good social scene, but sadly no major events took place during my 4 weeks at the firm.

The cost was what you would expect in London. There were supermarkets like Co op, Boots, Tesco, Sains very close by that you could get a meal deal at, or the canteen on the ground floor did a decent meal for £4.50. Also lots of restaurant nearby in the St Paul's area where you could get a nice lunch like a burrito for about £7.

The firm paid for two lunches for me - a buddy lunch with the buddy who I was assigned to to help me settle in, and a lunch with everyone in my department at a local Italian restaurant. Other than this, I got lunch with my colleagues several times and went to the pub once, but there were no other activities outside of work that took place during my time here.