Financial Technology Intern Review

Despite not coming from a finance or computer science background, I was given a real opportunity this summer to dive into financial technology at M&GPrudential. The atmosphere was relaxed and I was given a lot of time and space to explore my own interests, whether that was learning more about AI, Cloud Engineering or programming languages.

My colleagues always made sure to invite me to any meetings that I might benefit from attending and gave my work recognition when I had done a good job. I felt most valued by my colleagues when they took time out of their schedule to explain new concepts to me, as it showed me that they cared I was learning during my internship.

One of the best things about the internship was the level of support we had. I had a scrum master, a line manager, a secondary line manager, a personal development manager, two graduate buddies and four members of HR I could talk to if I needed anything, so there definitely wasn't a lack of help! Everyone was really open to meeting with me whenever I needed help. I met up with most of my managers once a week for a chat.

The first half of the internship involved almost daily insight sessions into various areas of the business, which meant my mornings were often quite busy. We got to meet a lot of different department Heads during these sessions, which made us feel really recognised and valued by the company despite just being summer interns. Toward the end of my internship, I also was given more work as my tech team's project evolved and got more complicated. In between these two busy phases, I did sometimes wish I had more work or tasks to do. I am quite a quick worker, so I often had spare time in the afternoons even after asking for more work.

I was allowed to run several meetings during my internship, carry out intern presentations and had analysis and research work for my tech team too. I also took up several side projects that kept me busy in between. I think it would be a good idea for future tech interns to have their own project to work on independently over the summer.

As mentioned, my degree is not in computer science so from a university perspective my internship will perhaps not have a great impact. That being said, I learned a huge amount of other skills and knowledge that I believe will allow me to establish a really strong foundation for my career. For instance, I knew nothing about agile methodology at the start of my internship, but now the terms "scrum," "retrospective," "stand up" and "chapter" are a part of my daily vocabulary. I've also learned a lot about the role of an analyst, which was my main goal at the start of my internship as I was interested to see if it would be a career that would suit my personality and interests. Having real life experience in this role has assured me that this is definitely what I want to do in future, and that level of certainty is the most valuable thing I gained this summer.

Relaxed and friendly. The office has a flexible working policy, so there are booths and sofas in the centre of every floor that you can work at if you don't want to sit at your desk. You can also work from home if you don't have any meetings in a day. I liked to come in every day because I liked the social atmosphere of the office and meeting up with the other interns at lunch.

Very well organised. Our intern calendars were sent out to us weeks before our internship began, so we always knew what our next event or training session was.

We were given lots of insight sessions to learn about the business and were also encouraged to teach ourselves new skills such as coding through online courses. It would have been nice to have had more formal tech training or an intern curriculum related to technology in order to make sure we learned as much as possible over the course of the internship.

My assessment centre is soon so I hope it goes well! I think it's easy for anyone to see themselves working at a place like M&GPrudential - it's very modern, very welcoming and a very exciting place to be at the moment.

The intern group this year really got on amazingly well. We had inside jokes together from the first day of our internships, ate lunch together every day and enjoyed the weekly socials HR organised for us as a group (ping pong, a London treasure hunt, a pub quiz, etc.). We would also meet up after work once a week for dinner and had a WhatsApp group that we used every day. Everyone just genuinely got on very well and it will be really sad once we finish our internships and go back to our different universities!

London is an expensive city!

I don't really go out that much, but London is of course a great place to go out at night.

There are coding dojos, a running club, various networks related to gender, LGBTQ+, diversity...