Assistant Risk Manager/ Innovations Review

I really enjoyed the internship. I was in the Insurance and Wealth division and put in a small team. Luckily, I was able to move myself between teams to find areas I was interested in and choose to engage with projects of my choice. 10 weeks went much faster than expected.

This varied depending on which team I was spending time with, but all colleagues were very inclusive and not at all patronising. It was easy to meet colleagues with similar interests who quickly engaged with you. My contributions to work were always appreciated and I was given tasks with responsibility.

Once I had arrived, my manager walked me through the necessary induction processes and then assigned me work which he supported to the degree I wanted. I felt I had support when I needed it, but I was also allowed to be pretty independent if I didn't need support, so it wasn't suffocating either.

Some days I was really busy, some days I was filling time. If you are proactive enough to introduce yourself to new members of the team and ask for work then I found that there was lots to get involved in - but you will likely have to seek a lot of this yourself.

I was given a good level of responsibility - assigned my own projects which I had to research, pull together and pitch to both internal and external stakeholders. I also had to review internal processes and changes were made on the back of my work. Responsibility makes you feel valued.

The work was pretty different to my degree (I study politics), so the training wasn't particularly relevant to my studies either. However, it has given me good industry knowledge and skills within the workplace so will definitely help me once I have graduated. I feel this was the case for a lot of the other interns too.

This is dependent on the office. I spent time in a number of different teams and found the atmospheres quite different - some were quiet hard workers, were used very social ways of working. All teams however had work and social events so colleague relations were good, social and engaging.

My manager had made sure that all my necessary kit (laptop etc) had arrived before I started and I had access and permissions to the areas that I needed. He also thought up some projects for me to get involved in. Much of my placement however I was able to choose what I got involved in so didn't need too much organisation.

I attended workshops of diversity and inclusion, agile working and had online training courses. Beyond this, I didn't get invited to any particular courses on development, but there are courses available to all employees that I am sure interns would be able to sign up to if they were interested.

I am currently applying to the grad scheme, although this whole process was quite poorly organised. It would be useful to have been given a broader understanding of the wider firm / division to understand what the range of jobs entail. But they are good employers who look after their staff

Yes, we were all put into student accommodation together which meant there were always lots of other people to socialise with. There was something going on every evening and weekend and everyone was very friendly. I feel that this would have been harder if we had not been living together.

Edinburgh is an expensive place to be over the summer because the fringe festival is on. This means that a lot of the student bars are more expensive and there are a lot of tourists around. However we all managed to live relatively cheaply and we didn't have to pay rent or bills.

Pretty good, lots of bars. Whilst the fringe festival is on there were events pretty much every night that you can go to, and it was super busy. Outside of this the nightlife was average - a lot of people recommend going to Glasgow for a night out over Edinburgh.

Living with all the other interns meant that there were always social events to get involved in. My teams also had a couple of social events during my time there and had a good social scene outside of the office too. It is also really easy to make connections with that's grads and placement students.