Actuarial Summer Internship- Retirement Review

I thoroughly enjoyed the placement, we were given so much variation day to day which included training, meetings with seniors to discuss various parts of the business as well as getting stuck into client work. We were embraced by my office where we (virtually) attended socials and got to know each other. I felt challenged throughout the process which is something that I wanted from WTW when applying. Further to that the internship cemented my desire to become and Actuary after finishing my degree which surely shows the success of the internship!

I had constant, daily communication with my colleagues which felt like they valued my questions and wanted to make sure I was okay. Specifically I had various meetings with seniors and on some occasions time ran out which meant I was unable to ask questions. In these cases I would email the senior with my queries and the responses given were extremely in depth and clearly carefully thought out making me feel values despite how junior I was.

The support available was incredible. The buddy system WTW had in place meant I had someone to rely on that I felt comfortable explaining my issues to in a more informal way. Harry and Saim were great mentors and by the end of the internship I felt they had taught me a lot. Further my intern manager Gemma was always on hand if anything went wrong and she put a lot of effort into making sure we were looked after.

As we were effectively training and working at the same time it felt like we had a lot on and were therefore very busy. The length of the process meant that we had a lot to do in a short space of time but this definitely made the internship feel varied and I never felt burdened with work. We were also given booklets to fill out so any spare time was filled with this which was stimulating.

Pretty immediately we were asked to do client calculation and even though this were checked by somebody senior it still felt like we had an impact on real work and therefore were responsible for any mistakes made. More informally we were given tasks to create socials for our office. If we were there longer I feel we would have been given more varied opportunities and trusted to do more complex tasks however this was not the case.

There was a great emphasis on EXCEL work which I was a complete novice at and find difficult when using in my degree. After finishing this internship I have come away with a greater knowledge of the program which I can definitely take with me. Although the internship was virtual I feel like my communication skills improved due to the fact we had to be on constant calls in order to get information rather than just asking the person sat next to me!

We had regular hub meetings which were smaller factions of the office where we came together mid week for a more informal chat where everybody got along and could empathize if others felt they were really busy. Everybody was really eager to get involved with the interns which from the offset meant I felt there really welcoming atmosphere. Everybody clearly got a long and I didn't feel as though there was any negativity towards others.

The facilitators and admin team as well as my intern manager worked really hard to provide a well thought out program that touched on all aspects of the business. At some points this could be overwhelming as I felt all the learning should have been scheduled before we started client work so that we could fully process our knowledge. Further there could have been better training on the Willis Towers Tatson software so we didn't experience unnecessary issues when doing work.

Immensely, we had thorough training sessions on many different topic areas, given a huge amount of resources to practice our learning and provided with training sessions where our questions were addressed in smaller groups. Even though there was an emphasis on technical training we were also exposed to development opportunities such as research presentations which helped our skills and given mid internship feedback which enabled us to improve throughout the program. I couldn't fault the investment in training and development.

We had a chat with a senior and talked about the opportunity to be creative within WTW which I wouldn’t have expected previously. Although I enjoy math I was worried that opting for such a technical career I wouldn’t be able to develop other skills such as communication and innovation. It was a very exciting conversation and opened my eyes into the various paths I could go down if I were to pursue a career as an actuary.

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