Valuations Intern (Financial Services) Review

Brilliant experience: I spent most of time on client projects, following a quite extensive training (for an intern), so that I felt I knew what I was doing and I had the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the team. The people in the team, and their attitude towards me, really made the difference.

I felt like part of the team very quickly, the team would often eat lunch together and I was always invited along. Despite only being on projects for a short period of time, I was invited along to project meals. When on working on projects, senior team members made sure I understood how my work was going to be used. and told me how much they appreciated my work. The project leader sought my opinion on parts of the project, such as which index to use or how would you forecast how the market is going to move. They asked questions about my suggestions and put some of my ideas into project. Being able to have the impact definitely made me feel a valued part of the team.

The practical support given was great, even when on a busy project my supervisors were happy to talk me through aspects of the project and gave suggestions for good approaches to tasks. I had a people manager who helped set my objectives and met me regularly to discuss progress and suggested ways that I could go about gaining the experience I hoped to acquire from the internship.

The first three weeks were quite relaxed, which was helpful to get settled in. I always had enough work to do, but I was not on a big project so I was not too busy. In the second three weeks, I was working on a deal driven client project. I was very busy. It was a great experience as I was able to develop much faster than I otherwise would have. Over the two halves of the internship, it was the perfect balance.

Working in advisory you will not be given total freedom as an intern. However I was able to work on live projects, being was responsible for writing parts of the report and being able to make meaningful contributions to discussions about assumptions that were central to our valuation model. I also had the opportunity to attend a client meeting very early on in the internship.

The training will be of great help. We were given formal training from Capital IQ and Factiva in using their respective research tools that would be useful pretty much anywhere. The technical training in different valuation methodologies and their application will invaluable in a full time role. The practical modelling skills I learned on the job will be helpful in my degree and beyond.

The office was friendly, pretty much everyone was happy and smiling. It was a work hard - play hard culture and as a result the team was very social, often eating lunch as a team, from senior members of staff down to interns. People from other lines of service were more than happy to meet for a coffee to have a chat about life at PwC and their experiences, even if you had no intention of joining their team. It was just because you were an intern and they wanted you to feel welcome.

Very well organised, formal training for the first week. When I joined the team I had a buddy and a people manager. Your work was organised by booking onto projects, which was handling by resourcing (who we were introduced to during our training). There was a midpoint day organised to encourage us to reflect and give us a bit more information about our future options. There was a crowd sourcing project for one of PwC's clients run for the interns.

Other than the people this was one of the outstanding parts of the internship. PwC arranged for external trainers to come in and train just 3 interns! We were given training in how to use research tools such as Factiva, Capital IQ, Thomson Research and some internal tools. We were given presentations from each of the different sector teams within valuations to explain what they did and a bit about some recent deals, this lasted an entire day and was for the benefit of just 3 interns. We also had technical training, we were given a session introduction valuations and the methodologies used and when to use them. My buddy supplied me with work books and further training on valuation methods specific to my sector team. In addition to the intern specific training, we could attend training sessions aimed at full time staff. I attended sessions on: BRS Pensions/ valuations collaboration, how to value management incentive schemes and an introduction to tax valuations.

Dinners, drinks and lunches were often organised amongst the interns. This was not organised by the firm, but whenever the interns came together for a training day there would be some sort of social afterwards, and there were random socials during the internship.

It is London, so not the cheapest part of the country.