Summer Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship at the London office. There was a good balance between work, training and social activities which meant I never experienced a moment of boredom. The placement gave me a good understanding of what a pensions actuary does and confirmed that an actuarial career is what I want to pursue.

Throughout the internship, the work I was completing and submitting was appreciated and I felt like a work colleague more than a summer intern. I was treated like one of the employees and I felt both respected and valued amongst the other workers.

There were numerous training sessions given to introduce the interns to company software and advanced techniques in programmes such as Excel. Alongside this there were a few sessions on general pension knowledge which proved useful when it came to completing tasks. In terms of guidance, everyone in the team was open to answering any questions we had. On top of this, each intern was allocated a mentor who could always be counted on to help when I needed it.

On most days I found that I was given enough work to last me the full length of the day. If I did ever find myself with no work to do and if there was no work available for my level of competence (which could be the case as there were three other interns to share the work with), then I always had the opportunity to work on my project. This project was an ongoing item throughout the eight weeks and required a fair amount of commitment which meant I always had something to do.

The majority of the work I was doing during the placement was work for clients. Most of the work revolved around calculations or the setup up of large spreadsheets for running calculations. Ultimately, the work we did as interns was fundamental and played an important part in big valuations. Alongside this we were involved in writing reports and summaries for clients to communicate our results and advice to them.

This internship helped developed my work skills such as communication and confidence, as well as my professionalism. The project which ran throughout ended with a thirty minute presentation which was my first experience of a long talk. Interacting with various clients and administrators taught me how to communicate in a professional manner and will set me in good stead for any future employment. In terms of the actual technical skills, I learnt more about pension schemes and their mechanics through this internship than I could have ever imagined. Seeing as I am planning to pursue a career in this field, I feel that this internship has given me substantial knowledge of how this industry works.

The atmosphere was great. The layout of the office was entirely open, meaning that everyone was accessible (even the partners). Through this there were always some jokes flying around and discussion about various topics ranging from cooking to sports results. Of course, the balance was just right and nobody ever got too distracted!

I thought the programme was very well organised. The two days of training at the start gave a good introduction to what we could expect from our offices and the transition to our office was smooth. There were exercises and meetings scheduled through the course of the eight weeks which all seemed to slot into place well. The mentor-supervisor structure was useful and, as mentioned before, there was always something to do.

On top of the two day training session run for all interns firm-wide at the start of the placement, the office I was working in hosted various training sessions for the interns. This required valuable time of the employees and, overall, there must have been at least 20 hours of training in the office. On top of this there were exercises given during the placement with feedback to help develop skills such as letter writing and data checking.

The firm is growing and is definitely on its way upward; with the experience I had on the internship, a career at the firm is definitely appealing.

There were three other interns in the same department as myself and three in a different department. We usually met up for lunch and occasionally visited the pub together on a Friday night with the other workers. It was easy to get along with the other interns and always pleasant to talk to someone in the same position as you. The office itself isn’t too large and so we were bound to run into each other every day.

I go to university in London so, luckily, I was able to extend the contact on my student flat with some friends. Unfortunately the rent was quite high at £140 per week and, as expected, going out in London is quite expensive too. However, with the payment from the internship and with suitable budgeting it was definitely manageable. To help with this it was frowned upon for the interns to buy drinks and so I saved a lot of money there!

In the centre of London there is always something going on!

Plenty. Not only was there the weekly cricket matches in a local Actuary league, but there were plenty of inter-office sports events too such as Netball and Football which pitted all the Barnett Waddingham offices from around the country against each other. Within the London office there were other activities such as a friendly Golf afternoon and the annual trip to the Great British Beer Festival.