Wealth Risk Analyst Review

Work was interesting for the most part. There were times where interest lulled but there tended to be some very interesting things available to do. I also had the opportunity to work with other teams which was quite fun.

Colleagues were really friendly and helpful. They spent a lot of time helping me out and teaching me things as well as making an effort to have me be a part of the team. I really felt like a part of the team.

My managers spent a lot of time teaching me things, helping me with projects and making time in their diaries to spend with me in order to help my development and helping me when I got stuck.

This varied quite a bit but it was more a reflection of how the team functioned. The team does monthly reporting and so are always busiest near the beginning of the month and have a lighter workload towards the end of the month. My workload reflected this and fluctuated a lot. I was also restricted by IT access restrictions which prevented me from taking part in a lot of work because it required access to certain data servers etc. My team tried hard to allow me to take part in creating these reports but there was only so much they could do.

I had a fair bit of responsibility and actively took part in monthly reporting. I also spent a lot of time working to improve existing systems and even created a new monthly report that would be used by the team going forward. Due to the nature of the team, however, it was difficult to give me much real responsibility in standard reporting due to IT access restrictions. This wasn't an issue my team could do anything about and they complained about the difficulty to find work for me because of the access restrictions.

A lot of the coding skills I picked up will definitely be life skills that could be very useful for future employment. Further to this I gained a very good understanding of how banks work, how lending is approved, the various types of loans that are available and how a bank works from inside. It's also given me the knowledge to make an informed decision about future career choices.

The office had a great positive atmosphere with very friendly colleagues. It was also clear that people knew when to be serious and get work done so there was never any wasting time, but this didn't mean people didn't have time to chat or make jokes while still getting the work done quickly and to a good standard which I feel is the ideal environment for a workplace.

It was relatively smooth though getting my laptop ready took longer than it should have. My manager was quite organised and helped me get onto the work that I needed to do very quickly so that I could get the most out of it. It did seem like this was more my manager being well organised than the internship project however as it didn't seem like there was much communication between managers and the central project leaders. How true this is I'm not sure of, but that was the impression I got.

There were webinars to help development. Some were very useful, others were quite boring. The recorded webinars were a good idea because it allowed me to flexibly listen to them in my own time. I had access to a lot of the Discover Learning resources, but these were quite difficult to navigate. The web based courses I did do were very useful. My manager put me on a SAS Bootcamp course which was incredibly helpful and one of the most useful development opportunities I had.

Employment prospects seem reasonable based on performance. The process seems quite straightforward and easy to understand. I'm not sure about how I'm performing however and perhaps some more clarity about my performance could be provided sooner, so if I need to improve I can.

The Charity Challenge was a good way to meet some other interns. Our Charity Team bonded really well and we've become friends and eat lunch together almost every day. There weren't really any organised socialising opportunities outside of those organised by the interns themselves.

The local area (Central London) was quite expensive but as a Londoner myself it wasn't too unreasonable. My work team organised lunches and socials occassionaly. My charity team was also willing to spend some time socialising.

The nightlife is ok though I wasn't particularly interested in it. I know that a lot of interns were burnt out and didn't spend too much time on nightlife towards the end of the internship.

The charity challenge let us get involved with stuff outside of work. Beyond that it was purely activities that were organised by colleagues or interns. There weren't really many organised activities outside of work that I knew about.