Summer Intern - Assurance Review

I thoroughly enjoyed the 6 weeks at EY in Edinburgh. It was a great learning experience and a chance to gain valuable insight into the company and the actuarial work.

I was very lucky to have an immensely supportive team who made me feel welcome from the very first day. Everyone in the team, regardless how senior, made me feel valued and were happy to answers any questions I had. They have also prepared a series of presentations over the first two weeks - including the aspects of the different actuarial work, EY and the industry. This was extremely helpful for the following weeks of my internship.

During my time at EY I was assigned a buddy (typically most recent graduate joiner in the team) and a counselor. They helped me set my goals and expectations at the beginning and worked with me over the duration of my internship to make sure I was meeting them, and that I was happy with how my work was going.

I don't think there was a single moment when i was sitting down twiddling my fingers. I had a chance to work on a number of different projects for a variety of clients (this included going away to client sites in different parts of the country), working with different team members. Everyone was happy to share their work with me whenever possible to ensure that I was getting a broad exposure during my internship. On top of this, we were given an internal summer internship project (specific to out sub service line) that we then presented to a partner towards the end of our internship. Finally, I was involved in a global internship project with interns from the UK, US and Hong Kong.

I was certainly getting an increasing amount of responsibility as my internship progressed. Even in my first full week in the office, I had a chance to give a presentation in front of the whole team. Over the course of my internship, some of my responsibilities included client calls to source information, working on various slide decks that were then sent to clients after review, building billing spreadsheets for the team, as well as emailing senior staff across different EY offices.

I have gained a huge amount of insight into what the actuarial work involved, which has been extremely helpful in making the most informed decision for my future career choice. As a lot of the work I did was based in Excel, I have definitely improved my skills in that area. I also learned the best practice when creating presentations, and improved my presentation and people's skills immensely - I had no idea how much you can learn in such a relatively short amount of time. This will be useful for my final year at university, and even more so in professional setting.

It was really good! Everyone was extremely friendly and willing to help. It was very easy to get chatting to people - but at the same time, everyone valued each other's work ethic.

Extremely well organised. The internship started with a three-day induction for all interns, and the onboarding process continued in the first two weeks through presentations and virtual learning. As mentioned before, we were also given internal projects on top of client work to ensure we were kept busy throughout, as well as found out as much as possible about the role.

My team were extremely helpful in this aspect. I have set my goals on the first day in the office and the team (my counselor in particular) ensured that I was meeting them throughout my time there. I also had a chance to shadow a partner for a day, and work in a different service line for a day as well, to get broader exposure to the different types of work and clients.

Given the chance, I would definitely like to go back to EY. I can't imagine a place where I would get a broader exposure to the variety of clients and projects available here. And the people are so friendly, which I think is really important!

Definitely. We met up for lunch most days (depending on how busy everyone was with work), although lack of a canteen in our office made it a little difficult at times. We also had a welcome dinner on our first day in the office, and a farewell dinner / Fringe festival night out on the last day.

Edinburgh can be really expensive over festival time (that is August), but my internship took place over July mostly. Since I live locally the cost of living didn't bother me much.

The night life in Edinburgh is really amazing. There are many bars and restaurants with different varieties. But they are a bit expensive.

There are a few sports clubs, e.g. running. There were also opportunities to get involved with corporate and social responsibility (CSR) activities - in fact the interns organised a bake sale / dress down day / raffle in the office.