IB COO Summer Intern Review

As an intern there are a few different focus areas:
- Actual work- working alongside your team and assisting them where necessary. I was given several tasks to help and improve the processes my team used. For example, one task was looking at analysing headcount- how many people have left/joined etc. Another was looking at analysing the Client Alert Data i.e. when clients have issues (looking at what the issues referred to, which employee they were assigned to, time trends, how serious etc). But obviously this was only one aspect of the overall COO book of work.
- Networking- we were really encouraged to network across not only COO but the wider Investment Bank. I would organise 3-5 30 min meetings per week to learn about the different areas within UBS and meet different people. Everyone was super friendly- definitely a highlight of the internship!
- Learning- we were also really encouraged to learn about how the Investment Bank runs, the different areas, products, structure etc. There were lots of great internal resources for this such as the UBS university.

Yes. They obviously have to find a balance between giving interns opportunities and exposure to work they can expect to receive if they actually got the job but also not giving them anything that if they failed would cause massive repercussions. As part of that I was given the opportunity to create a few new processes that will hopefully be really useful to the team once I leave. Experiences vary from intern to intern and are dependent on the people and team they are placed with but personally I thought my team found a really good balance and I was given a good level of responsibility.

Yes! They really encourage you to pick up new skills and the focus isn't so much on what you know but how you learn and how readily you pick up new things. I became way more capable at Excel and taught myself Tableau. Also learnt a lot more about the finance industry.

Loads! We were assigned a mentor, senior sponsor, buddy and line manager. The first two I would have fortnightly meetings with and were really senior (managing directors)- I loved that they allowed us one on one meetings with people so high within the organization. The latter two worked very closely with me and were always there for support/questions. Alongside that there are plenty of internal resources to assist with your learning etc.

Fantastic! All the banks say stuff like 'we really care about our employees welfare' but you're skeptical as to how true that is. I hear stories of 16 hour work days etc. My experience was that UBS really do care! I can't tell you how many emails we got about mental health and encouraging us to take a break. I was expected to work 9-5 nothing more, although I did tend to work a bit longer as I was keen to do well. Everyone was really friendly and sympathetic to what it's like being an intern.

The support, culture and experience of working in London was great. I learnt an unbelievable amount about finance and what the work really looks like, what skills are important and what to focus on. The work itself varied, but I could see that there were lots of interesting stuff on top of the more menial day to day tasks.

Yes