Acturial Consultant Summer Student Review

I was part of the Actuarial Consulting team. This involved much work in Excel. I was taught many of the principles on which an Actuary operates through in-person lecture-style training given to me by the team.

I was given a lot of responsibility, having attended 2 client meetings in my time and also being given the task of producing 2 reports for a public sector client which were later signed off on by a scheme actuary.

I have learnt better communication skills, both written and verbal. These were honed through the professional communication required of me day-to-day and through assessments given to me by Barnett Waddingham to measure my progress over the 8 weeks such as a mock-trustee meeting. My Excel skills have improved massively due to a large proportion of work being done in this. I have also learnt many role-specific skills related to setting assumptions for actuarial valuations.

I received a huge amount of support throughout my 8 weeks. I was given a mentor who we held bi-weekly meetings with to assess how I was finding the process. Moreover, my mentor sat near to me and my fellow intern, on hand at any point, as was the rest of the team to help out when we were stuck. I also had bi-weekly meetings with my supervisor to assess how I was finding the more work-related aspects of the job and my development and potential future in an Actuarial career. We had weekly workflow meetings on a Monday morning to assess our workload and make sure we had enough work, but not too much.
It was an incredibly supportive atmosphere.

The company culture was fantastic, truly putting people first. We had many coffee and cake breaks and always sat and ate lunch together as an actuarial team. There were some more informal events outside of the office such as a Summer BBQ and our end of Internship social. There were also events in the company calendar such as the football tournament and netball tournament which were enormous fun. Moreover, the team did more informal things together, such as playing padel in smaller groups outside of the work sphere.

I really enjoyed my placement and very much look forward to being back there next September.

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