Summer Student Review

The work included drafting papers for trustee meetings, member communications, and annual reports, as well as technical work such as calculating transfer values, updating factors, inputting funding updates, and completing step-change runs for valuations. There were also technical training exercises to complete, as well as an internship project on client analysis. Most of the work primarily used excel and in-house software.

I was given quite significant responsibility in completing a large amount of client work as the doer of a doer - checker - reviewer process, as well as needing to be responsible for managing my own time, deadlines, and communications with colleagues. Support was always available when I felt it was needed however.

I've learnt a lot about pensions both from a quantitative perspective, as well as a scheme governance perspective; this also included training regarding accounting work. I was able to improve my technical skills in excel and powerBI, alongside transferable skills related to presenting work, engaging with client teams, and handling both heavy workloads and urgent deadlines.

I received a very large amount of support from all of my colleagues and especially my people manager who I had weekly catch-ups with to review how I was doing and discuss any points of concern I had.

The company culture was great, everyone was very friendly and open to answering any questions I had. Even many of the partners were open to having conversations and didn't treat me as less important simply because I was an intern.

I've really enjoyed the internship. The work was engaging, felt significant, and most importantly I felt supported the entire time. The application process was also one of the most smooth processes I had out of all the places I applied to and felt very personal rather than simply being based on hirevue / assessment centres.

Yes