Summer Vacation Student (Actuarial) Review

I very much enjoyed my time at Punter Southall. The office had a very nice atmosphere and everybody was really nice to me. The social side was good as well, luckily I was there for the office summer party but they had monthly socials too.

Everyone was very welcoming to me in the office and on only my third day there got me a birthday card which they all signed which I thought was amazing. In my team I could go and ask anybody a question at any time, no matter what position they had, and they would try and help me.

Whenever I was stuck there would be someone there to help. I was sat next to the newest member of the team so that he'd be able to relate to questions I had due to him only recently having them. The company also provided training for all the summer vacation students to give everyone a better understanding of what they were working with.

Over the first few days I was trying to learn the background to what i was doing and adjusting so wasn't very busy. However as time went on I was given more and more to do and by the 2nd/3rd week I was continually busy and had lists of things to do. There was also the summer student project to be getting on with if I had nothing else to do.

Towards the end I felt like I was given quite a lot of client work to do. The company carries out a doer, checker, reviewer system so you'd never have to worry about making a mistake and it going out to the client.

I learnt a lot very quickly about the pensions industry itself whilst at Punter Southall, but the excel skills I developed whilst there will be the best and most useful going ahead I feel. Also the time management working in a professional environment was very different but a very good skill to have learnt. Some of the work I did in investment has helped me with one of my modules in my final year of Financial Mathematics.

The atmosphere was great, you could have a laugh with everyone in the office but also very professional in the fact that the work was done.

The internship was very well set up with a ongoing project between interns in 3 different offices. At the end of the placement we all had to do a presentation followed by lunch to celebrate with some of the staff in charge of graduate recruitment before socialising with the other interns. In the office I had a representative who was looking after me and all of the training I received.

We had 3/4 different training session especially for the interns to learn what the company did and I also sat in on other meetings where external companies came in for training purposes

Very appealing and I'm starting there full time next September.

Unfortunately I was the only summer student in our office but I had a good time when we all met up after the presentation. However in the office there were quite a lot of people near my age who were willing to socialise which was great.

I commuted from home so only had to pay for travel but there are so many places to go to eat around the office that it's not that expensive.

The nightlife is central Bristol is awesome, with bars and Bristol's biggest club around 150m from the office you can't really ask for more than that. Whatever you like, Bristol will have something for it.

There were the office socials and the summer party which were great and there was the opportunity for the Bristol Actuaries quiz night as well.