Intern Review

The internship was enjoyable because it was exactly what I had applied for. I had the opportunity to meet clients across different turnover segments and experience the whole spectrum of clients. Although I was in SME banking, I had countless opportunities to shadow different functions of the bank - in risk, OKYC, mid-markets, business management, just to name a few!

I have mixed reviews because some colleagues really valued me, especially those in the main office. They really made an effort to teach me the ropes and ensure that I'm constantly learning something. However when I was in one of the branches, some of the colleagues were(understandably) more concerned with their day-to-day work and weren't too bothered with me.

My supervisor changed during my internship as my line manager had passed me on to one of his team members. I'm not complaining though - I got to see how things ran from both perspectives, which I really appreciated as this showed me the thoughts of senior management and how these strategies permeated down to the day-to-day running of the business. My second line manager held weekly chats with me to make sure I was constantly learning and was very open to me initiating projects/ shadowing people from other functions of the bank.

The answer to this question is negatively biased because of the nature of my placement. SME banking centers around relationship management and this is obviously not something an intern can tangibly contribute to. Unfortunately, I wasn't busy during the early parts of my internship and often felt that I had nothing to do/ wasn't able to contribute much especially since what the RMs were busy with their own tasks. I did help the relationship managers/ directors with simple tasks like conducting basic company research before meetings, and I eventually initiated a project that kept me busy towards the later part of my internship. During my free time I also took the opportunity to read up on SME products and take the online learning courses on Lloyd's internal learning platform. So I think how busy you will be depends on how much initiative you have in yourself to keep yourself busy?

Again, this leads back to the nature of SME banking which interns can't play a REAL part of (if you understand what I'm trying to say!). Nonetheless, I had a project mid-way through my internship so that was nice; and one of the relationship directors allowed me to call his clients to kickstart account opening processes (which was initially intimidating but I felt honoured that he had placed so much trust in me that I wouldn't mess up!). Every intern in the LBG summer internship programme is also part of a larger charity project, so there was also a responsibility of raising money besides placement-related work.

I think there is something to be learnt from every experience, and because I was placed in the regional director's office, I had the opportunity to travel to more than 10 UK cities/ towns to job-shadow different functions and specialisations. This experience was amazing for me because I'm not a local (I'm a foreign student and I usually live in London), and it exposed me to an array of working environments and styles. Needless to say, working out of London is EXTREMELY different from working in the City, and learning to adapt to different cultures and styles is something that I will take with me for a lifetime! Because I job-shadowed different functions of the bank I also received a very comprehensive overview of banking in general, not just specific to SME banking, and saw how every function connects with each other. This is definitely good general knowledge, even if I don't end up in banking in the future.

My office was constantly changing - there was a week where I worked out of Fareham (Mon), Fleet (Tues), Havant (Wed), Reading (Thur) and Southampton (Fri)! I would say that for bigger offices like Southampton, the general atmosphere is very chill yet busy. Branch offices (like Fareham) have significantly fewer people in the office (some days it was just me and the RM).

The Emerging Talent Team (which I presume is the HR team looking after all interns and graduates) was rather organised in the overall work placement - they held an induction on the first day, created 4 intern webinars for us to attend as part of personal development, and most helpful of all, assigned each of us a graduate buddy. However, my only gripe was that some interns were allocated big projects by senior management while some (like me) were not. This should be something controlled by the Emerging Talent Team to ensure at least a modicum of consistency in the internship experience.

As mentioned previously, the emerging talent team orgainsed intern webinars to help us in personal development (touching on areas like customer excellence, personal impressions, adding value, etc.). I also had the opportunity to browse through all the e-learning courses on Lloyd's internal online learning platform and I enrolled myself in some of them (e.g. Basic Accounting). My supervisors also arranged for my to shadow different functions of the bank for personal development and this was perhaps my favourite part of the internship.

They do offer a sizeable number of graduate offers to interns, I reckon as long as you don't make a big blunder and do your best it should be okay? At this point in writing no interns are given graduate offers yet so I'm afraid I can't say much! But from what people tell me, chances are quite high. On the graduate scheme, trainees are rotated across 4 placements so I reckon it gives a very good scope of the bank before specialising in a role proper.

There were only 2 interns in my office, myself included. There wasn't much of a social scene, though we went out with some of the younger colleageues in the main office for an open-mic once. To be fair I'm not much of a social person so this doesn't bother me much, and at the end of a day at work, I could enjoy the peace and quiet of chilling and being alone.

I cooked most of my meals and there was a LIDL nearby, so that helped. Southampton is not the cheapest place to be, but coming from London, I definitely found myself saving quite a bit.

Southampton has a few famous nightclubs

Yes, especially all the charity events organised by other interns across the country. My office also organised a street collection in Southampton. However, being in Southampton did made me feel quite left out as I wouldn't travel all the way to London after work just to attend a party and then catch a 1.5h ride back after that. I think the interns in London or other big cities like Birmingham, Edinburgh would have more opps.