Summer Intern Review

I greatly enjoyed my internship at AON: I learnt so much about the Insurance world in terms of the technical aspects of the work as well as what the day to day life of an analyst entails. I felt that I was able to make a lasting impression amongst my colleagues and have definitely increased my industry contacts from this experience.

I felt very valued by my colleagues, especially those at the more junior levels (analyst/associate consultant) as they could relate to me having been in my position relatively recently. With more senior colleagues, e.g. consultant/senior consultants, I found they took a while to warm to me (a few weeks) but once they did, I was handed work from them and formed great relationships with them too.

I felt I was given a good level of support from my manager. From the beginning, biweekly catch ups were set up where I would discuss my progress with my manager i.e. feedback from colleagues and any issues I wished to bring up with her. This mirrors the AON quarterly manager progress meeting that all colleagues undergo and was a good experience.

This greatly depended on the day; some days I would come in at 9.30 and leave at 5 with very little work to do. Other days I would come in at 8.30 and leave at 6 due to being so inundated with work. Most days, however, I would have medium capacity of work where I was kept busy but not rushed of my toes. Nevertheless, a simple email round the office to pick up work would always suffice to bring new projects my way.

I was given quite low level to no responsibility initially, but this was to be expected as I was still undergoing extensive training. However, as the week progressed I found I was being given a lot more responsibility and towards the end I handled material that would be directly sent to the client.

I spent a lot of time doing technical calculation based work for clients; whether this was calculating CETVs from scratch or checking a colleague’s work. I found the technical side of the work will greatly help me with my third year modules at university which are mainly financed based. Furthermore, they will of course help with the actuarial exams later in my career.

I found the office atmosphere to be quite busy as it was an open plan office with all levels of colleagues working alongside each other. There was always a rush in the morning to get in but I suppose that’s part and parcel of working in London. There is a slightly competitive tinge to working within this office as you are often vying for other people’s attention and feedback but I think this is a common theme amongst the finance world.

I found the internship to be quite well organised, particularly the CSR element of it. We were given a charity client to work for in teams of 8 with the teams consisting of interns from different streams across all offices in the UK. This gave me an invaluable way to build my network amongst different colleagues as well as learn mi=ore about the areas within which Aon operates.

This is somewhere I feel AON could greatly improve. There was no personal training and development given to me, despite the fact that the company uses its own templates within word and excel. I was left to decipher how to use these for myself. For such a big company, I feel this was a huge let down and something they should definitely change.

There were many socials organised during this internship however they were mostly CSR project related. We had a few pub quizzes and cake sales to raise money for different reams’ charities and I found these to be greatly enjoyable and informative. There was also monthly socials within the department I worked in where we would relax in a local London pub. Other than that, a few sports events were organised but I didn’t attend to can’t speak much about those.

Very expensive.

As I was working in London, (arguably) the nightlife capital of the world, there was an amazing nightclub atmosphere. London has an array of nightclubs ranging from cheap to expensive budget wise and is famed for its world-class theatres, bars and clubs of the West End to the alternative Camden scene, or a trendy night out in Shoreditch in the East. London's nightlife scene caters for all tastes, be it comedy, theatre or music, there will always be somewhere to party the night away.

Yes, as stated in one of the above paragraphs.