Actuarial Consulting Intern Review

I very much enjoyed the atmosphere and work environment at Aon. I also got on very well with all of my colleagues. When I was busy the days flew by. My main complaint is the lack of responsibility to do important work that I was given. It can be somewhat disheartening to feel as if you are not contributing anything and although this made it less stressful, it also made the work much more boring. This being said, I appreciate that doing actuarial work can take time to learn to do properly and understand why I was not trusted to handle much of this after such a short time working here.

I got along very well with my colleagues and felt that they welcomed me to the team very quickly. In terms of colleague relations I cannot complain. However, I wish this could have translated to me being given more responsibility with my work. In this sense, I felt that I was very much seen as intern that they did not trust to do any important work.

Technically my manager did not go through all of the prescribed procedures of setting goals and whatnot, but I did not mind this. I told him that my main goal was to learn as much about the industry as possible and with this he did as much as he could by arranging for me to talk to people from other departments and the like. My manager was also very supportive when I was having some personal issues and allowed me to work from home which was a great help.

I was often very bored as I felt that I was not given enough too, despite frequently asking if I could help with more. I sympathise with my managers as they were very busy most of the time and hence found it difficult to take time out of their busy schedules in order to teach me, however, I felt that f just a bit more time were given to help me get started, I could have contributed a lot more to the team.

I felt that very little of the work I was given was very important for the company. Much of it was helping out with admin tasks or checking that some data was valid. I would have liked to be trusted to produce something that was actually given to a client, although due to the complicated nature of the work, I understand why I wasn't.

The workplace skills I obtained working at Aon should hopefully help me well into the future when I start my career at university. They will be particularly useful if I decide to pursue actuarial work in the future as I have learnt much about the profession and have picked up the necessary skills and knowledge to pass some of the first exams without needing to do too much work.

The general atmosphere was quite relaxed, especially on Fridays, although people would still knuckle down and focus when they had to. People were happy to chat quite a lot while they worked and providing you got your work done, nobody seemed to care much if you wanted to watch the cricket or tennis for a bit while you worked.

The first few days were quite rigidly structured with a few training days and then many meetings after I started working in the office. However, aside from a project done over the whole 9 weeks, after the first few days I was happy that I was simply assigned to a team and only had to interact with them most of the team.

Aon and my team in particular were very willing to teach me as much about the insurance market as I wanted to learn. I was even given some time to learn by myself about the actuarial work that is done when I was not busy. My team also organised for me to learn to use the modelling software and create my own model of a client's business, although this was not used due to my lack of experience.

Future employment prospects within Aon are very appealing as I believe that as I am given more responsibility, I will enjoy the job more and more. Another advantage is that they provide training days and other help if I wanted to do my actuarial exams, which is something that I believe would be great for my future.

Since I did not work directly alongside any other interns, I did not end up going out with them very often. I did however go out with some of the younger actuaries. Despite them being a bit older than me, I got on very well with them anyway and did not feel that I missed out by not socialising more with the other interns at all.

Since I was working in the center of the financial district in London, the costs of socialisng were very high, as one would expect. It wasn't too bad though, as often if you went out with colleagues, older colleagues would buy drinks for interns so it did not cost too much to go out in these cases.