By Robbie Bailey
Hi guys!
I have now finished my internship at Santander and a lot has happened since my last blog post!
The Provisions team have been fantastic and really made me feel welcome from the start. They have given me a lot of work that has been interesting and worthwhile. I have been working on some proposed changes to the mortgage provision model and have been producing data on Excel to assess the impact of these changes on the overall provision. These changes will be a significant change to the nature of the teams work and they are being implemented later this year. Graphs and analysis that I have produced have been used in board papers and have gone right to the very top of the organisation. I certainly did not expect to be given so much responsibility during a 10 week internship programme but it has given me great exposure!
I have attended a number of training sessions for a variety of topics. We had sessions with teams from Risk and Pricing and learnt all about how these teams work. I was also invited to learn about Santander’s Finance Graduate Scheme and what life as a Santander graduate is like. These sessions were very useful and helped me when considering what I would like to do after I graduate from university next year.
The CSR Challenge is now finished and my team and I were very successful as we raised over £2,000! We ran weekly food sales within the office including cakes, popcorn, pastries and samosas! I organised a football score predictions game that was very popular in the office. Players paid £2 to enter and half of the money went to our charities and the other half went to the winner of the game. Our main fundraiser was a pub quiz night which we hosted in a local Wetherspoon’s! Teams from various departments across Santander came along to play and it was a fantastic evening. Local companies donated some great prizes including lunch vouchers, a free gym membership, a signed photo of Jessica Ennis-Hill and the winners took home a team go-karting session.
In my penultimate week I delivered a presentation to the Provisions team about my life, my experiences on the internship and my future career plans. This was really good as it helped me to reflect on the programme. This last 10 weeks have gone incredibly quickly, it has really flown by but I have had brilliant experiences and met some great people.
All Finance interns were offered the opportunity to interview for the Finance Graduate Scheme during our final week. We were asked about our experiences on the internship and our motivations and plans for the future. I was then called on my final day and told that I had been successful in securing a place on the Santander Finance Graduate Scheme. This is a 3 year rotational programme based in Santander’s London head office and I will be starting in September 2017.
The internship has been a fantastic experience and having a graduate job already secured means I can focus on my studies in my final year and takes away a lot of stress!