Robbie Bailey
Reflections on my Internship
I am a few weeks into my internship so I thought now would be a good time to reflect on why I chose to apply for the scheme and what my time here has been like so far!
I am doing a Finance Internship at Santander UK and I am based in Santander House in Milton Keynes.
Whilst working as a Student Ambassador at the Management School, I heard many of the older ambassadors emphasising the benefits of getting real world work experience alongside my degree. I decided that I wanted to do a summer internship as it allowed me to get this vital experience without having to take a full year out of my studies. I then applied to a number of banks and financial institutions and worked my way through a lot of online applications and assessments. This is a long-winded process that can be very disheartening when your application is rejected but if you persevere and learn from your feedback then it is possible to get the opportunities that are out there. After multiple online tests and a telephone interview, I was invited to an assessment centre in Santander’s Milton Keynes office. This was the first assessment centre I had done and it was very tough but my hard work paid off and I got the job!
My programme runs for 10 weeks and I am working in the Provisions team. The easiest way to describe what my team does would be that we decide how much money to set aside every year to cover the losses that occur when people can’t pay their loans or mortgages. This area requires a lot of analysis and we use a number of sophisticated models on a daily basis to get the best estimates of how much money the bank are going to lose. Currently, I am focussing mainly on mortgage provisioning and I am doing a lot of analytical work, which means a lot of Microsoft Excel!
I knew that the work would be very Excel focussed so, prior to starting my internship, I completed a free online Excel training course provided by Lynda.com via the University of Sheffield website. I strongly recommend this as it has really helped me to quickly get to grips with the advanced Excel techniques used by my team every day.
During the induction process in the first week of the programme, I was told that interns also had to take part in a Charity Challenge. This involves working alongside other interns to raise as much money as possible for Santander UK’s charity partners: Age UK and Barnardo’s. I am the team leader of my team and we are currently in the process of organising our fundraising activities. We plan to have regular food sales in the office including cakes, samosas and sweets. Our main fundraiser will be a Quiz Night later in the programme and we hope to raise around £600-£700 which will then be matched by Santander UK. 
Last week, I was invited by another Finance department to join them on their annual community day. Each Santander UK employee must do at least one community day a year. Santander support worthy causes in the local area by donating money and providing staff to undertake any major tasks. Last week we painted a fence at a local primary school which was a great experience as I got to meet new people from the Finance team and it was also very rewarding to see how happy the teachers were with our work!
I have really enjoyed the start of my internship as it has allowed me to experience life in real world finance. The charitable elements of the programme have also been fantastic! I will be writing another blog post towards the end of my internship to reflect on the programme in more detail. Thank you for reading!