It’s an incredible experience that should be taken advantage of!

Name: Cindy Lau
Course: BSc Accounting for Management
Placement Position: Finance Industrial Placement Student
Location: Morgan Stanley, Canary Wharf, London

Post #1:

Hi and welcome to my first post! I’m Cindy – an Accounting for Management student currently on placement at Morgan Stanley within their Finance division. I’ve been here for 3 months and thought I’d share some thoughts on my experience so far.

Securing the placement:

Entering 2^nd year, I had some ideas of where I wanted to apply – mainly accounting firms but on a whim, I decided to apply for investment banks as well. I decided to go with MS due to the positive experience I had at the assessment centre / interview.

Something I would say is don’t underestimate how time-consuming it is applying for places. Some companies have early or rolling deadlines – I’d recommend getting your application in as early as possible!

My role:

I sit within Regulatory Controllers, specifically in the Global Capital and Balance Sheet Management (GCBM) team. GCBM are responsible for capital resource planning as well as forecasting and impact analysis for the Business Units. My main responsibility is running the Credit Risk process – I provide commentary and analyse weekly movements which get distributed across Business Units – though later in the year, I’ll be focusing more on impact analysis.

My first 3 months:

The first couple of days consisted of firm-wide training, with other placement students and summer interns. There were a lot of new faces but it was great being able to meet so many people. Entering the corporate world can be intimidating so it was nice to be able to meet others in a similar position as myself.

I was also able to meet some of my team before joining desk, which helped ease my nerves greatly due to how friendly and welcoming everybody was. There was a handover period with the previous IP student making it easier to settle into my role.

Since joining, I have received a lot of support – through weekly catch ups with my manager and bi-weekly catch ups with my ‘buddy’ (another point of contact).

Some Highlights:

• Summer of Sports Olympic closing event at Cargo, Shoreditch
• Global Volunteer Month – gardening / hosting a party for pensioners
• Guest speaker events – including CEO James Gorman, Jon Pruzan, Jeff Brodsky, Carla Harris and others
• Fundraising for charity
• Closing event for Summer interns at Bluebird, Chelsea

And some Low-lights:

• The commute – 3 hours of daily travelling gets long and tiring very quickly
• Falling down the stairs on my first day
  • Followed by 2 other incidents of falling over (now known as the clumsiest person)

If you’re considering a placement year, I would highly recommend. The working world is so different from uni and it’s an incredible experience that should be taken advantage of!