I can’t believe it’s already been two months since I started my second placement at a Lloyd’s syndicate. It’s a busy world out here.

The first part of my placement has been with a team of aviation underwriters. Like most people I really didn’t know much about aviation insurance before I joined—but it has proved to be a very exciting class.

So what have I been doing since I got here? Well, my role started out as an ‘Underwriting Assistant’. This has helped me to pick up MASSES of information about how business is transacted.

I’ve read countless slips and I think I am finally getting my head around them. For every slip I have to pull out certain pieces of information e.g. policy period, sum insured and premium, leader, line size. The time it takes me to find everything is falling every day—and that now includes spotting mistakes!

I am learning something new all the time and that’s great. I’m not sure where my next placement (in the syndicate) will be—maybe with another class of business. I’m sure a lot of the principles will be the same but the considerations will be different. There is so much to think about when assessing risks.

I have another exam for the CII coming up and it is a lot of hard work having to study in the evenings. It’s worth it, but I’ll be glad when that’s out of the way.

Some of the other graduates are on placement in the market too—but we are all keeping in touch and meet up regularly. It’s nice to see everyone and to hear how different our experiences are.