But enough about that… I’ll tell you more about it next time. The whole point of thisblog was to say that I and my fellow grads have been touring the country, to pop in to a university careers fair near you!

It was good to chat to you all about life at Lloyd’s as well as a good excuse to catch up with friends who couldn’t bear to leave further education, but I was aware that the most frequently asked question was something along the lines of -

“What is the application process like?”

Or the slightly more direct line of questioning -

“Tell me how to get the job!?”

So, with the first assessment centre on the horizon in early December I thought I’d write a bit of info, based on my experience:

Very briefly, as a quick introduction, the process is an Online Application and Online Tests followed by a Telephone Interview and lastly the Assessment Centre –check this out in more detail on the Lloyd’s Graduate Site.

I thought I’d let you know how I found the assessment centre last year, as I think a little information about the day would have calmed me down a lot! Jennifer Crane, who is the Graduate Recruitment and Development Adviser, has said that they are moving things around for this intake’s assessment centre, but I think the bones of it still are as follows:

Group Exercise – We were given a written, hypothetical ‘non-insurance’ problem to solve as a group.

Written Exercise – Again, a hypothetical situation where some analysis needed to be done and then communicated in writing. I found this one the hardest mainly due to time pressure as there is a lot of information to take in.

Role Play – You get a few minutes to read a brief about a situation involving a work colleague in the work place, and then have to solve it, with one assessor acting as the work colleague in question.

Presentation – I had to present on ‘Myself’, which I didn’t like very much, but it was fairly straightforward. Preparation time, followed by the presentation to a couple of assessors.

One on One Interview – Does exactly what it says on the tin. I had Vinay as my interviewer, who had just come back from a surfing holiday in Hawaii… So basically I lucked out! He was in a very good mood!

Guided Tour – You get a good little break from the assessments with a guided tour of the building – which is pretty impressive, especially the trading floor!

My ‘Top Tip’ to you, as someone who filled out a hideous number of applications in the last couple of years, is to check out the Lloyd’s Core Competencies, because this is the benchmark you will be compared against at each and every stage of the process. If you can display the characteristics the assessors are looking for, with good examples for these competencies, then you are in with a shout, so make sure answers to the more obvious questions are thought out and can be used to display your best qualities – pretty basic, I hear you say, but it took me a couple of speedy rejections to work it out!

Lastly, and I don’t want to sound like your mum, but – do your homework! A working knowledge of where you have applied is always going to play well and can help identify you as a frontrunner… to be honest, just knowing it’s nothing to do with the bank would be a good start!

The Lloyd’s Site is a great resource to use, with a Glossary of Terms to help you wade through the slightly more technical areas, but on the whole, it’s in pretty straightforward English. Fill your boots, the more you can talk about the better!

For more general hints and tips follow the link to the section on the Grad Website.

Right. That’s enough for now, but I am very happy to answer questions, so please feel free to post a comment.

Living the underwriter lifestyle within the Lloyd’s market is something that truly is a one off. The buzz of being on the box, with the hive of activity happening all around you, means that if you are the type of person who is easily distracted, you will end up getting nothing done!

 I do not imagine many other places that would see brokers queuing patiently (sometimes impatiently) to place risks with underwriters; they are the ones with the true power!

The work I was predominately involved in was on the property catastrophe side in North America, so supporting our underwriters at the box, helping with risk pricing. My days were filled with looking into hurricanes and earthquake activity, and how we model these to ensure we only take on risk we fully understand.I did some work looking at Hurricane Ike and Gustav in 2008, and how catastrophe models were not well prepared for such events. 

So one year in, with both corporation and market experience under my belt, I am ready to show my true worth.

I am now in the Exposure Management team, sounds pretty sexy as insurance goes. The team are responsible for managing the aggregation of risks and reinsurance within the Lloyd’s market, and alerting the market to emerging risks.

I am mainly involved on the emerging risk side, and they have produced some interesting reports on topics such as nanotechnology, potential impacts of pandemics and digital risks.

Next Steps…decide on my career post graduate scheme! I think I will concentrate on the run up to Christmas first though!

To be honest I was a bit sceptical when looking at the Lloyd’s website when it said we accept any degree discipline. However, that recruitment/HR cliché is actually true at Lloyd’s (as well as my degree, two of the other grads did biology and civil engineering!) and this conference proved to me that there are plenty of opportunities at Lloyd’s to get involved in areas that interest you. My first placement is also with the small (but the most important ) Government Policy and Affairs Team which fits really well with my background.

The conference looked at three emerging risks that the insurance sector and the wider business world needs to consider – climate change, cyber risk and piracy.

Some very senior people were attending or speaking at the conference including the Lloyd’s Chairman Lord Levene, Anders Fogh Rasmussen the new Secretary General of NATO and the Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation. I also got to see Andrew Marr in action as chair.

On the topic of climate change, I was very impressed with this smartly suited man who turned out to be a modern day version of Robert Scott! – He had just returned from surveying the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover. The volume of cover has decreased by 60% and in some places it is only 1.7 metres thick. This of course has implications for global stability including the risks that may arise as the northwest sea passage (across the top of Canada) opens up and nations begin to vie for access to new oil and gas reserves.

Cyber risks were more technical but just as worrying – it’s not just an issue of annoying viruses, as the entire Estonian government was attacked by cyber terrorism in 2007.

You have probably heard about all the pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia but the conference just highlighted how much of a problem it has become. Piracy has cost the international shipping industry over $90 million and over 250 attacks have occurred this year already. Problems include the lack of international framework to prosecute captured pirates and the potential economic impact of ships diverting away from high risk areas. There is also growing concern over the increased violence shown by Somalian pirates towards crew members.

I promise that for my next blog I will write a bit more about what life is like on a daily basis and about some of the great perks you get here.

On your first day of school, you expect to meet your new-best-friend-for-life (on the basis that she has the same Forever Friends pencil sharpener as you). On your first day of Uni you expect to wave goodbye to your parents and embark on 3 years of socialising, playing sport, and having the time of your life (with a few lectures and finals thrown in as an inconvenience along the way).

So a First Day at Lloyds?

The nerves beforehand…the excitement to be wearing a new suit…to be meeting new people… and the delayed tube ride that made me 2 minutes late… so far, not so unexpected.

But going up in the glass lifts, on the outside of the building, to the 11th floor, next to the ‘Gherkin’, to spend our first morning meeting the CEO of Lloyd’s, and several other Very-Important-People including directors and heads of departments…? Already I was beginning to realise that Lloyd’s graduate scheme is pretty unique.

If you have got as far as reading this blog, you have probably already had a glance around the grad website or Lloyds.com and read about how we are Lloyd’s of:

‘Extreme Situations’
‘Zero Gravity’
‘One Giant Leap for Man-Kind’
And
‘Coffee Drinkers’ amongst many, many other things.

I had read through all of this many times in preparation for my first day here at Lloyd’s. In fact one of the main reasons I applied here was the diversity of experiences and opportunities on offer: from the structure of the program link to learning about the ‘Sexy’ Insurance market itself.

But no amount of research could quite prepare me for my first week. After just the first hour here my nerves had relaxed into excitement- everyone was completely welcoming and helpful. The first week saw the 7 grads meeting the big guns, learning the ins-and-outs of Sexy Insurance, and even chopping down trees on a bonding day at a Farm in central London!

I’ve now been here nearly 4 weeks, and yes the hours are 9-5, but so far I’m happy to report that a career at Lloyd’s is ‘not your everyday 9-5’… I’m really looking forward to joining the Claims Team for the next 6 months, and will keep blogging to try and give you some insight into what being a graduate here at Lloyd’s is really like…

“I want to work for the world’s leading specialist insurance market”

For many people, it seems easy; they’ve known what they’ve wanted to do from the moment they were born. A friend of mine has recently been signed by a premiership rugby union club, and having known him for many years, I can see that his gaze never wavered from his end goal, no matter how abstract or distant it might have seemed at some stages. Obviously, the fact that I taught him everything he knows goes without saying!

Unlike my friend, I have not had the blessing of knowing with such certainty what I wanted to do, and although I spent a lot of time on work experience narrowing down the field, it was the generalist nature of the Lloyd’s Graduate Scheme that really appealed to me.

Not only are you working for a historic corporation, in an award winning building, with lifts that Mr. Wonka would have been proud of, but you have a great range of placements spread before you, that you control. It is the perfect opportunity to gain an overview before deciding upon the career path for you, be it market or corporation.

On top of this, as there are only seven graduates and this is only the second intake, our feedback on the scheme can effect changes to suit us, and our interests.

So I applied, and got through the various tests until I arrived at the assessment centre. Surprisingly, it was actually a really good experience, and unbelievable though this might seem, actually made me want to work for Lloyd’s more.

I had done a few assessment days for financial services organisations to be able to compare with the two days at Lloyd’s. It was streets ahead! They focused on putting us at ease from the off, and it soon became apparent that no attempts to trick us were being made… they just wanted us to perform well and do ourselves justice.

Having said that, the tests were not a walk in the park, and were designed to push us and measure us against the Lloyd’s core competencies. I came away a little brain dead, but happy with my performance. I was on the platform at Kings Cross the same day, on my way back up to Durham, when I got a ‘private number’ calling. I felt as though my stomach had just dropped through the platform floor, but it turned out to be good news.

So, here I am, one of what I have just decided to dub, ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and looking ahead to a varied, challenging and exciting 18 months. I’ll let you know how I get on!

So now is a good time to reflect on the past year I have spent working for Lloyd’s. I feel that I have learnt a huge amount – not only about insurance, but also about myself. The cliché that you ‘find yourself at university’ may well be true, but until you have a full-time, fast paced, exciting job, how can you know everything?

The Lloyd’s Graduate Programme sets you on a fast track to becoming a professional. From learning my Myers Briggs Type Indicator (look it up if you don’t know what it is) to understanding Reinsurance, I have enjoyed every aspect that the graduate scheme has offered. Oh, and I mustn’t forget learning a new language (or jargon) – which is probably the best indication of how much I have learnt. I remember a year ago walking into my first meeting in Lloyd’s and not understanding a word. Now you should hear all of us at lunchtime nattering away in insurance speak.
The Lloyd’s Graduate Programme is unique in the industry. You have the opportunity to try out a wide variety of roles not only within the Corporation but also in the market. It is on the job learning – about the job and about you. The development programme on offer is second to none and tailor made to suit the needs of graduates and their roles.

I fully recommend the programme to anyone who thinks they might be interested in the industry and in particular the Lloyd’s market. It is a fantastic platform from which to launch your career.

And so, this is it, my final blog.  I am really happy in the knowledge that Lloyd’s and all my friends are nearby and that I had a great experience. Now to becoming an underwriter!

Time really has gone very quickly, my placement in Market Operations seems like yesterday, despite the fact that I moved to my market firm over 5 months ago.

This can surely be only a good thing.  They say that time flies when you’re having fun – so the fact that I’ve actually been at work whilst time has been flying can only be a good thing (although I wouldn’t go as far as saying it always feels like fun when packed on a Tube train during the summer months).

The summer has been an unusual time – my first experience of working, rather than enjoying the long university holidays.  People in the office tend to come and go on holidays etc, and usual working life can be a bit disjointed.

There can be increased workloads when covering for various team members, but this is generally counterbalanced by a slightly more relaxed feeling.  I’ve found that making the most of weekends becomes all the more important in the summer.

At work, we have recently undergone a ‘development centre’, designed to assess our skills and provide us with feedback on how we have been progressing.  Despite feeling a bit like our original ‘assessment centre’ this was a really useful opportunity to gauge our performance to date, and to establish those areas which require further work. 

We are now looking forward to our third and final placements on the Scheme, before considering careers paths and options for the future.

As part of their induction week, the new graduates were given a series of presentations from various departments within Lloyd’s, to give them a better insight into what each of the departments do.

We presented on the International Markets department, in which I have spent the last five months, and spoke about the Lloyd’s international agenda, and some of the tools which we provide the market with, to help them develop existing and new business internationally.

After the presentation, Filip said that he enjoys giving these types of presentations, as they remind him of just how many projects we are working on, and the positive impact that our work is having on the Lloyd’s market.

This made me reflect on how much I have learnt over the past year, and how far I have progressed since I was in the position of the new cohort of graduates who started this week. 

Through my roles in the International Regulatory Affairs and International Markets departments, I now have a thorough understanding of the Lloyd’s international network and agenda, and (hopefully) I have made valuable contributions on the projects in which I have been involved in over the past year.  

I have benefited a great deal from being given the opportunity to spend time and work on projects in two different departments within the Corporation, and in a couple of week I will be embarking on my final placement, a six month secondment with Marsh.  This will give me an invaluable opportunity to see things from the perspective of a major global insurance broker.

All in all, it has been an exciting and very productive year for me, and I am greatly looking forward to the year ahead, which should see me successfully completing the scheme and starting my first post grad scheme role at Lloyd’s.

Knowledge of the business of insurance in this country isn’t good. For most people, insurance means house, car or travel insurance—hardly the most exciting features of life. 

As a result people could mistakenly imagine a career working in insurance to be fairly dull and mundane, based around call centres and statistics tables.

And when it comes to leaving university, you don’t often hear of people queuing up to join insurance firms. This was recently noted in a Post press article. A career in insurance simply isn’t regarded as a mainstream choice for graduates in the way that banking, management consultancy or legal careers are popular.

If I’m completely honest, I’d have taken exactly the same view.  When leaving university I was really unsure what I wanted to do—and was probably staring down the barrel of doing an LPC (Legal Practice Course) and joining the lawyer’s queue. 

I went on a tour of Lloyd’s (I can’t actually remember why) and was really impressed with the whole atmosphere and feel of the place. Quite simply, I had no idea it really existed—it had a bit of a ‘secret garden’ feel to it.

The more I found out about the industry, the more attractive it became.  I’m quite an active person, I play a lot of cricket and am very into climbing—so I wanted to avoid the horrendous hours of many junior City careers.

As it turns out, the London insurance market work generally sensible hours (there are some busy periods), and most people rarely have to stay past 6-7pm. It turns out the pay isn’t too bad and the job does come with some other pretty good perks—personally I’m in it for the corporate umbrellas.

The other cool thing about working in the market is that it’s heavily people orientated. That’s really appealed to me. You tend to bump into the same characters regularly so can build up very solid business relationships fairly quickly.
In many ways insurance is the silent partner in the City—never really acknowledged from the outside. But it plays a far bigger role that you might think.

So far I’ve really enjoyed my time in insurance and would encourage people to do a little research and find out a bit more about it. It’s definitely worth thinking about.

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.