Meet our people: Philip

Summer intern and investment analyst, investment consulting

BSc industrial economics, University of Warwick

"I thoroughly enjoyed my internship so it was an easy decision to come back as a graduate after I completed my degree."

In the summer of my second year at Warwick I joined Mercer’s Summer internship programme in investment consulting. This was an eight week programme which commenced with a comprehensive induction and technical training sessions on all the Mercer tools and systems. Thereafter, when I joined my team in the London office, I had the skills to deal with all aspects of the investment consulting process to which I was exposed. I also had training sessions on other more specialist areas of the practice, including alternative investments such as hedge funds and a session on liability driven investing.

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship; the people I met both in my team and around the office were very friendly and helped me learn a great deal. Given my positive experience in the summer it was an easy decision to come back as a graduate after I completed my degree.

The investment consulting department advises mostly pension scheme trustees on all aspects of their investments from strategy to manager structure and selection and monitoring. As a new graduate you are heavily involved from day one on the monitoring of clients’ investments and rapidly gain exposure to all aspects of consulting. The variety of work and steep learning curve are a definite positive for me. The teams I work with are a mixture of people from within the team and from other teams and offices, which is great as you get to work with and learn from lots of different people, as well as working on different types of client, large and small. This variety of clients means that in investment consulting you get a chance to attend client meetings and get direct client contact relatively quickly.

On joining Mercer, I participated in the pre-determined graduate development programme, which included two-day residential courses and several one-day specialist technical training sessions. These are a great way of taking time to reflect on what you are already learning on a day to day level. Mercer have also encouraged and supported me in gaining professional qualifications. Within 3 months of joining my graduate intake, I sat my IMC exam and I am now studying towards my CFA qualification.

Mercer’s generous study bank was essential in this process, as it enables you to take time out from work to study. In conjunction with the support of junior and senior team members, it has created the perfect environment to learn and succeed.

Learn more about our investment consulting business