Assurance Apprenticeship Review

I am an Assurance Apprentice within the Wealth and Asset Management (WAM) service line. I am working as part of audit teams working with clients across WAM. These clients vary from Hedge funds, PE firms and Investment trusts. Typical roles I perform on engagement teams include summarising board meeting minutes, expenses testing (checking expenses booked to the invoice received and the relevant approval process has been followed). In addition to this on some clients I work on the valuation of investments. These can include recalculating valuations produced by the client or if it is a listed investment checking the value to a 3rd party website.

I did not have any previous experience of audit procedures. I have developed my use of office products such as excel, word, outlook and recently Microsoft teams to communicate with members of my engagement teams. I have strong time-management skills and I have continued to improve on these by being flexible and adjusting my schedule to work around other members of my team. In addition to this, I have learnt basic functions of EY Internal systems to record time worked and how to process expenses claims etc. I have taken part in a mentoring scheme with a local university offering guidance to students transitioning into the workplace and providing advice for application processes.

I really enjoy the programme at times and have enjoyed learning whilst working and earning. At times the hours can be long and demanding with very little spare time outside of work during the week. I would like my learning towards my professional qualification to be more condensed and the length of the programme to be shorter as I would like to reach my qualification faster.

My programme is well structured with plenty of support available to me. I have a network of mentors, counsellors and apprenticeship coaches. This is in addition to my peer network but at times it can be slightly confusing about who you need to contact to discuss issues around the programme (e.g. exam timetables). As mentioned above, I would like to see the programme shortened as I would like the process to gaining my qualification be faster. I would also like to see a bit of rotation within the programme with different service lines to gain an understanding of the wider business opportunities available in EY.

I receive plenty of support from my employer. I have a support network including a mentor, who is a year ahead of me in my programme, a counsellor, who is responsible for managing my performance and ensuring my wellbeing, and support from and Apprenticeship coach as well as the professional qualifications team. In addition to this, I have got the support from my peer network.

Kaplan is my training provider. At the time of writing I have only had 5 days based in college learning towards my first course. I have contacted them for support based off my own personal study and they were responsive. In addition to this, they have produced online webcasts to recap certain areas of the course and I have not yet had a chance to watch these through yet.

As mentioned above, I have only had 5 days in college working towards my accounting exam. I would like to have more formal training with the training provider towards the start of my time with EY. However, I have had a significant amount of training performed by EY in order to introduce me to audit procedures etc.

There are plenty of extra-curricular activities to be involved in. I am really enjoy playing sport and have been involved with the hockey and rugby teams within EY. I have not come across formal networking opportunities within the firm but throughout my induction and emphasis was placed on networking constantly through my peer group etc. I have also assisted with the student recruitment team and this has presented informal networking opportunities with other members of the firm and attendees as recruitment events.

Yes

It has been a really eye-opening experience working within a big 4 firm. The development and learning that I have experienced is highly valued across the financial sector. The culture within EY is good and the workforce is young and energised. This helps to compensate for the long hours worked during "busy season."

I would advise anyone applying to EY to really research why they would like to work as part of a big 4 firm and the sacrifices that they will be making when they accept the role. I would encourage people applying from University to ensure that they really value their university experience and ensure that they undertake additional activities to prepare for the working world.