Internship
For my practicum, I intern for StoneBridge Advisors. StoneBridge is a financial services firm that provides clients with retirement, estate and business succession planning, as well as related estate tax reduction, investment and insurance strategies. My role as an intern has two major aspects. Those are with maintaining the office environment and client outreach. The first part of that deals with making sure everything in the office is in order like having client documents and information readily available so the partners are equipped to complete their daily tasks. With client outreach, I correspond with clients that have upcoming meetings to make sure all of their financial information updated.
Artifact: Weekly Journal Entry
My four months at this internship have taught me a lot. This was my first professional experience in the finance industry so it was my first taste about what working as a financial advisor is like. Going into this experience, as a finance major I had a general idea of what I wanted to pursue as a career path but I still needed to work the specifics out. After I have gotten this far with my finance professional experience, I think I have found a career path that I would like to go after.
From this experience, I have seen the most growth as a professional. As my first real professional involvement, I got my first exposure to a real life office work environment. I have gotten the opportunity to learn how I need to operate to be an effective member of a team. Whether it is small communication things like sending emails or making phone calls, I have gained crucial knowledge on how to navigate these spaces. I have also learned a lot about how to prioritize tasks in order to get work done in the most efficient way possible. While having to balance working two days a week with classes, I have had to make quick adjustments to make sure I get everything done that I need to. When it comes to work tasks, when I am in the office, I try to make lists in the morning for everything that I need to get done that day. With regards to school work, at the beginning of each week, I have planned in advance time for studying and time to get all of my course work completed.
For my artifact, I included a journal entry from this past Tuesday to better describe my daily tasks and also how I have applied some of the new skills I have learned. These tasks are the way I can do my part to help the office run in an efficient manner. This also shows the progress I have may learning new tasks and documents my growth and learning over the internship. When I first started, I was doing simpler tasks like filing and sorting mail. While I still do those things, it is along with many other tasks that I am doing to help out.
My plans for the rest of my time include finishing my studies while still keeping my internship. Along with my Finance major, I am planning on adding a second major, Business Analytics and Operations Management. My reasoning for adding this second major is that it will a much more diverse educational experience which will make me a more well rounded student and professional. It will also give me more professional options in the event that I am no longer interested in finance. I also am considering doing a four plus one program through the business school which would allow me to get a masters in finance just a year after finishing my undergraduate degree. As of right now, my post graduate field of interest is in financial management. For me it is just a matter of staying my current course in order to achieve that goal.
4/27/21
On Tuesday, I started my morning by processing the explicit hold forms that were sent to me from the last time I was in the office. Processing explicit hold recommendation forms is a process where I use the investment recommendations from the agenda of investment review meetings and mark up clients’ accounts with what positions are being held and what positions are being shifted. Then I take these and submit them to the National Financial Services database. My next task is to run a discretionary trade report. For this, I have to go into our client relations management system, Redtail, and extra client data about if they have signed discretionary trade forms or not. Once I run the report, I email it to everybody in the office so they can see if any new clients have been added. After this, I moved on to sending preparation for investment review meeting emails. For clients who have upcoming investment review meetings, I reach out to them two weeks prior asking them to send in an updated net worth statement. Typically, these meetings are about a year apart for clients so changes over the year must be documented. After sending these out to clients, I moved on to my next task. I had to call into Lincoln Financial and Jackson National financial service centers to make sure all information on our end for our client’s accounts were up to date.