Eric Berkelbach
Provide a General Description of the Internship. Include daily tasks completed, the company and its employees, and any other information.
The first week of my internship we had training in Chicago where we learned technical skills and a lot about the firm. For the following weeks of my internship I worked primarily on reserve audits. I had a mentor assigned to me who helped me with work and assigned some projects. I also worked on an intern project throughout the summer and presented on it at the end. Otherwise, I would reach out to other members of my team when I had extra time to help them with work. I worked 40 hours a week for 8 weeks and was not allowed to work overtime.
Did you have a mentor?
Yes
If so, how did he/she help you during your internship?
My mentor was assigned to me and was someone who had recently gone through the internship program and was now working full time. She helped me by assigning me work and helping me understand the concepts behind the work. She was also a great resource to go to with any questions I had.
Did you feel your RMI/AS classes better prepared you for the internship?
I am going into property casualty insurance and I wish there was a choice for actuarial science majors to choose between this track and the life insurance track because most of my class work has been focused on life insurance concepts.
Interviewing/Hiring Process Comments:
I received an email from a recruiter to apply for the position. The first interview was over the phone and the final interview was a 2 day event in EY's New York office where all the actuarial intern candidates were interviewed.
Were you assigned any special projects? If so please describe.
My main intern project was looking into patterns for Black Lung claims filed for coal workers in the US. I received a database of claims data from the department of labor and used it to discover patterns between filings and entitlements to benefits and how they corresponded to changes in legislation.
What were the supplemental benefits besides the pay? (Internship Lunches, Housing, Sports Games, Happy Hours, etc.)
I received 4 hours a week for study hours and the day off for my exam. There were also happy hours and intern events such as a kickball tournament and phillies game.
Describe the company's internship program(atmosphere, work load, work, housing, outside work activities, etc.).
The internship was great and I learned a lot of technical and people skills. There were formalized intern events and also several mentor programs for interns to be involved with. There could have been more technical training but I did learn everything I needed on the job and my coworkers were eager to help me learn.
Was the internship what you expected after the interviewing/hiring process?
Yes
Were you provided time off besides the weekend?
No, but I was allowed and encouraged to work at home on Fridays.
The first week of my internship we had training in Chicago where we learned technical skills and a lot about the firm. For the following weeks of my internship I worked primarily on reserve audits. I had a mentor assigned to me who helped me with work and assigned some projects. I also worked on an intern project throughout the summer and presented on it at the end. Otherwise, I would reach out to other members of my team when I had extra time to help them with work. I worked 40 hours a week for 8 weeks and was not allowed to work overtime.
Did you have a mentor?
Yes
If so, how did he/she help you during your internship?
My mentor was assigned to me and was someone who had recently gone through the internship program and was now working full time. She helped me by assigning me work and helping me understand the concepts behind the work. She was also a great resource to go to with any questions I had.
Did you feel your RMI/AS classes better prepared you for the internship?
I am going into property casualty insurance and I wish there was a choice for actuarial science majors to choose between this track and the life insurance track because most of my class work has been focused on life insurance concepts.
Interviewing/Hiring Process Comments:
I received an email from a recruiter to apply for the position. The first interview was over the phone and the final interview was a 2 day event in EY's New York office where all the actuarial intern candidates were interviewed.
Were you assigned any special projects? If so please describe.
My main intern project was looking into patterns for Black Lung claims filed for coal workers in the US. I received a database of claims data from the department of labor and used it to discover patterns between filings and entitlements to benefits and how they corresponded to changes in legislation.
What were the supplemental benefits besides the pay? (Internship Lunches, Housing, Sports Games, Happy Hours, etc.)
I received 4 hours a week for study hours and the day off for my exam. There were also happy hours and intern events such as a kickball tournament and phillies game.
Describe the company's internship program(atmosphere, work load, work, housing, outside work activities, etc.).
The internship was great and I learned a lot of technical and people skills. There were formalized intern events and also several mentor programs for interns to be involved with. There could have been more technical training but I did learn everything I needed on the job and my coworkers were eager to help me learn.
Was the internship what you expected after the interviewing/hiring process?
Yes
Were you provided time off besides the weekend?
No, but I was allowed and encouraged to work at home on Fridays.
Patrick Cohen
Provide a General Description of the Internship. Include daily tasks completed, the company and its employees, and any other information.
Interns could work no more than 40 hours a week - 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. You could generally come in and take lunch when you wanted, as long as interns were getting their work done and it was cleared by their manager. I generally came in at7:45am, took lunch from 11:45am-12:15pm, and was out by 4:15pm. From there I would go to The Hartford's on campus gym until 5:00pm. Each day varied depending on which days your team had meetings or when you had smaller tasks to complete instead of your big project. Every day was pretty different though so it never really got boring.
Did you have a mentor?
Yes
If so, how did he/she help you during your internship?
The mentors were great for a couple of reasons. The first reason was if you were an intern on the property & casualty side of the business, your mentor was on the life side, and vice versa. So this allowed the interns to get a taste for both sides by being able to shadow their mentors and ask them any questions about their work. The second reason was that they were not evaluating you during the summer, so interns could be as personal as they wanted to. You could also set up meetings with mentors as often or as little as they both wanted. For example, I met with my mentor once a week. But I know other interns met with their mentors twice a week or once every two weeks. Most of the mentors were previous Hartford interns so they were able to provide guidance with the end of summer presentation and interviews, as well as other things of that nature
Did you feel your RMI/AS classes better prepared you for the internship?
The math intensive classes were't too much of a help, which makes sense because they are more tailored to the exams. The classes that helped me the most were Introduction to Rick Management (RMI 2101) and Casualty Contingencies (AS 3596). Casualty Contingencies was most helpful in the fact that I was already introduced to reserving and loss development techniques, which I used a lot in my internship. I would say knowing as much about how insurance works will be most helpful going into an internship.
Interviewing/Hiring Process Comments:
I submitted my resume to the Grand Chapter and a recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn to set up a first round interview with me in Chicago at the Annual Conference in the beginning of October. After the first round interview, The Hartford asked me to come to Hartford for a second round interview near the end of October, where I, and several other intern candidates, had about two, two and a half hours worth of 30 min interviews. We were also given a tour of the building and lunch. Before we left for the day, The Hartford split the candidates into two teams where we were given a type of case study to analyze and present a solution to the certain problem in front of a few Hartford employees. The very next day I received a phone call with an offer.
Were you assigned any special projects? If so please describe.
Every intern's manager presents their intern with an objective sheet for the summer on the first day. This will have any projects that are assigned as well as performance objectives and expectations. I was assigned two projects over the summer. The first one, which held less weight, was to help the Spectrum team transfer over data that was being pulled into Excel from SAS into another application called ResQ (a reserving software). My main project was the create a general liability monitoring tool by industry for the Spectrum team. The reason for this was so that the team could more closely monitor which market groups were producing the most losses each month. This was unique in the fact that this type of analysis was never done on a monthly scale before and helps the team get a more granular view.
What were the supplemental benefits besides the pay? (Internship Lunches, Housing, Sports Games, Happy Hours, etc.)
Soccer every Monday, Ultimate Frisbee every Wednesday, and happy hours every Friday. Housing was included downtown Hartford with a 5-10 min commute in the morning. Everyone was willing to set up job shadows or set up lunch. I was able to set up a lunch with the Chief Actuary of the company.
Describe the company's internship program(atmosphere, work load, work, housing, outside work activities, etc.).
Extremely well structured internship program. There are tons of events scheduled for the actuarial interns, including excel/VBA training, a speaker series to give information on all sections of the company where actuaries work, and social events such as a golf outing and community service events.
Was the internship what you expected after the interviewing/hiring process?
Yes
Were you provided time off besides the weekend?
The Monday of 4th of July we were allowed off. There was also an Actuarial Golf Outing where we were allowed to take a half day to attend.
If you had to relocate, describe the process of adapting to a new city.
Hartford was a great place to work. Almost everyone there that you run into works in insurance. Hartford is definitely much smaller than Philadelphia, but there are some pretty cool places surrounding Hartford that made it special. It really helped a lot that there were 24 total actuarial interns. So there was also someone who was willing to hang out or go out and find other things to do.
Interns could work no more than 40 hours a week - 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. You could generally come in and take lunch when you wanted, as long as interns were getting their work done and it was cleared by their manager. I generally came in at7:45am, took lunch from 11:45am-12:15pm, and was out by 4:15pm. From there I would go to The Hartford's on campus gym until 5:00pm. Each day varied depending on which days your team had meetings or when you had smaller tasks to complete instead of your big project. Every day was pretty different though so it never really got boring.
Did you have a mentor?
Yes
If so, how did he/she help you during your internship?
The mentors were great for a couple of reasons. The first reason was if you were an intern on the property & casualty side of the business, your mentor was on the life side, and vice versa. So this allowed the interns to get a taste for both sides by being able to shadow their mentors and ask them any questions about their work. The second reason was that they were not evaluating you during the summer, so interns could be as personal as they wanted to. You could also set up meetings with mentors as often or as little as they both wanted. For example, I met with my mentor once a week. But I know other interns met with their mentors twice a week or once every two weeks. Most of the mentors were previous Hartford interns so they were able to provide guidance with the end of summer presentation and interviews, as well as other things of that nature
Did you feel your RMI/AS classes better prepared you for the internship?
The math intensive classes were't too much of a help, which makes sense because they are more tailored to the exams. The classes that helped me the most were Introduction to Rick Management (RMI 2101) and Casualty Contingencies (AS 3596). Casualty Contingencies was most helpful in the fact that I was already introduced to reserving and loss development techniques, which I used a lot in my internship. I would say knowing as much about how insurance works will be most helpful going into an internship.
Interviewing/Hiring Process Comments:
I submitted my resume to the Grand Chapter and a recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn to set up a first round interview with me in Chicago at the Annual Conference in the beginning of October. After the first round interview, The Hartford asked me to come to Hartford for a second round interview near the end of October, where I, and several other intern candidates, had about two, two and a half hours worth of 30 min interviews. We were also given a tour of the building and lunch. Before we left for the day, The Hartford split the candidates into two teams where we were given a type of case study to analyze and present a solution to the certain problem in front of a few Hartford employees. The very next day I received a phone call with an offer.
Were you assigned any special projects? If so please describe.
Every intern's manager presents their intern with an objective sheet for the summer on the first day. This will have any projects that are assigned as well as performance objectives and expectations. I was assigned two projects over the summer. The first one, which held less weight, was to help the Spectrum team transfer over data that was being pulled into Excel from SAS into another application called ResQ (a reserving software). My main project was the create a general liability monitoring tool by industry for the Spectrum team. The reason for this was so that the team could more closely monitor which market groups were producing the most losses each month. This was unique in the fact that this type of analysis was never done on a monthly scale before and helps the team get a more granular view.
What were the supplemental benefits besides the pay? (Internship Lunches, Housing, Sports Games, Happy Hours, etc.)
Soccer every Monday, Ultimate Frisbee every Wednesday, and happy hours every Friday. Housing was included downtown Hartford with a 5-10 min commute in the morning. Everyone was willing to set up job shadows or set up lunch. I was able to set up a lunch with the Chief Actuary of the company.
Describe the company's internship program(atmosphere, work load, work, housing, outside work activities, etc.).
Extremely well structured internship program. There are tons of events scheduled for the actuarial interns, including excel/VBA training, a speaker series to give information on all sections of the company where actuaries work, and social events such as a golf outing and community service events.
Was the internship what you expected after the interviewing/hiring process?
Yes
Were you provided time off besides the weekend?
The Monday of 4th of July we were allowed off. There was also an Actuarial Golf Outing where we were allowed to take a half day to attend.
If you had to relocate, describe the process of adapting to a new city.
Hartford was a great place to work. Almost everyone there that you run into works in insurance. Hartford is definitely much smaller than Philadelphia, but there are some pretty cool places surrounding Hartford that made it special. It really helped a lot that there were 24 total actuarial interns. So there was also someone who was willing to hang out or go out and find other things to do.