A bit about me

Hi, I’m Monty, an Associate Investment Consultant working in the investment team out of Broadstone’s London office. I finished my degree in Mathematics at Keele University in 2019 and spent four years working in the insurance industry before moving to Broadstone in October 2023 to get more involved in the world of investments. I’m a sports enthusiast as well as a keen traveller having been to India and Colombia in the past year

Why did I choose the actuarial profession?

What attracted me to the actuarial profession was my passion for Maths and problem solving as well as the opportunity to build strong long-lasting relationships with clients. These are two things that are key to my role and I enjoy both the analytical side of it as well as communicating with various stakeholders, whether that be investment managers or pension scheme trustees.

My progress in the actuarial exams

I am currently waiting for the results of my 11th and 12th actuarial exams and am studying towards my 13th (and hopefully final!) exam in September. The exams are certainly not easy, but they are incredibly rewarding, and Broadstone provides a generous amount of study leave to support me with my studies. It has been a privilege to be able to continue studying after university so I would always encourage people to take on the challenge of completing the actuarial exams!

Working at Broadstone

What I enjoy most about working for Broadstone is the collaborative culture. Although my team is spread across the UK, I regularly work with colleagues from various offices and have even travelled up to Scotland to work with the team based out of the Edinburgh office.

Each day brings something new, whether it’s presenting at trustee meetings, leading internal initiatives, or developing technical skills like coding. Broadstone also promotes a healthy work-life balance, which allows me to pursue my interests outside of work from cycling to rock climbing. We even have a gym in the office now, which I always try and use whenever I’m in the office.

A typical day in my role

There is no such thing as a ‘typical’ day in my role! However, a few examples of things I have been working on recently would be:

• Providing investment strategy advice to a pension scheme. The advice we give can be very different from one client to the next to allow for their funding level or risk tolerance. This means each piece of advice we give is unique and always keeps the work interesting.
• Attending trustee meetings to provide updates on investment performance and support schemes through key transitions, such as buy-out processes.
• Arranging disinvestments from managers to ensure the pension schemes we look after have sufficient cash available to make their monthly member payments.
• Working on internal projects to develop our back-office systems and processes.

Advice for anyone wanting to get into the industry

Interviews are an important part of getting into the industry so try and get as much interview experience as possible. Think about what skills you have to offer and how this relates to the skills that roles will be looking for. Most importantly though, don’t forget to be yourself!

Be prepared for a challenge in terms of balancing working an office job alongside studying for exams but bear in mind that you will be provided with generous study leave. Also, the knowledge you gain from studying for the exams will be invaluable to your future career.