Lincoln Financial Summer Internship 2016 Blog
- I am currently interning in a registered representative company of Lincoln Financial Group called Grossman Financial Planning Group. I am lucky that the setting is as such because, I will be gaining work experience from such a big name company and at the same time, work in an office where I can observe flaws & inefficiencies in systems and rectify them without having the strict restrictions of a big firm.
- This internship provides me with a good opportunity to understand and experience how it is to work in a financial firm involving information about several funds, financial planning, strategies and plans. On top of this, what’s even more valuable is that I am able to observe the entire process from an MIS perspective and see how various things in general can be improved.
- In this internship, I have been involved in tasks such as making calls to get certain information, create entries in CRM systems and outlook, updating Asset Allocation figures and researching ways to automate manual tasks. I have found out that there is a way to reduce data entry steps for outlook and CRM by applying certain software so as to save time and make the system more efficient, now the challenge is to do so while maintaining the quality of the data entered.
- Following on from the previous point, I have found a way to reduce data entry steps however there is the issue of maintain a particular quality that is preferred by the financial advisers. Therefore, that project has been kept on hold and I have been presented the opportunity of analyzing and fixing the operations manual for the firm. Next step is to create a proposal and present it to my supervisor.
- Proposal for the operations manual has been created along with the suggestion of using Cloud storage. The idea here is to use the MIS rule of efficiency & organization to have an well organized Operations Manual that directs an individual to the right manual. The idea of the cloud storage is for safety and backup in case the Operations Manual starts becoming messy again.
- After further tweaks, I have finally given my supervisor the proposal for the operations manual. I will be hearing her opinion on it soon. Apart from this, manual entry work, presentation editing and other tasks continue to keep coming as the deadline to meet the client approaches. It can get busy at times like this but with organization and a calm yet focused mind, the goal can be accomplished with good quality to show in the end.
- I have come up with certain ideas that I believe will help the financial group I am working with. I realize that passwords and various forms of access are given to interns and I am not aware if the permanent staff have a process to change the passwords and access methods so as to stay secure online. If I find that they don’t have one, I would love to write up a process that does so. Another idea is to come up with a sheet or two to help ease intern arrival process. These sheets would contain all necessary information required when calling for support or any other business purpose. I am planning to share these ideas with my supervisor soon.
- My supervisor came to me about an issue; the group does not have a solid & reliable client list. The have two different client lists from two different software platforms (Redtail CRM & Outlook) and my task is to combine both lists, remove duplicates and present a final list on which the group can rely on. I plan to write in additional steps (such as adding new clients to the newly merged client list) to prevent messiness among client information and have a dependable list which reflects the current clients the group deals with. Research has been done regarding this issue and I seem to have an idea to go about solving this issue.
Below I have attached a link that shows what I did, learnt and realized from this prestigious internship.