Compliance Apprentice Review

Although my job title is 'compliance apprentice', throughout the course of my apprenticeship i have been heavily focusing on Data Protection and have not rotated to any other department within compliance. On a day to day basis, i have been involved in analysis personal data breaches, fulfilling subject rights requests and also triaging Privacy Impact Assessments.

I have learnt lots of new skills during the course of my apprenticeship. When i started at Fidelity i had no experience of working in an office environment and had little knowledge of the financial sector or compliance function. I can safely say i now understand much more about the financial sector and departments within it, and have gained lots of experience working with systems like excel, powerpoint, word and outlook. I have been given the opportunity to develop my presentation skills and as a result my confidence has increased substantially.

I have enjoyed working in a completely different environment to what i am used to and learning lots of new skills. However, unfortunately due to the department that i have been working in and also the current working situations with COVID-19 i have been unable to enjoy my experience to its fullest. I would have liked to meet more people and engage with the other apprentices more often but due the working from home environment this was not possible.

At the start of my apprenticeship it took a while to become onboarded onto my qualification with Kaplan. During the course of my apprenticeship there has not been much communication internally for the apprentices to connect and catch up with each other about our experiences. I was also not disclosed of my full qualification criteria and workload until very late on in my apprenticeship by Kaplan.

With my apprenticeship qualification i have been entitled to the necessary time slots to work on my apprenticeship but do not think i have been given access to all of the information during the course of my apprenticeship that i required. This was a result of my team not being made aware of the content that was involved in my qualification and not knowing what areas of the business i needed exposure to in order to meet the criteria.

at the beginning of my apprenticeship i was given support when completing the starter tasks to build my knowledge. However, i was not provided with the necessary information in order to complete my portfolio work to its highest quality, i was not told about the detail that was required in each piece of work which made it difficult.

i feel that there are some cases where my apprenticeship qualification has helped me in my day to day role. However, the qualification is for a Risk Officer so there are lots of other aspects of Compliance included and i have only been working in the Data Protection team so struggle with these areas of the qualification.

Throughout my 18 months at Fidelity we have had training days where we get the opportunity to socialise slightly and have had 2 Christmas socials. Personally i would have liked there to be more activities and opportunities to get involved in expand my network however i feel that COVID-19 was a big factor in the lack of social events.

Yes

Although i have had my troubles meeting new people i have thoroughly enjoyed working at Fidelity and in my team. Everyone is extremely friendly and the facilities at our head offices in Surrey and London are very modern and nice to work in. Fidelity were also really quick with their transition to working from home and dealt with the COVID-19 crisis very well and in a safe manner.

I would advice others to put themselves out there and would encourage them to get involved in as much as they possibly can to expand their network. I would also encourage them to be open with their line managers if they have problems with home working or getting into the office as they are very easy to talk to and will accommodate if people are facing problems.