Finance Apprentice Review

My placement is based in the Europe & International (E&I) Cost base Reporting team in Finance Planning & Analysis (FP&A). The prime objective of the team is to consolidate and report all of E&I’s Cost base information to the relevant budget holders and function representatives to aid decision making. My responsibility is to provide functional support to ten departments in E&I Engineering. After which the outcome is subsequently reported to the Financial Controller and the Finance Director of E&I in order for them to review the financial position at each period.

In the process of creating Monthly Forecast Review packs, it manifested my excel skill and made me want to take on excel courses to exceed them further, which has not only assisted me in creating packs, but rather developed my confidence and allowed me to teach new members of the team developing both my leadership and team working skills.

Recognising the value of my work impacting not only my immediate team but across the Finance function and the wider organisation is incredibly fulfilling. This has been demonstrated through individual interactions such as both departmental colleagues and sub-functional Engineers seeking guidance and expertise from myself. Getting this exposure at the beginning of my journey has been great.

The Finance Apprenticeship is well structured. It is advertised as a Level 4 scheme for 2 years with an opportunity to move on to Level 7 for a further 3 years, once Certificate Level for CIMA and an End Point Assessment (2 parts - an exam and experience) for Level 4 has been completed.

The support received is varied, from examination to placements to health and ensuring everything is up to it's standards. Each apprentice has a skills coach allocated to them who overlooks the scheme for the individual and ensures we are on target. For placements, we have a placement manager who is expected to provide training for your day to day role. Depending on what placement you're in and how far you are into the scheme the support varies.

The support received from Kaplan is phenomenal. We get allocated a tutor who we can ask any questions regarding the qualification about, if they're not available there is a help line and they tend to reply as soon as. I think this is a brilliant provider as they always go out of their way to ensure students understand the content, which explains why the pass rate for this provider is pretty high.

Although the core of my role is centred on producing and analysing data accurately, this in turn allows me to focus on the key value adding activity of transforming data into useful information to provide to stakeholders at all levels. This is one of the topics I studied in BA1. There are many times where the qualification assists me in my role, not so much the doing aspect but rather the understanding aspect.

There are many opportunities to get involved in extra-curricular activities. The finance apprentices usually have a social once every two months where we usually do an activity and go out for a meal. I believe this is a great opportunity to network and build relations outside of work. We also have a yearly finance conference where we network with all finance early careers i.e. graduates, industrial placement students etc.

Yes

I believe it is a great company to work for, the opportunities are endless for apprentices. The movement of placement allows you to understand different area of finance and the business. What I believed finance to be and what it is, is completely different and I believe this is due to the placements I have been exposed to from accounts payable to management accounting.

Research the company, see what they have to offer for the role you are interested in. For a finance apprentice role in particular, research CIMA. It is majority management accounting so research into that too. If you get the opportunity to gain some experience in this field take this opportunity, prior to applying.