Jacob Smith

Jacob Ethan Smith

Jacob Ethan Smith studies Mathematics MMath, BSc and is currently on an industrial placement year at Redmayne Bentley LLP.

Year in industry

Jacob decided to undertake a year in industry to develop his skills and to gain an invaluable experience that will aid him in my future career. He said “I understand that getting into the workplace in a career that you want can be difficult and so I wanted to try and make good connections and gain as much experience as I can.

I work for Redmayne Bentley LLP and we are the largest private investment management and stock broking firm in the UK. We provide advisory and discretionary services to retail clients as well as facilitating trade execution. My role changes over the course of the year as I rotate through three departments. My overall role is to carry out certain set tasks and then provide ad-hoc services to other members of my team.”

Typical day

We asked Jacob about a typical day on his placement. He said “My daily tasks change across departments and as I have only been in two so far I can give a breakdown of that time.

Investments: First thing in the morning I have to write a report about the previous day’s market events. This means reporting on issues concerning British and American markets primarily with a general overview of any global economic news of interest. This is then distributed to the whole firm. Then I create a technical analysis of the FTSE 100 index up until the close of the previous day; this is then given to clients. Afterwards I begin work on my research project. I have more activities that occur weekly or bi-weekly such as writing for the Yorkshire Evening Post or our newsletter.

Corporate Actions (CA): The morning starts off with gathering the notices of all corporate actions that were announced the previous day for all companies our clients hold. After that I process and format all non-deliveries of stock/ dividends and then balance the firm’s incoming cash from the Bank of New York (BONY) before processing the incoming cash allocated for company’s dividends. After the morning’s jobs are done I move on to starting internal events for given CAs and sending out letters and emails to our branches and clients regarding the events.”

Getting involved 

While on his placement year so far, Jacob has had the opportunity to get involved in a range projects and roles. He said “I enjoyed my time in investments the most as I spent time with people of a similar mind-set and the insight I got from their thinking and investment strategies was extremely interesting. I enjoyed being informed and fluent in current affairs, both political and economic and it has led me to learning an awful lot.’

My time was described as “specialist”, as during my research project on Algorithmic Funds I created a machine learning program designed to analyse economic variables and help predict and monitor economic regime shifts (shocks). I enjoyed liaising with my firm’s director of investments to test the models efficiency and potential uses within the firm. This project has helped me develop my learning from my university course and apply it into an industry setting.”

Experience so far 

My time on placement has been invaluable so far. I have gained strong connections to members of the industry, progressed in exams towards a professional qualification and developed my understanding of current events and their implications to the industry.

Jacob Ethan Smith

Jacob still has some time left on his placement year but said on the experience so far - “My time on placement has been invaluable so far. I have gained strong connections to members of the industry, progressed in exams towards a professional qualification and developed my understanding of current events and their implications to the industry.”

Tips and advice

“Definitely try and find a placement in an area you are interested in. Ultimately you will be working in that field for a year and so if you don’t find it interesting or even potentially useful for your future than your time will pass by very slowly.’

He added ‘Often an industry is much broader than you are initially expecting and so many companies may overlap in the area you are interested in in a way that you may not have thought about. So it is definitely worth looking into all possible different routes into your area of interest.”

Find out more about our Mathematics MMath, BSc here.