Ryan Lucas – EY Financial Services Advisory Intern
This past summer (2013) I had the opportunity to intern with Ernst & Young in San Francisco. Specifically, I worked in the Financial Services Office (FSO) in the Business Advisor Program (BAP). BAP is one of two entry positions within FSO Advisory; the other entry-level program is the Technology Advisor Program (TAP). The BAP program is what I will be starting in full-time when I join the firm upon graduation; it is a rotational program ensuring experience across the three sub-service lines of FSO Advisory, which are Financial Services Risk Management (FSRM), Process & Controls (P&C), and Performance Improvement (PI). For the summer I was staffed on a FSRM team composed of members based both out of San Francisco and New York. The project involved implementing an Advanced System Review (ASR) that ensured our client was compliant with the Basel Accords (international banking regulations), and most recently the Basel III regulations passed down by the Fed in late June of 2013. Our client, a national bank with over $100 billion in assets, required implementation of the ASR program with both speed and flexibility to allow for changes in regulatory requirements.
This project was very unique for an intern to be staffed because of the regulatory nature. I never thought my summer internship would revolve around Federal Reserve regulations, but I was very pleased when I found myself actively involved in meetings and NOT reading lengthy and verbose regulatory jargon locked away in a back room, the type of work you might see in most internships. Surprisingly, I would regularly sit in on meetings with our client’s risk management team ranging from entry-level analysts to the Senior Vice President of Risk Management for the firm. Due to the nature of our team composition, communication was of the utmost importance. I would regularly fill in our senior team members, who were based out of New York, with our day-to-day findings and activities. I found it very interesting to see the life cycle of a consulting project from the discovery stage to the implementation of our findings and recommendations. Overall, it was a great experience to be able to work with such senior professionals.
As far as the city of San Francisco goes, I loved it and am excited to be moving back there upon graduation. The city is full of young professionals and the opportunities there are endless. I never found myself at a shortage of things to do, whether I was traversing the Golden Gate to Marin County for some amazing scenery or going over to East Bay to check out Berkeley or exploring one of the many neighborhoods in the city, the summer was most definitely awesome. Generally, I found people very welcoming and friendly in the city, which made my transition to living there easy for the summer. Fortunately, I also met some great people at EY that I became friends with as well and I look forward to working with them when I start full time.
