Success Stories

Andy Flawn, Project Manager

I joined Schroders in September 2000, spending the first three months in a general financial training programme designed especially for the graduate intake. This culminated in us all taking (and passing) our Investment Management Certificate exams (IMC), as well as going on an extremely fun ’team building’ trip to the Lake District. It was in January 2001 that I first got a taste of real work, when I joined the Straight Through Processing team in the IT department as a system analyst. Initially I spent a lot of time supporting the users of our trade confirmation and settlement system, and learning about the business processes in this area. As time went on, I started to be given more responsibility, and some three years after joining the team I was managing the Asian implementation of a new global confirmation system.

My next project saw me working closely with a well- respected external consultant defining the company strategy in the trade confirmation and settlement space. I got a huge amount out of these six months, learning a lot from the consultant, and meeting many people throughout the industry. Following this, I moved onto the Trade Management Systems team, where I got my first experience of managing a project from start to finish. It was also here when I got my first opportunity to line-manage a team – until November 2006, when I moved to become a full time project manager, re-engineering our transaction flow for the new Portfolio Book of Records project.

Schroders has always been very good at supporting my career development, not just through formal training, but in giving more responsibility as time goes on, progressing my career by moving me between teams and involving me in many different projects. I'd like to think that I’ll continue to manage projects over a wide area of business functions. It’s also no secret that I want to work in our New York office – understanding different cultures and processes, allowing me to come back to London in a stronger (and hopefully more senior) position.