2020-10-30
Text: Gabrielle Akal
Foto: SEB
I started my studies at the Aalto University School of Business and majored in finance. During my finance studies, I became more interested in the technical side of finance as well as mathematics, so I applied for another Master’s Programme at the same University in the school of science. I’m finalizing my second Master’s while I’m working so it will take a few more years to complete.
I’m a quantitative analyst at the Markets Department which means I’m working with numerical data and modeling of different instruments that are traded on the market.
Lauri Stark
Title: Quantitative Analyst, Markets Department
Education: Finance, Aalto University School of Business. Ongoing Master’s program.
Currently, I’m working on a sustainability-related project. We try to calculate sustainability numbers for the companies we have data on. Based on this data, we can then evaluate several sustainability metrics for different kinds of portfolios.
Before this, I was working with FX which is currency-related work. As an example, I built a tool that can be used to check how certain FX derivative strategies would have performed in the past.
I was still studying when I applied for an internship program targeting fourth- and fifth-year students. I started as an intern at SEB in Helsinki after summer 2018 and completed the program in December the same year. After the internship, I continued working part-time during my studies. I was selected for SEB’s International Trainee Programme, which I started in autumn 2019 and finished in summer 2020. After that, I have been working within the Markets team as a full-time employee.
The program took 9 months and we were all in all 20 trainees. During the program, I had 2 trainee colleagues from Germany, one from Finland, and 16 from Sweden. Every month we spent one week in Stockholm. During those common weeks, we focused on training soft skills and networking. The learning was focused on common skills, such as social skills, communication, and leadership training. The more technical and hands-on training was given by the home team during the remaining weeks of the month. It was much fun; we got to see different parts of the bank. We met with colleagues from all the various divisions in SEB and they gave us an overview of their business and daily work.
The company culture is amazing. I just had my first child a month ago and everybody has been very supportive about me taking parental leave. It was unusual to work remotely before Covid19, but since last spring, and now having my baby, my manager and colleagues have encouraged me to work more from home. We have a tight community with my colleagues, where we know each other well and everyone supports each other.
SEB
