Keep things easy, simple and familiar for clients

Vincent Tse Shing-hin (left) was offered a summer internship focusing on Hong Kong business development at Schroder Investment Management (HK) after winning the Schroders Case Competition 2011, which tested participants' ability to create a viable long-term investment plan. Tse talks to Wong Yat-hei

What's your academic status?

I'm a Year Four student of quantitative finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

How did you start your day at Schroder?

I started working at 9am, but did not have a regular routine. Among other things, I assisted managers in their meetings with clients. I had to work fast.

What did your job entail?

I worked with the Hong Kong business development team, which focuses on the retail fund distribution business.

My main job duty was to prepare PowerPoint presentation materials for my manager. These included global markets news updates and fund product recommendations.

What are the major challenges you encountered?

One of the challenges was customising materials for clients. I discovered the best approach was to keep the materials easy to understand, and to make use of examples of things encountered in daily life.

For example, I used the BigMac Index [of BigMac prices in various places] to illustrate the discrepancy in purchasing power in different countries. I also learned what it means to be client focused.