Spotlight on higher education | Matej Mezes, PwC

Matej Mezes
Senior Actuarial Associate
PwC

I studied Accounting with Corporate Finance at the Edinburgh Napier University. I was always good with numbers and previously studied Maths with Computer Science, however, I struggled with funding, so I had to give that course up and started working full time. I always knew I wanted to go back to studying, I just had to figure out a way.

Napier offered courses on a part-time basis which immediately struck me as something that I should look into and after some research I decided to give it a go. Whilst a maths degree wasn’t available, I come from a family of accountants, so I thought I might as well keep up with the tradition. Huge benefit was that the course gives you exemptions from a number of accounting professional qualification exams, so I thought that would give me a good start to a career in professional services.

As I mentioned earlier, I had to start working full-time before I even enrolled on the course, so my career path in the financial services started off in a very unconventional manner. For most of my degree I worked as a duty manager at the Edinburgh University Pleasance gym, so I had to fit uni between my shifts that could start at 5.30am and finish at 10.30pm, so that was a challenge in itself. I started applying for a lot of graduate schemes in my final year and after several rejections, assessment centres and a couple of final interviews, I managed to land a place on the Actuarial Services Graduate Programme at PwC. Since I joined, I have been working within the Banking team reviewing banks’ credit risk models. I have been involved with external and internal audits, assurance projects commissioned by the PRA and so on.

Given a lot of my work is related to external audit, having a background in accounting was a huge benefit for me, particularly early on. Being able to see the big picture and understand the accounting concepts made the transition very smooth and allowed me to add value straight away. But I would argue that the non-technical skills like working in a team, communication, presentation skills and time management are even more important. Graduate schemes tend to hire from a range of degrees and so they tend to teach the technical skills, but the soft skills are often challenging to attain. My degree gave me plenty of opportunities to do presentations, discuss problems in group tutorials and work in a team (even though it felt really challenging and frustrating at the time). But it truly does prepare you for the work environment.

Now I work within the Risk Modelling Services team focusing on banking clients. The work can vary from model development, model validation, internal and external audits, gap assessment against current regulation and so on. I enjoy the varied nature of the projects and the fact that you are exposed to different teams and different clients throughout the year. The type of skills you use also depend on the projects, so you can be doing a lot of coding on one project, but another project may require you to speak to a client on a regular basis. Therefore you are really challenged and feel like you are constantly learning. I particularly enjoy delivering presentations of our findings to very senior people that really challenge you to think about the “So what?” of your work and how it adds value to the client and the firm. As you progress, you also get more opportunities to coach people, which has been really rewarding.

To anyone that it is looking towards higher education in Scotland I would say, do it! You should really think about what you enjoy and pick a degree based on that. Then you just need to give it your all to get the most out of it. A lot of times people tend to think about how the degree fits in with their career, but I believe it’s not the right way to look at it. It’s incredibly rare for people to stick to exactly what they thought they would do before they started university and so what they end up doing is actually completely different. A lot of the skills you learn during your time at university are very transferrable and therefore you should be open to any opportunities that come your way.