Rishi Patel Internship Term Paper Account Management Intern 5/11/11

FGI Risk Services As an integral component of collegiate studies, an internship enhances certain abilities that are first learned in the classroom. With a practical application of the subject matter one can thoroughly internalize all existing theories and expand on them to help with personal goals and ambitions. A company that provides a thorough look into their business practices and applies their methods in an easy to understand learning experience can help any student grow. I find that my internship at FGI Risk Services has not in any way supplied me with the tools to meet the expected criteria. FGI Risk Services is a risk management company that specializes in trade credit insurance. It provides clients with solutions that help eliminate financial risks associated with customers not being able to pay their invoices on time and in full. Trade credit insurance is a useful tool to have in both strong and weak financial markets. Companies are not limited to do business with jus their current clients. They can extend credit terms to new prospective customers without having to worry about the customer declaring for bankruptcy or not being able to pay their invoices. They can gain a competitive advantage by exploring new business in markets that were otherwise inaccessible. There was a sales department and an account management department. My job, as an account management intern, was to assist the account managers with the daily updates to the database or upload new aging reports into the system. I wish the internship challenged me more based on my classroom learning. I wanted to be more hands on to the financial

aspect of the company. The closest thing I did to anything financial-wise or anything related to class was to look at income sheets and balance statements in different languages. Since FGI Risk had clients all over the world, we could have to upload financial ratios into the database as well. So I had to interpret Spanish and French balance sheets and income statements to get the data required to get the ratios. I also was required to assist in the sales department at times. Another one of my responsibilities was to create the sales forecast for the president of the company. Once a week Mr. Fred Voccola, the president of FGI Risk Services, holds the forecast meeting of to see how many deals the sales team has made and how much profit was acquired. I put together the sales numbers and created a report that shows all the values and statistics that were needed each week to project what will be going on over the next month. I worked with the individual sellers to help them maintain their numbers and made sure that there were no conflicting appointments or meetings scheduled for each person. As a part of the individual attention for each seller, I created a daily call log for each person stating how many deals they closed, what potential clients were gained, and how many calls were made. This was a one of the positive experiences because I was able to meet new people and network with everyone in the department. Most of this work was to be done by the secretary but since she didnt want to do it, so it was passed on to one of the interns. I was told that the secretary does this each semester when new interns come in. She makes one of them do her work for her and claims that she did it to the president.

The account management department gave me somewhat of an insight to the working of the credit insurance/risk management industry. After the sellers close their deals they hand over the maintenance of the policies to the account manager. This is good for keeping up with the clients and making sure that the insurance carrier addresses their policies. FGI Risk has a new software platform that was launched during my internship that enables the carrier and the client to be constantly in the loop with all the newest developments of the policy. This platform is called the TRUST platform. My new responsibilities as an account management intern were to help the account management team integrate all of their existing and new policies into the TRUST platform. As part of my daily activities with the platform I updated any changes to coverages that may have been made, I inputted and maintained new policies that were given to me, I updated internal records for each policyholder, and I was in communication with the client when it was time for their renewal. The account managers have let me listen in on the TRUST transition calls into the TRUST platform. As I mentioned before in my monthly reports, the TRUST platform had undergone a severe setback. The head of the IT division mistakenly put in the wrong code into the TRUST system and accidentally deleted everything done in TRUST since the last back-up which was done in November of last year. So all the hard work we had put in to getting all the valuable client information into TRUST was all gone by the press of one button. The TRUST platform was still in its development stages when this occurred but it still caused the company to lose some clients and set back everyones work by 6 months. Since this meltdown and collapse, FGI has hired about 15 new IT interns and workers to fix this problem that the system has get TRUST up and running.

Within this process of getting TRUST to work properly, FGI Risk had decided to slowly fire all of the account managers that I directly worked with on a daily basis. Within a three-week period, they had let go of the 5 main account managers. The only people working in that department now were us 3 interns who handled all the day-to-day duties. Once I saw this happen, I knew things were not looking good for the company in the long run. So now I basically was taking orders directly from the head supervisor and was being dumped with an enormous workload to finish since theyre were basically no more account managers left. They have hired two new managers to work but these guys have no idea what to do with the TRUST system and all its issues. . I think this was a wrong move by the company to fire all the people who help build the T.R.U.S.T platform to what it is. I have more experience than these new people on how the company and the system works but they only offer me an UNPAID summer internship to continue doing the same useless work I was doing for the past 5 months. I politely declined the offer, as I need to have some sort of an income coming in and can not afford to continue to work unpaid. There were so many issues and problems with the TRUST platform even before it has collapsed. I was required to do daily updates on new policies gotten by the sales department or new debtors added on by our existing clients. Some of our clients in the TRUST system had over 1000 debtors and each page on the system showed only 10 debtors at a time in alphabetical order. There was no way to easily search for these debtors. If I had an update with a company whose started with M, I would have to sit there at the desk and click next 50 times to get to the middle of the alphabet to see if this debtor is already in the system. If not, I would add this new debtor into the system. If it

was, I would go in and edit the data I need update. I had to do this for all of our 100 clients. It was such a time-consuming duty that it really deterred me from wanting to move forward with this company. For the first month, it was the most horrible and boring job to work for. All the interns and myself felt the same way. I wanted to deal with work that was more hands on than doing updates to a system that eventually crashed. So all the work I had done for the entire internship up-to that date was gone. Its almost as if was never there and never did it My morning and afternoon updates could have all been finished within a matter of half an hour if the TRUST system didnt always freeze up and if it has a simple search engine. Instead, this one job duty requires 4 hours of my day clicking next on the computer screen hoping that TRUST wouldnt freeze so I dont have to start over again. There were times were I was required to read foreign language income sheet and balance statements and convert them to English. After that step, I had to input financial data into TRUST so it could convert them into the necessary ratios for our customers to see where they match up with their industry average in regards to net worth and debt/equity ratio. This was beneficial as I was dealing with companies financial statements firsthand. All of the coursework I had completed so far had nothing to do with the duties of my internship except the inputting of financial data into the TRUST platform. One of the topics I had learned was issues concerning corporate ethics (especially after our recent financial meltdown.) Everybody seems to extend the truth a little bit but straight forward lies are not what you should be telling prospective new clients to lure them into buying credit insurance. I have over heard my boss say on numerous occasions to clients on the phone that FGI Risk Services currently has over 300 clients and we have offices located

in New York, Miami, London, and Paris. These are both concrete lies. FGI Risk has about 100 clients and only one office in New York. The president Fred has a house in Miami in which he makes some of his conference calls from and claims that to be another office of the company. He has also told prospective clients that FGI Risk services had closed over 200 deals so far this year and that they are greatly expanding their company and moving to a new bigger floor in their building. This is another fabrication. FGI Risk sales department has closed about 11 deals so far this year, far below the 200 deals told to clients. And I would not consider firing the entire account management department as greatly expanding the company. Fred continues to praise the TRUST system and claim how efficient and convenient it is to use to people on the phone. But once off the phone, I had heard him yell to another supervisor how are we going to run a company when our damn product (TRUST) doesnt even work? He then turned to the whole sales division and said, You guys never heard that. Keep making calls. Each sales representative pitches our TRUST system to potential clients and tries to get them to purchase credit insurance. With the unethical behavior of the president, all the sales reps are forced to do the same to continue earning a paycheck. If you refuse to tell the lies that the boss wants you to tell, you will be fired just like all the other people being let go at FGI. I have taken Business Law as a second minor at Baruch and have taken an Employment Law course. This course taught me of my rights as a worker of a major company and their rights against me. At first, they would only give us interns a half hour lunch break and no other breaks during the day. I told them that I knew what we were entitled to and that was a 45 minute lunch break and two fifteen minute break throughout the day. After they realized that I knew what I was talking about, they didnt bring up the

issue again. This is probably the only time where my course related work helped me in this internship. All the job duties I was given were to deal with the undeveloped TRUST database. Although this internship did not meet my expectations and was really in no way related to the course-work I had done previously, it was a learning experience. I am able to hear first hand of all the concerns the carrier or the client may have on their policy and how to fix them. I feel that this is a trait that I can use in any business environment I encounter in the future. Another responsibility in the account management team is to maintain a database for the renewal schedule. This keeps track of all the policies that are expiring and it reminds the account manager to take the appropriate actions to get the renewal with the client. It gave me responsibility and how to deal and manage with multiple clients. I am a very diligent worker and am very good at multi-tasking duties. I also learned about credit insurance and its usefulness in the business world, especially after our recent financial meltdown and recession. More and more companies are now looking to protect themselves from a downfall like that again. As I stated before, I declined their offer to continue working as an intern unpaid for the remainder of the summer. I had quit my job paying me a decent wage because I needed some sort of financial experience on my resume to potentially get a good job once I graduate from college. I could not continue to work my job, do the internship, and be a full-time student. There just wasnt enough time in the day. So I had to quit that job, which I severely regret now, and they are not hiring anymore. And I was not offered job opportunity that was paying form FGI Risk either so I am currently umemployed. At the end of the day, it was an interesting learning experience working at FGI Risk for the past semester but I would

not recommend fellow colleagues to intern their if they really want to learn and apply classroom teachings to real-life.