School students take part in JP Morgan Summer School at BU

Students from schools across the country developed their designs for financial services firms 25 years in the future at the JP Morgan Summer School at Bournemouth University (BU).

A group of students, all of whom have just finished the first year of sixth form or college at a range of schools took part in the summer school which ran for a week in the Fusion Building at BU’s Talbot Campus.

Phillip Paige, EMEA Emerging Talent Team Lead at JP Morgan said: “We have run the summer school for a number of years now in partnership with Bournemouth University. The concept behind it is that we want the students to go away having a much better understanding of what it takes to run a financial services firm.

“People have a baseline understanding – they understand accounting and they understand what a trader might do but they have no idea about the huge raft of other roles in the firms, and all the technology that goes into it. The summer school is an interactive way for the students to understand all of that.”

During the week, the students worked in groups to design a brand new financial firm, 25 years in the future and learnt from masterclasses on all subjects related to financial services.

The students were able to determine in their groups what had happened in the 25 year period – including environmental and geopolitical changes – and had to consider every aspect of those future changes in their choices of product to trade, technology used, how they market and more.

At the end of the week, the students gave a presentation on their proposed firm to a panel of judges before a winner was chosen based on which team had created the most viable firm – considering all the future challenges they had decided upon.

Phillip Paige praised the winning team: “I was blown away by just how detailed the winning team’s presentation was, but also that they had mastered that key skill of being able to get a lot of information over in an engaging way in a short time period.”

Head of Regional Community Partnerships at BU, Ian Jones, helped to organise the event and said: “The week-long course gives the students a real understanding of the ways that modern banking contributes to our globalised world, and about how financial services firms are often leading the way in technology and e-commerce innovations. The students are also able to enjoy our campus and facilities and come away with a sense of what it’s like to be a university student.

“The summer school demonstrates how we can work in partnership with local organisations like JP Morgan, and fuse together teaching, research and practice to help shape the next generation of industry professionals.”

One of the students, Josh Hardy, attended the summer school and commented on the collaborative nature of the week: “The summer school was informative and also really collaborative.

“We were working in teams all week, working on a group project looking to the future and that was really great. Presenting at the end of the week made it competitive and a really fun week. I’ve learnt collaboration, communication and strategic skills and to top it off, it was really fun.

“It has given me an insight into apprenticeships, and also graduate routes and what you can do with JP Morgan in terms of future opportunities.”