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The University of Southampton
Southampton Business School

Business School students win internships at leading UK financial institutions

Published: 29 May 2020
TISA Savings Challenge students
TISA Savings Challenge students

Earlier this year our University entered two teams made up of final year BSc Marketing, BSc Accounting and Finance and BSc Business Management students into The Savings Culture Marketing Competition, with one of the teams coming in at second place. Congratulations to both student teams for applying their knowledge and business acumen to a real-world challenge.

This national competition run by The Investing and Saving Alliance (TISA) comprised of three stages, with our students successfully completing the first stage back in February. Due to the lockdown, the final stage involved students collaborating virtually as they were unable to work together in person.

Team Capital and Soton Savers, who were accompanied by Dr Philip Alford and Dr Weisha Wang, were asked to work on the challenge proposed by TISA: How can young people be persuaded to adopt a habit of saving for their future wellbeing?”

Team Capital (Szymon Boczynski, Noah Farmery, Marco De Andrade Paulo, Elizabeth Mitchley, Marie Simmons, and Melisa Rangarira) from BSc Marketing were awarded second place out of 15 teams from a number of UK universities.

BSc Marketing student Marie Simmons from Team Capital said, “For many people, talking about money is a taboo subject, they’re happier talking about their weight than their bank balance,” she says. “We thought we could encourage young people to be proud of what they can achieve through saving some of their money. Our team drew up a social media campaign and made a five minute video illustrating how we came up with this idea.”

Philip Alford, Lecturer in Digital Marketing noted, “This was a fantastic opportunity for the students to put their marketing and business skills and knowledge to the test in a competitive setting and I’m delighted for both teams. This type of Experiential Learning is something I’m really keen that we develop at Southampton Business School.”

The students will be rewarded with internship opportunities in marketing roles working in leading financial institutions in the UK. Although Soton Savers (Mariam Aly, Shannon Stack, Mitchell Perrett, Ollie Frangiamore, and Joshua Lawrie) didn’t make it into the top three, the judges were impressed with the quality of their work and they have been acknowledged on TISA’s website.

The judges said, “This represents a huge achievement as the competition was very strong, the judges were looking for high quality work, and not least because the students had to collaborate remotely in the latter stages due to COVID-19!”

This was a successful pilot of the competition which will take place again next year, with the University as a key academic partner.

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