LINSCO PRIVATE LEDGER
(LPL FINANCIL SERVICES)
Jeremy Soana

An economics major from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Jeremy Soana also attended Winchester College in the United Kingdom where he won two Vale Ludeorum Medals for best all-round athlete. At Franklin and Marshall Jeremy performed community service by working for a blood-donor drive, and he founded a rock band to raise money. He helped coordinate soccer games for children with learning disabilities and participated in Wessex Walks to help fight Alzheimer’s Disease. Jeremy worked as a web-designer for Phuket Island Properties and Phuket Realtors in Asia, and he was a lifeguard at Plaza Beach in Banus Marbella, Spain. Jeremy was captain of Kappa Sigma Intramural Soccer at Franklin Marshall, captain of both the swimming team and water-polo team, and deputy head of Fearon Boarding House at Winchester College. Jeremy is fluent in English, Spanish, and French. He had much computer training and was interested in the stock market and sports. Jeremy belonged to the East India Club in London, and he lived in the South of Spain and France along with Asia and the United States where he was studying in America on an F1 visa. Jeremy applied to the Washington Internship Program in late March, was accepted at Linsco Private Ledger one month later, and started his internship in Fairfax, Virginia during mid May while living at Summit Hills within apartments furnished and operated by WIP. Jeremy’s supervisor described this young man as “the best intern” he ever hired. Below is Jeremy Soana’s description of his work.

“Linsco Private Ledger (LPL) is the number one independent brokerage firm in the United States with more than six thousand financial advisors based in more than 3,500 branch offices nationwide, making it the largest company of its type. I worked full-time for a branch of LPL Financial Services as an administrative assistant beginning May 17 and ending on July 2, 2006. Every day my supervisor provided a list of tasks for me to do, like installing financial software such as Morningstar and Value Line on the computers and learning how to use them. The internship was quite computer-orientated, and thus my skills in this area were put to good use. I also created financial reports on various clients’ accounts; these reports were created on the LPL platform and were used to show the financial health of the assets my boss was managing. In addition, I prepared Asset Allocation reports, which gave clients insight into the diversification of portfolios in conjunction with a description of their track record and current plus predicted rates of return. I also drafted an investment-policy statement describing the core financial strategy being applied. It included a summary of the financial situation, future goals, and the firm’s attitude toward risk. It serves as reassurance that assets will be prudently managed in keeping with expressed objectives. I compiled mailing lists for the weekly LPL Market Outlook Report. Every week I also picked a selection of municipal bonds. My supervisor was changing his business strategy while I was there and moving toward retirement planning, so I also wrote reports using a Monte Carlo simulation to predict how pension funds would develop depending on how risk-averse individual were in light of their annual expenses and planned consumption.”

“One of the biggest jobs I was given was organizing new software, contacts, and machines. One day I sorted a filing room filled with prospectuses from various mutual funds and insurance companies by updating the cabinet. This task was tedious and long since I had to read all the documents and use initiative in terms of what should be kept and discarded. Half way through my internship, my supervisor purchased some software called ProTracker, which is a program designed specially for financial advisors. It is an advanced client- management tool that tracks all contacts and client information. I was assigned the responsibility for setting up this program and obtaining information from various other programs for the input of nearly three thousand entries.”

“I had numerous administrative duties because my supervisor was frequently on business trips as was the certified public accountant who worked there. In the absence of these people, I was in charge of running the office by taking calls and handling clients who visited. Other assignments included installing security systems.Special projects were the most interesting. For example, my boss was frequently visited by wholesalers from various mutual funds and insurance companies who marketed their companies in hopes of generating more business. I was allowed to sit in on all of these meetings, and occasionally I was treated to a luncheon with them. Another interesting task I was given involved creating a model portfolio of about $100,000 in various equities. I chose a value strategy (rather than a growth-oriented one) because I believed the market would eventually be too optimistic and that Bernanke would raise interest rates again, which were up by 2 percent when I left. In order to choose these stocks, I used various platforms available to me to do stock screens for large cap. I selected stocks with reasonable P/E ratios and low price to book ratios to ensure I was getting companies with good fundamentals that were undervalued. Toward the end of my internship, another intern from India was hired, and this guy was also part of the Washington Internship Program. Since I was the senior intern, my job was to show him how the office was managed and teach him all programs and software.”

Back to Sample internships main page