Ukrostsbank Internship Journal

Since I have to keep a weekly journal of what I do at my internship anyway, in order to receive academic credit through The School of Russian and Asian Studies (SRAS), I figured I'd just make my journal entries the regular Monday post here on SMTC for the remainder of my time in Ukraine.

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Ukrsotsbank Internship Journal
17.06.2013 – 21.06.2013

This was my second full week in the PR Department, and I felt like I finally began to settle into a regular routine. I started off the week by finishing up the English version of my PowerPoint report/presentation on the potential PR-related problems that Uksotsbank could face in the near future during its legal merger with UniCredit Bank. I had started to translate it into Russian as extra practice, but just decided to refine and simplify it in English and give it to Nastya, my manager, as soon as possible. She was very happy to receive it, and told me it was very excellent work.

My next project was to condense the bank’s long and detailed political risk report for Ukraine—which is prepared for shareholders and investors every year—into a shorter and more readable single-page document. The original idea for the project was actually mine; I had seen the new reports lying in the office and, being naturally intrigued, picked one up and began reading. While I found it very interesting, I also thought it a bit too detailed for its purpose…and if I, a history major, thought it was overwhelming, then what were other people going to think? Thus I approached my managers and asked if I could condense the political and economic information presented in the report to one page. My idea was well-received and after a couple hours I finished my “executive summary” version of the report. Hopefully it will allow investors and businessmen—Ukrainian, American, and others—to make better-informed decisions.

Next, my managers asked me to prepare, in English, short slide deck with finance definitions for kids. Ukrsotsbank/UniCredit is developing some new marketing materials aimed at making finance fun and easily comprehensible for young children, in the form of children’s books. After doing extensive research on the internet about best practices for explaining banking to children, I put together a short slide deck that defined such basic terms and concepts as currency, deposits, credits, debits, debt, etc. Not exactly an extremely challenging project, but interested nonetheless.

My final project of the week, on Friday, was to translate a press release about the recent awards Ukrsotsbank/UniCredit has received from Global Finance magazine. Unlike most of my translation work to date, this time I was translating from English to Russian. It was obviously much more difficult, and took me the better part of the afternoon to finish, but I was able to deliver what I deemed to be an accurate translation by the end of the working day. I will see what Yurii, who handles most of the press releases, has to say about it on Tuesday, since we have a long weekend this week.

In addition to the four concrete tasks outlined above, I also kept my superiors updated on external PR developments I noted. For example, I purchased the Ukrainian business magazine Власть Денег (“The Power of Money”) last weekend, and among the many reviews and ratings of various finance and credit terms, I found an article which ranked Ukrsotsbank #1 in Ukraine for long-term loans and mortgages. When I showed it to Nastya, she had not heard anything about it from the external PR team, so she was very grateful for the article as it was excellent PR material. It seems my extra efforts to learn about business in Ukraine outside of my internship and classes are paying off in unexpected ways at the office.