Case studies
Max Cooper, history graduate talks about his role and career journey after leaving the university.
Max Cooper, Risk Officer, Lloyd's Americas
What is your current role and what does it involve?
My current role is a risk officer and I am based out of our Canadian office in Toronto. I took on this role and moved to Toronto in November 2024. Before I start, it is worth clarifying that this is Lloyd's Insurance Market, not Lloyds the bank (the clue is in the apostrophe).
My main responsibility involves managing the operational risks for our entities across the Americas region. So, we have offices in Toronto, New York, Miami, Brazil, LATAM and the Caribbean, all of which carry different operational risks.
A company's operations are its people, processes and systems. Operational risks could include anything from a local system going down in Toronto; a severe weather incident affecting office accessibility in Miami; or, fraudulent market activity in Brazil.
Each of these risks are properly articulated, scored and assigned controls to help manage and mitigate against a potential incident.
How did you become a risk officer?
I have been at Lloyd's for nearly four years now and I started on the Business Graduate Programme in London - a rotational scheme involving four six-month rotations around the corporation.
My undergraduate degree is in history, which isn't very vocational, so a rotational programme was perfect for me as it allowed me to explore different business functions. My placements ended up being in: Business Change, Operational Risk, Financial Risk and Investment management - a good mix.
Whilst the subject matter of my undergraduate degree was not particularly relevant to any of these business functions, the skills that I developed at university helped me a lot on my grad scheme. Specifically, my ability to think critically and analyse information.
Following my grad scheme, I took on a full-time role at Lloyd's as an operational resilience manager. The knowledge and skills required for this role had a lot of crossover with what I had learned and developed during my graduate placements in Risk, so I think this is a pretty good example of how a rotational programme can help you carve out a potential career path.
Finally, I'd always had the aspiration of living and working abroad, so I began having conversations with the different country managers at Lloyd's to understand more about our global network and, in some cases, express an interest in working for them. After narrowing it down a little, I was having relatively frequent (once every six to eight weeks) catch up calls with the Canadian Country Manager at Lloyd's, and then applied to the vacancy that opened up eventually.
What advice would you give to a current student considering this career?
I don't feel like I am the voice of reason when it comes to entering the employment market, as I went through tens, if not hundreds, of rejections when trying to secure a graduate programme. Perhaps that is a lesson in itself? Persistence pays off…?
I can offer two pieces of advice to those seeking similar moves or career paths as me, though.
The first is that, for visa reasons, it is certainly easier to relocate for work when done internally at your current company (especially to North America). It is a very difficult and often expensive process to secure a working visa in another country, and a lot of organisations will help guide/sponsor you through the process if you have secured a new position at one of their global offices.
The second is that, being proactive and 'shooting your shot' goes a long way when seeking new career opportunities, both internally and externally. In my case, there was certainly an element of luck involved as one of the vacancies that came up happened to be well-aligned with my recent working experience, but by the time it did go live on our company's vacancy page, I'd already built up somewhat of a relationship with the hiring manager which undoubtedly bettered my chances. Just reach out and have the conversation - you'll find that most people are more than happy to speak with you