On 8th November 2021 the Company co-hosted this year’s Monmouth Enterprise Initiative with the Worshipful Company of International Bankers.

The Monmouth Enterprise Initiative (MEI) is a programme that offers an opportunity to Year 12 students at Haberdasher schools to experience something of life in the City. Each year, The Haberdashers’ Company works with one of the Livery Companies that remains actively involved with their professions, to engage City companies to offer groups of students work experience for one day. For 2021, we partnered with the Worshipful Company of International Bankers (WCIB) to deliver the programme.

Due to H&S constraints, and complexity regarding visitors to company offices for work experience, a different format was adopted to previous years. This year students benefitted from a City familiarisation and finance careers’ conference at Haberdashers' Hall. The event included keynote and interactive workshop sessions delivered by speakers on topics including: What is the City?, Finding the Role That’s Right for Me, Employability Strengths, Diversity & Inclusion, The Future of Financial Services and JP Morgan’s Apprenticeship Scheme.

The feedback from our students was exceptionally positive. It is hard to overstate the positive impact of the event for young people, many of whom have had their education seriously disrupted in recent years and have had very limited opportunities to find out about their chosen career.  The overall score for the event was 4.51/5 which means that students strongly agreed that they enjoyed the event and found it useful. 

“The information was very informative and helped me in my decision about having a job in finance”

“The best thing was learning from people with experience in the field I hope to go into”

“It was very educational and eye-opening into the world of finance”

Many thanks to the WCIB for arranging the participation of the following organisations: UK Finance, JP Morgan, Fidelity and NatWest and particular thanks to WCIB Past Master, Bob Wigley, for his inspirational key note speech. This Monmouth Enterprise Initiative has been running for many years and would not be possible without the vision and generosity of the founder Lord Ezra and the collaboration and support of our Company Members and other Livery Company Members.