Investing in our people - Border To Coast

At Border to Coast we value and invest in our people. Whatever stage they’ve reached in their career – intern, apprenticeship, graduate, or experienced hire – we offer opportunities for all colleagues to learn and develop, gain recognised qualifications and progress their careers.

Border to Coast pays for colleagues’ development – professional qualifications to individual coaching programmes – across all roles and levels within the organisation.

Formal Qualifications

As an organisation, we are committed to nurturing each colleague’s personal development, supporting them to undertake relevant training, CPD and achieve formal qualifications.

Support for programmes and other development activities are subject to the Border to Coast annual budgets and an application process.

In the past year, some of colleagues have achieved qualifications such as CFA Levels 1 to 3, MiRO certificates and CAIA, RICS and the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing.

DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES

We have developed and deliver a very successful Personal Leaders Programme, primarily to support early career colleagues. The aim is to help them thrive in their role at Border to Coast and more widely.

The programme includes individual coaching along with face-to-face group sessions. These give participants the opportunity to work on real workplace challenges and identify areas to maximise performance.

There’s more about the Personal Leaders Programme and its impacts in this video (right). It features some of the participants in the original cohort, People Managers and our CPO Louise Bryan.

“Some of the positive impacts that I’ve seen on some of the team members is really around them having more confidence in taking ownership and control of their own development.”

Tim Manuel, Head of Responsible Investment

“Their ability and willingness to coach their team members has been a real positive and something they’ve have developed through this training.”

Jonathan Shaw, Head of Operations

“I would encourage people to do these programmes, they’re very useful for professional and personal development. It’s really good to know where you stand in your career and professional life, especially with your strengths and weaknesses.”

Connor Bowker, Graduate Analyst

“Some of the future benefits I envisage are that we’ve been doing coaching to each other and having others coach us. That’s been really helpful because instead of advising people or seeking advice from other people, we’ve been finding the answers to our challenges within ourselves.”

Holly Owens, Graduate Analyst

“Investment in colleague skills and development growth is part of Border to Coast’s wider workforce planning strategy…and the identification of the skills and capabilities needed to deliver our future success.”

Louise Bryan, Chief People Officer

Graduate Programme

Our Graduate Programme offers you the opportunity to start your career as a Graduate Analyst at an organisation where you can make a difference.

Over four years, you’ll rotate through different functions in the investment team then you’ll progress into a role within our investment team, equipped with the knowledge and experience to make an impact.

This experience will give you a deep understanding of the industry and help you build the skills needed for a successful career in investment and discover where your skills fit best.

Find out more about our programme and apply

Apprenticeships

We offer apprenticeships as part of our commitment to nurturing talent and creating a pipeline of professionals who’ll be part of our company’s growth. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Our apprenticeships currently cover HR, Finance and Compliance – they each offer a competitive salary and combine practical, on-the-job learning and a fully funded level 3 qualification.

More information is available here, and check our current vacancies page for opportunities.

Internship

We’re an active supporter of GAIN Girls Are Investors and its annual internship programme.

The internship, which is paid and runs between June and September, gives an opportunity for female and non-binary people across the UK to learn about investment management and work out if it’s the career for them.

Our GAIN interns benefit from a challenging and rewarding experience, an insight into the investment management industry generally and Border to Coast in particular.

GAIN prepares interns through online resources, events and their tailored pre-internship programme.

Contact GAIN for more information about their support, internship programme and how to apply.

Case study: Rebecca

Rebecca was among the first cohort of GAIN interns, spending eight weeks at Border to Coast in summer 2021 when in her penultimate year at university. After completing her degree studies, Rebecca joined our graduate scheme in 2022. In 2024, she was promoted and is now an Investment Analyst with our alternatives team. Rebecca is also an ambassador for GAIN and regularly takes part in initiatives to encourage women to consider a career in financial services.

“tangible investment experience”

Rebecca says: “I found out about GAIN by chance and, after some research, applied for the internship.

“The internship helped me in my application to the Graduate Programme by improving my knowledge of the investment industry and having tangible investment experience to draw upon during the interview and assessment selection period. On a personal development level, the internship boosted my confidence in my capabilities and ability to form professional relationships.”

“very interesting and insightful”

At Border to Coast, I particularly enjoy the collaborative culture. I have worked within the research team with analysts and research managers, as well as joining introductory sessions run by portfolio managers in the internal equities team, the external management team and alternatives. This gave me a breadth of exposure to different asset classes early on.

“Getting to work with and learn from experienced investment professionals was a very interesting and insightful experience. Throughout my Graduate Programme, I felt very supported in my role to integrate into the team, develop my analytical skills and gain an insight into the investment world.

“Now I’ve progressed to Investment Analyst, I’m passionate about encouraging others to take up the opportunities offered through GAIN to explore careers in financial services.”

Photo of Rebecca Harvey, Investment Analyst

“The graduate scheme gives you quite a well-rounded view of how the investment business works and I think there’s alot of value in that. If you just work in equity research, you might be very good at picking stocks to go in an investment portfolio, but you have no idea how client money comes in, how it’s dealt with properly, how we meet the regulations to be able to do it. If you want to progress into a management role, certainly at the more senior levels you have to know how the business works rather than just how a portfolio works.”

“I’ve worked in a lot of places where the Operations team was just an afterthought. But here, we built the operating model, recruited the team, started from scratch. Your opinion is always heard and appreciated – and development is always available.”

“Because Border to Coast is new, we’ve had an opportunity to create our values and live by them. For Border To Coast, we need to have values because that’s how we do good business, our values are comprehensible – they’re in our DNA. I know what it means to be collaborative in our role.”

“Border to Coast has really engaged my learning and development, and with the soft skills I learnt in my placement with GAIN, it’s given me a sense of purpose and satisfaction. I’ve never had one day where I haven’t wanted to come to work – I enjoy the social aspects, I get along with my colleagues really well, I enjoy the sense of achievement and challenge, setting myself and being set targets and goals, adding value to people’s roles and the company.”