From Insurance Apprentice to Senior Analyst
Morgan Denham, Senior Insight Analyst
Back in Year 13, as I was coming to the end of my A levels, I’d been weighing up the ‘what-ifs’ of not going to university. I didn’t need to, right? It’s expensive and, to be honest, despite having all my offers, I wasn’t even certain that uni was what I wanted to do. This was coming from someone who had idolised the idea of attending a red brick to ‘make the parents proud’.
Instead of uni, I opted to research apprenticeships — and stumbled across the Pathway Programme offered by CompareTheMarket…
· A huge name with an unmistakeable brand (THE meerkats, what isn’t to love?)
· The opportunity to work towards recognised qualifications (and get some letters after my name, fancy!)
… And, perhaps most importantly, I could rotate into different roles around the business to better understand what I wanted to pursue as a career.
This is when, not long after results day, I landed in the lap of an Insights Manager as a part of the CompareTheMarket Data team — and where I unknowingly would spend the next four years developing into a fully-fledged analyst.
Joining the Data team was a scary thought — having no prior experience nor really understanding what the role would entail, I could land softly with my first assignment: analysis of social media mentions on any topic I could think of.
Naturally, I chose my favourite band, Catfish and the Bottlemen (I have a tattoo of one of their album covers on my leg), and worked over the next few weeks pulling together my first ever piece of analysis — trying my hand at ‘delivering insights’ into what UK ‘Tweeters’ and ‘Facebook-posters’ thought about the band and each of their songs.
Nothing is perfect first try, but with the support of my manager and the rest of the Data team, I slowly but surely was able to learn, discuss and tweak the analysis I was delivering over the next few months to reach a business standard — something I could be proud of, and knew was working well from the feedback I’d received. During this time, I’d started delivering analysis for actual stakeholders across the business (think commercial, marketing, and finance teams) to understand real CompareTheMarket product markets.
These larger and more frequent pieces of work — which covered topics ranging from the UK energy and broadband markets to the size and dynamics of the home-mover market — helped to build my reputation across the business. Soon I’d established myself as a go-to for my product areas. After four ‘rotations’ around the business (three of which I stayed in the Insights team because I liked the role and gelled with the team), I was offered the opportunity to stay on permanently, with a promotion from Junior to Analyst.
*Insert hoorays, clapping*
Thank you!
Since then, I’ve continued to deliver regular market insight, which has helped the business to make key decisions on what, when and who to prioritise, deliver and target. I’m now a trusted translator of data into insight and have earned an increasing amount of responsibility, which I’ve found to be super rewarding. It’s great to think that it’s my name that pops into folks’ heads when they have a question!
Most recently, I co-led the onboarding of the popular review platform Trustpilot, and we as a business started inviting customers to review their experience with us. We’ve seen great success: our Trustpilot score increased from 1.6 to 4.8 stars in under two months. I’ve had the opportunity to analyse the verbatim (reviews) of over 25,000 customers using the Trustpilot insight platform, AND I’ve presented back to the wider business my key recommendations and emerging patterns, bridging the gap between our customers and the folks who help to make good things happen.
I think it’s important to call out that CompareTheMarket doesn’t just encourage success in my work but has also supported me in allowing me weekly CSR (volunteering) time on Monday mornings over the last two years for a local charity, FoodCycle. It’s something close to my heart that I would otherwise struggle to find the time for, but a little flexibility has gone a seriously long way. And it’s actually through CompareTheMarket that I found out about the charity in the first place, so thanks a lot for the opportunity!
It’s been a busy four years, and I’ve recently (this Jan) seen myself promoted once again to senior analyst — a giant leap from school-leaver to qualified analyst (again, with letters after my name — pretty suave!). Though it’s important to recognise not everything goes smoothly and I don’t want this account to sound like it was a straight-line ascent to senior. This wasn’t a first-time promotion; I didn’t succeed when I initially applied for the senior role. But my manager and team supported me in understanding what gaps I had in my skillset, and over several months we worked through a development plan which allowed me to dedicate some time each week to focusing on developing, ensuring that second time around we nailed it. Goal set and done.
After my apprenticeship qualification, CompareTheMarket continued to support me in developing further, with the Market Research Society [MRS] certification, and access to platforms like DataCamp to build and diversify my Excel, SQL, and programming skillset. I’ve since been inspired to pursue further development in using tools like Jira (workload management, basically), and completed a qualification in Mental Health Awareness.
The opportunity in apprenticeships is much bigger than some people think, and I may well have still been twiddling my thumbs on what career to pursue if I’d not had this experience. Onwards and upwards!
