Veronika

Veronika is now firmly settled into her new role within JP Morgan. While the nature of what she does is essentially the same, internal audit - the area she covers - has meant that she, once again, has a lot to learn.

'Before, I was covering the general area of investment bank finance, but now I'm part of a team that covers one EMEA equities product from the trade initiation to the end,' she says. 'It's complicated and I'm on another big learning curve to sometimes even understand what the traders are talking about.'

Fortunately, Veronika has not had to deal with too much other change during the move, having moved desks a total of two meters from her original position. But she is hopeful her new role will help her learn more about the business and enable her to 'meet a wider range of people'.

She has already broadened her horizons quite significantly. In November, she will be jetting out to Johannesburg for two weeks to conduct an audit. While she admits the fortnight deadline on the work means that her time there will be hectic, she is nevertheless excited by the opportunity to travel.

On top of that, her Russian language skills have proved invaluable for the company as it establishes itself in equities trading in Moscow. The company recently purchased an equities trading business from a bank in Russia and plans to start working there this month. Veronika has been put in charge of oversight - from an internal audit perspective - of that office and has already been out there to check progress. It has also opened her mind to the possibility of moving into project managing.

Although Veronkia is looking forward to the opportunity of working back in her homeland, she feels settled and happy living in London.

Having been here four years now, she has no immediate plans to relocate anywhere else, especially if travel opportunities are available within the company to satisfy the wanderlust.

Safia

Three years or hard graft, endless studying and countless worry has finally come to an end for Safia. Despite being convinced that the retake of her case study exam would not bear fruit, she has in fact passed her final paper and is now exam qualified. Having put in the requisite hours on numerous audits for KPMG, she is also time qualified, but there is still a few things to do before she can become an ICAEW member.

'I've got to do my work-based learning questions for the institute, which is the bane of my life at the moment,' she says.

The questions details how what she has been doing at work relates to what she has learned during her time studying and Safia readily admits that she has 'a lot of catching up to do'.

But this hurdle is relatively small compared to the ones she has already cleared and she is likely to gain full membership within the next six to eight months.

But as far as her work with the firm is concerned, she is already out of her study period. At the beginning of October her training contract was torn up and she was made assistant manager in the firm's Liverpool audit division, with a decent pay rise to boot. She has already been handed her client portfolio, some of which she has much experience of and some less so.

But Safia is also picking up experience outside of audit.

'I spent some time over the summer in forensics in Birmingham, but if I told you what I was doing I would have to kill you,' she says. 'It was an interesting experience and I would be happy to go back but I've had my appraisal and it's been decided it would be best to spend more time in transaction services, which ties in quite nicely with audit.'

Outside of work, Safia is spending a lot of time in her role as chair of the Liverpool Chartered Accountants Student Association, organising a welcome event for new starters and the big 125th anniversary annual ball. And now she is qualified, and with the busy period about to start, things look unlikely to slow down anytime soon.