Job purpose

The Press Officer (intern) at UK Finance plays a key role in the organisation’s busy Press & Campaigns team, acting as a public voice for UK Finance and the UK’s banking and finance sector, helping to promote the industry to media, consumers, government and external stakeholders while providing a high quality service for our members’ press teams.

Duties and responsibilities

* Support the Head of Press & Campaigns and press team in handling reactive day to day media relations: responding to press calls and drafting reactive lines, coordinating broadcast media bids, preparing press releases and press briefings for the CEO and senior policy colleagues, identifying opportunities to place proactive coverage. There will be ownership of projects so you’ll need to be organised and capable of juggling a varied workload to tight deadlines.
* As part of a rota write the daily Brief, our daily industry news digest which is produced five days a week, 45 weeks a year by the External Affairs team. The brief takes 2-3 hours to put together every day and the aim is for this to land in inboxes no later than 10.30am.
* Work with the Press team to maintain UK Finance’s long term strategic ‘forward look’ grid and coordinate media activity accordingly.
* Monitoring news and breaking stories, developments online and social media and flagging to relevant internal teams. Compile, track, summarise and report on media coverage
* Assist with maintaining contact lists, editorial forward features lists, and event calendars
* Work with the Press Officer to ensure the production of a ‘coverage book’ (a compendium of all media coverage secured by UK Finance), which is then circulated to members and our Board on a regular basis.
* Creatively seeking proactive media opportunities to promote UK Finance and its work.
* Ensuring editorial standards are met and maintained in print and online.
* Work proactively and collaboratively with the commercial arm of UK Finance to ensure our externally produced events and conferences are well publicised and supported in national press, trade media and social media.
* Build and maintain strong relationships with journalists across national, regional and trade outlets.
* Draft articles for trade press, UK Finance blogs (working with policy directors) and speeches.