FDIC internship leads to job for Simkins

Just before Rick Simkins returned to Cornell College for his senior year, he got the news that  many of his fellow seniors would have wished for: he’d been offered a position with the FDIC, where he’d spent the summer as an intern.

After graduation, Simkins, an economics and business major from Bozeman, Montana, will be going to Madison, Wisconsin, where he’ll work as a financial institution specialist, examining banking records and helping to determine a risk rating for banks. The idea to work in banking regulation first occurred to him during his junior year after a lecture by economics and business professor Todd Knoop on the banking system in China, where regulation is far less independent and rigorous.

“The system we have in the United States is not what the world has,” he said. “We’re lucky to have the system we do.”

Later that year he traveled to China with Knoop and economics and business professor A’amer Farooqi, and he saw the regulation system in action. While in China Simkins applied for an internship with the FDIC. Farooqi, his advisor, wrote him a letter of recommendation. In fact, Simkins developed a strong relationship with several of the faculty in the department.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without microeconomics 101,” Simkins said.

He took the entry-level course with economics and business professor Jerry Savitsky, thinking it would be a simple refresher for him. After all, he’d taken Advanced Placement microeconomics in high school and scored a 5, the highest possible score, on the test. He soon realized he’d been very wrong.

“Professor Savitsky really kicked me in the pants, and told me that talent alone wasn’t going to be enough. I started to take things more seriously, and I applied myself to the work,” he said.

Soon he took intermediate microeconomics with Savitsky. It’s a class that upper-level economics and business students sometimes use to scare first-year students who are interested in the major, and has a reputation as being among the most difficult classes in the major.

“It was grueling,” Simkins said, “but I proved to myself that I could do it.”

Beyond the academic grounding he got at Cornell, Simkins said that RJ Holmes-Leopold ’99, then director of the Career Engagement Center, prepared him well for his internship interview with the FDIC.

“I don’t think I could have done it by myself,” he said. “RJ gave me a ton of practical tips, and it changed how I approached the interview.”

At his internship he first studied the structure and operations of a bank and then traveled to the financial institution where he interviewed employees and examined documents, led to the job offer.

Simkins plans to stay in finance and regulation, and said the FDIC position is the perfect starting point for that. Not only will the work give him a solid understanding of how the regulatory process works and how banks should comply with regulations, but it will offer an introduction to the entire banking industry.

“It’s an opportunity to start a career and to open more possibilities,” he said.