Now I am not saying in the least that being an actuary
sucks. It’s just that it doesn’t fit
me. It fits lots of people very well and
there are a couple of cool perks about the career. Heck, it might be just the thing for
you. So I think it would be informative
to give an overview of the career just in case you are unfamiliar with what an
actuary is.
In the most vanilla of terms, an actuary is an insurance
mathematician. Ever wonder how they
figure how much to charge for auto insurance?
Well, that’s thanks to an actuary.
Who is on the front line in calculating how long until Social Security
runs out of money? An actuary. There are lots of “cool” projects that
utilize actuaries besides just insurance.
There is a growing field called Enterprise Risk Management ERM where
actuaries are often found. And ERM is
used in almost all of the Fortune 500 companies in some degree, not just
insurance.
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| One of the views from my desk at work. My friend, the hoodie. |
Considering that actuaries do things like calculating
insurance rates, you have to have a good mathematics background to be an
actuary, but nothing more than an undergrad degree. All of the mathematics I ever had to use I learned in the first couple of semesters in
college. Some actuaries come from
business and economics backgrounds without the mathematical rigor of a pure
math degree. Some actuaries come from
fields that aren’t even related (like English), but that really doesn’t matter
in the end. In order to become a
credentialed actuary, you have to prove yourself through the exam process.
The actuarial exam process is one of the last holdouts of
the old apprentice system. In order to
work as an actuary, you don’t have to be credentialed. You can actually do actuarial work without
having a designation. You can’t issue
actuarial opinions and other work that requires a credentialed actuary. But, you can still work as one while you take
exams.
The actuarial exam process is rather straightforward. You have to pass exams in order to attain
your designation. Depending on the
actuarial organization that you test under, it will be somewhere around 6 to 10
exams. The first couple of exams are
offered a couple times a year, but the later ones are only offered once or
twice. But the real kicker is that these
exams are hard. Like, crazy hard. I did not study a lick in high school and
college and made out with a B+ average.
And my course load wasn’t easy.
But actuarial exams are different – they kicked my butt. Over my actuarial exam career, I had an
overall 50% passing rate. So that is the
drawback to the exams. Add on top of it
that you are probably working, your really just trading graduate school for
these exams. But hey – if it was easy,
everyone would be doing it, right?
Which brings me to the next point: the actuarial career has some pretty good publicity on
the job polls. I mean, you just need an
undergrad degree and the chutzpah to persevere through the exams and you could
be earning six figures. Doing what? Making up numbers and persuading people that
your numbers are the right ones. I sit
on my duff and play with numbers all day.
That is my job in a nutshell. And
by doing that, I pull a decent paycheck.
And if you think that it is all just dry calculating of
numbers, you are wrong. You have
actuaries confused with accountants.
Being an actuary requires a level of creativity at times to come up with
unique and applicable solutions to problems that are always coming up. You have to be on your toes. Well, not always, but from time to time. And there is some dry calculating, but it
can’t all be sunshine and rainbows, right?
So, have I whetted your appetite to be an actuary? If you are interested you can check out some of these sites that I share with naïve undergrads that want to be an actuary:
The real reason for this post is to set up the coupe de
grace that I have wanted to write for years now: What I have learned from actuarial exams.
Until next time…
God bless,
Sven
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