Generally, the smaller the firm, the more consultants will be called upon to assist with promoting a firm and bringing in business. This underscores the need to balance abilities with the expectations of consulting firms. Actuaries tend to bristle at making sales. Actuaries can overcome their reticence by understanding what sales means on a practical level. Sales is about managing expectations and building relationships, Modlin said.
Mango wants actuaries to know that selling is not as difficult as it might seem. Actuaries who work for insurance companies should realize they already are using sales skills in their current jobs, he said. He also cautions against believing that rainmaking can compromise professional integrity. Also, actuaries should not approach producing sales and marketing materials and raising their profile as if it were subject to the same standards as court testimony. He also discourages actuaries from downplaying their expertise.
Pondering the idea of being an actuarial consultant is common. However, skills and even personality traits required for success often do not come easily for those attracted to quantitative work. Fortunately, there are a variety of consulting roles available and infinite opportunities to improve the skills necessary for climbing the consulting career ladder.
Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. The term actuarial consultant refers to a financial professional who advises clients on investment, insurance, and pension -related decisions using a variety of measurements.
The consultant applies an extensive use of statistics , contingency plans, and large amounts of data to formulate a plan best suited to the client. They calculate and analyze the data, make forecasts , provide the most accurate information to clients, and help them realize what their best options are.
Actuaries are professionals who work in the financial sector. They complete risk and cost analysis and determine where financial uncertainties lie using the skills of a statistician, economist , and probabilities forecaster. Actuarial consultants use these skills to dispense financial advice to their clients, manage risk, and help clients choose the proper insurance, pension, and investment plans to meet their specific goals.
These professionals spend a great deal of time crunching numbers and running hypothetical scenarios concerning current trends and any changes that are likely in the future.
Some of the cookies that we use are essential for parts of the website to operate. By using this website you agree to our use of cookies. To find out more, including how to opt out, please read our Cookies Policy. From music to maths, microphones to mortality assumptions, acoustic consultancy to actuarial science. A rather angular move on the career path I'll grant you, but my decision was measured and two months in it's proving to be the best one I've made since university.
Like many others, I don't think I knew what I wanted from a career when I left for uni, I enjoyed maths and I enjoyed music and therefore opting for a degree in Music Technology seemed like a pretty good idea… and it was! I studied audio electronics, digital signal processing, speaker design and lots of maths based modules. After I graduated I spent a while working out what I wanted from a career, whether I had already found it in acoustics consultancy or whether I should continue searching.
In the end I put together a list of career ideals to help me decide. That being said, there are some consulting positions precious few that require little or no travel. Most of the major consulting firms have taken steps to attract and retain talented employees, in particular more women and minorities.
Turnover is costly to all companies and consulting firms have attempted to address these issues with flexible work schedules and more regular total work hours.
But at the end of the day, your boss and the client determines if you make it home for dinner that night. Of course, deadlines must be met at an insurance company as well. Therefore, as noted above, much of the work-hours difference between consulting and insurance will fall to your boss, the amount of travel that you undertake and the time of year within the business cycle.
Please keep in mind that most consulting position descriptions, whether posted on the web or provided by a recruiter, are generic job postings that only provide a broad overview of the work that you might expect in the role.
They will not have any true job-specific information regarding the office specialty areas, their primary client focus, the hours worked, the amount of study time given or the amount of travel.
This is just boilerplate language along with many other bullets on the job description. Without speaking directly to one of the hiring managers, you will not get a true sense of what it means to be an actuarial consultant within that particular office with that particular firm. Just as within the insurance company universe, job responsibilities and work hours can vary widely from office to office, and engagement to engagement, even within the same firm.
It is up to you to investigate, to the best of your ability, the factors that are most important to you before making a job change. Will I get my study time? This is always an important question to consider. Early in your career, a great deal of time and energy is focused on balancing the need to effectively manage your workload at the office with the time required to pass the actuarial exams.
Fortunately almost all employers of actuaries have competitive student programs that pay for examination fees, required textbooks and other study aids and provide paid time off to study for each exam. If your current employer does not offer these benefits, you may want to consider changing jobs. Insurance companies are usually more likely to provide greater flexibility than consulting firms regarding scheduling time off for exam preparation and may be somewhat more likely to provide the full amount of exam study hours as outlined in their student programs.
In these types of positions, preparing for Spring exams can often prove more difficult than preparing for Fall exams. You may also find that larger insurance companies and larger consulting practices are better able to provide more flexible exam study time due to their larger staffs. Larger staffs often, but not always, allow for an improved ability to shift work around during the days leading up to an exam.
Passing exams at a reasonable pace is quite important to the careers of most actuaries. This means that scheduled time off for exam preparation is sometimes more difficult in consulting environments. It is also important to recognize that differences in staffing levels, client activity and the management style of the practice leader all contribute to variations in available study time.
Study time varies between different firms, different offices of the same firm, and even within different consulting practices e. We would love to provide you a list of where you can get plenty of study time and where you do not but it changes with some frequency for the reasons discussed previously.
The best advice that we can give you is the following. You will likely get far more accurate information at this stage of the interview process. When conducting a telephone interview with Human Resources staff, the individual is typically located outside of the city for which you are interviewing and he or she will not possess enough office-specific information to answer these questions. These questions are best left for current actuarial students who work at the firm or the office practice leader.
Overall, you will likely get somewhat less study time at consulting firms as compared to insurance opportunities. It is our view that consulting firms recognize this fact and attempt to hire actuarial students who not only have a strong interest and aptitude for client work but who may also require less study time to pass exams. For this reason, it is far less likely that consulting firms will consider you for employment if you are having difficulty passing exams.
Consulting firms want to you to pass exams. In fact, it is quite important to them that you do pass. As a consultant, you are hired to be an expert. And while consulting firms can always hire externally at the FSA or FCAS level, as with most companies, they would prefer to hire actuarial students and groom them to take on positions of greater responsibility in the future.
For entry-level hires, compensation is likely to be slightly better at a consulting firm. This is primarily due to large consulting firms competing for the best actuarial talent or perceived potential talent. Over time, this has modestly boosted the pay for entry-level actuarial students entering consulting. Either way, your pay will be competitive.
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