Actuarial jobs

In modern times actuarial jobs and responsibilities are rapidly evolving. Traditionally an actuary has worked in insurance companies in the following areas:

Product Design

Designing the benefits, features, terms, conditions and exclusions of an insurance product.

Pricing

Determining how much an insurance company should charge for the product it has designed to sufficiently cover the set of risks, charges and profits of the insurance company.

Reservation

Calculating how much an insurance company must set aside to pay for the claims that are likely to emerge into the future.

Modelling

Modelling the capital required to cover the insurer’s losses in the instance that a major catastrophe occurs

Risk Management

Managing the enterprise risk by modelling, quantifying, mitigating and avoiding the series of risks an insurance company faces.

Investment

Investing the monies an insurer accumulates from their policyholders to adequately match them to the insurer’s liabilities while optimising returns for the insurer and policyholder.

These actuarial jobs have been the actuary’s responsibility since as far back as the 18^th century. Insurance companies entered into long-term contracts with customers where payment rested on an uncertain set of future events. This required the services of an actuary in the areas above to ensure that company built, priced, reserved, managed risk and held capital appropriately.

Since then, actuaries have used their strong skills in a range of other areas. These include:

Product Marketing

Marketing of products using sophisticated distribution models that map the cost of acquisition against the value of each product sold

Data Analytics

Empowering an enterprise to make better decisions by investigating the rich data sources of a company to extract key company insights

Business Planning

Setting 1, 3 and 5 year plans based on a set of business assumptions that are stress-tested through a range of scenarios

Strategy

Setting the strategy of a company by doing in depth research, analysis and market sizing to direct the long-term direction of the enterprise