Actuary

deedee2002

Recently completed a commerce degree and have a job interview for a position as a trainee actuarist. How many exams would be involved to be qualified? And what is the starting salary for a graduate trainee?

useless

I don't know about exams, or starting salary, but if you say actuarist in the interview, there's no way you should be even applying for the job...:D

Torres9

http://www.actuaries.org.uk/careers

Have a look around that website. Starting salary is about €30,000

watna

From what I know of friends actuaries do a lot of exams over many years but eventually they get paid a lot of money. They don't go out much because they study all the time. My friend did a degree in actuarial maths but decided against it as a career after working with actuaries on her work experience!

As you said Actuarist in your post, is that a different thing or do you mean actuary? Do you have a job description?

tinkerbell

Oh ... my ... god. I am an actuary and if there is one thing that really annoys me it's people saying the word "actuarist", it tells me that you don't know anything about the profession. You need to research the role of an actuary before you walk into that interview.

Starting salary is not usually €30,000 unless you have eight exemptions from the actuarial exams from doing a university degree. You can expect to get around €25k starting off. This increases pretty quickly obviously depending on how you're getting on in the company but also with each exam you get paid. If you pass a load of exams one after the other, your salary will shoot up really fast.

There are four stages of exams: Core Technical (CT), Core Applications (CA), Specialist Technical (ST) and Specialist Application (SA). You need to do all 9 exams from CT, all 3 from CA, you get a choice from 6 for the STs - you need to do 2 exams and then you choose from 6 SAs and pick 1 exam (you usually pick the follow on from one of the ST exams you did). So total 9 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15 exams.

Since you did commerce you more than likely won't have any exemptions - they may give you Economics but there has to be some university agreement with the Institute of Actuaries in the UK for this. There are two exam sittings each year - one in April and one in September. If you are starting from scratch it could take 5 / 6 years to qualify, maybe longer. It depends really how you find the exams, you might do 3 CTs in a sitting, pass them all, do another 3, pass them etc, but I'd be surprised that you could do that many in one go without doing a math science / actuarial science degree because those subjects are very technical. The later subjects are more finance-type subjects, like about life insurance products, pensions, that kind of thing.

Yes it's crap having to study all the time and you can't go on holidays at certain times of the year because the exams are on. For a month or two before exams you don't really have a life either coz every spare minute is spent studying but you do also get study leave (max 1 day off per week - the min is a half day usually and depending on what subject you are doing or how many you could get the full day off a week). But the rewards really are great.

Anyway good luck in the job interview and for goodness sake, do not say actuarist, you are applying to be a trainee actuary. It really is a great job, I would definitely recommend it as a career choice.

ixus

Hey Tinkerbell, great info there!

Do you have any links that would provide further insight. Wouldn't mind reading up on this myself.

Cheers, Ixus.

tinkerbell

Hey ixus, yep check out these websites:

Irish Society of Actuaries
Institute of Actuaries
ActEd - educational info

The last one is where you order your study materials from for the exams so you can have a read up on the syllabus there, there's also a discussion forum on that website.

Nolanger

It's for people who find accounting too exciting.

tinkerbell

Nolanger wrote: »

It's for people who find accounting too exciting.

Ehhh I think not!

Ruby21

I know this thread is fairly old but have a few questions similar to the op. Looking at a Grad job online with an insurance agency and HR said you don't need to be doing a specific degree in Actuary etc just need to be mathematically minded. Hadn't ever thought about a career in Actuary, doing a finance degree and kinda leaning towards Consultancy. My question is whether the Maths sections are very difficult? Would I be able for it? I'm good at Maths but I know a lot who are better than me!

tinkerbell

Ruby21 wrote: »

I know this thread is fairly old but have a few questions similar to the op. Looking at a Grad job online with an insurance agency and HR said you don't need to be doing a specific degree in Actuary etc just need to be mathematically minded. Hadn't ever thought about a career in Actuary, doing a finance degree and kinda leaning towards Consultancy. My question is whether the Maths sections are very difficult? Would I be able for it? I'm good at Maths but I know a lot who are better than me!

I don't know if you would be able for it as I don't know you! LOL. The exams are really difficult. And it's not even "maths" as most normal people would know it, like Leaving Cert maths are so basic in comparison. The exams are really technical, and have a high failure rate. It can take multiple attempts to pass an exam.

Pythia

You would want to be very committed to go down the actuary route. You have to study a lot and most of that is in your free time. It's not something you should just walk into without doing a lot of research to see if it's for you.

There are also different routes you can take - life, non life, pensions. Consultancy can also be different to working in an insurance company,

tenchi-fan

I know some actuaries working in Dublin. They work crazy hours.. 12 hour days are normal. But they get paid a fortune, in one company the starting wage for a newly qualified actuary was €60k, but most earn more than that. With new insolvency requirements wages are going up the whole time.

Duke Leonal Felmet

Hi, rather than start a new thread, I thought I would use this.

I have a BA and MA in Economics (the quantitative end of economics) and currently work as a Risk Analyst for a financial institution. I have noticed that, historically, quite a high number of people in my position make the transition over to work as an Actuary, usually at some large insurance company. This is likely because of the higher salaries commanded, and this has piqued my interest.

Now, I know very little about the field or how to become one, so I thought I would begin my research into this on boards, as it is usually a great starting point for such endeavours.


So, does my educational and work experience offer me any head-start on this issue in terms of exams?

Is there much work in the field these days?

Any other info, greatly appreciated.

Pythia

I used to work as a risk analyst for a bank and am now in actuarial. Pretty much exactly what you described. Feel free to pm with any questions...