Bharat, Assistant Manager, Actuarial

Bharat Position: Assistant Manager, Actuarial Studied: Bachelor of Commerce Now working for: Prudential, India

What do you do?

I play with numbers! As a member of the Financial Reporting team we work on many projects, model & data testing and process improvements. My work involves analyzing the numbers produced, checking the movements in results and explaining why I think the numbers look sensible.

In addition to this, I have people management responsibility for colleagues in my immediate team. This involves allocating work, ensuring that they are aware of what needs to be done and by what deadline, holding regular 1-1s and more formal performance reviews.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Dynamism…Every day I learn something new – and that is the best part of my job.

To cite an example, part of my work involves checking numbers like projected profits and reserves on various financial measures. It presents a number of challenges about first gauging the movement in key economic variables, judging the impact of such movements on reporting numbers and explaining these movements to senior colleagues, which may lead to further investigation/analysis. Basically, it’s the kind of work that gives me a complete understanding of the business rather than just a part of it.

The insurance world is ever changing and so are the requirements of various reporting measures – the methodology of calculations or the way we report numbers are never the same. The challenge is to understand the new requirements, change the methodology appropriately to ensure that it meets requirements and then assess its impact on results and hence on the business.

What are the most stressful parts of the job?

The most challenging part of the job for me is working and studying at same time especially with tight deadlines near the actuarial exams, which normally leads to long working hours followed by late night studies.  This is something you can expect from any actuarial job.  

Being an actuary, time management is very important – even the exams require managing time as there is so much to do within those 3 hours.  

What was the interview process like?

I was working with AON Consulting in Bangalore when I got to hear about a vacancy in Prudential from a HR consultancy firm.  To me it sounded like a great opportunity to work for a reputed Life Insurance Company with immensely knowledgeable actuaries, and was a chance I couldn’t pass up.

I decided to explore this opportunity and had an initial telephone interview which comprised of few behavioural and technical questions.  This was followed by an aptitude test and face to face interview with a Qualified Actuary and the Actuarial Planning and Resource Manager.  Soon after the interview I was on-board.

Any advice for the interview process?

Be true to yourself!  During interview process, just be yourself and try to give lots of good and varied real life examples as it’s important to be able to back up a claim with tangible evidence.  The more examples you can give of specific situations where you have showed the qualities that the interviewer is looking for – the more likely you will be to receive a job offer.

Do you have any advice for anyone wanting to get into the industry?

You certainly are making the RIGHT choice!  Actuarial work involves a wide range of projects, offers a dynamic and challenging work profile, involvement in business decision making and allows you to employ your own judgment – it offers good prospects.  However, before stepping into this profession, be sure that you consider the career in detail - qualifying as an Actuary is a marathon and not just a sprint. 

What ‘soft skills’ have you found useful?

Interpersonal skills, team spirit and basic behavioural skills like a can-do attitude and time management have played an important part for me in my career so far.  To cite an example, while I am based out of Mumbai, most of my team members are in Scotland.  It becomes very crucial to have good spoken and written communication skills and choose different types of communication, e.g. telephone, instant messaging, emails or video conference, depending on the context of the discussion.  Also it is important to understand what suits you and the other person with whom you communicate.

Also I think the art of explaining difficult actuarial concepts clearly in simple words using relevant examples to my direct reports is one skill that I have learned over the past 6 months.  I’ve found this very useful as it makes them understand how and why things are done in a particular way.

What would you like to achieve in the future?

Personally, a lot of things, and being content with what I am doing professionally forms a large part of it.  My aim is to excel in my field and have an in-depth knowledge of actuarial practices.  As a step towards achieving the same, my first goal is to efficiently clear all my exams and be a completely qualified Actuary in the two years.  After this, I would work towards specialising in my area of interest (Financial Reporting) and get involved in more challenging roles.