Clare Beale - Head of Actuarial and Risk Analytics, HSBC

Name: Clare Beale Role: Head of Actuarial and Risk Analytics Company: HSBC Location: London Degree: Mathematics, University of Sussex

I lead the Actuarial and Risk Analytics team for Insurance within Retail Banking and Wealth Management Risk at HSBC. 

Actuarial and Risk Analytics (ARA) is a centre of excellence  providing actuarial and analytical services to businesses and teams across HSBC in order to achieve improved leverage of skills within a consistent risk and governance framework. The team consists of nearly 60 professional risk experts, with backgrounds covering risk, actuarial and analytics, providing technical support and analysis to multiple territories across Europe and Latin America. 

We have now launched a similar team based in Hong Kong, which will focus on servicing our businesses across Asia.

Why did you choose a career in the industry?

I wanted to pursue a career that enabled me to combine quantitative skills with the opportunity to solve practical business issues.  It was important for me to be able to interact with people from different professional backgrounds, to apply my skills in varied contexts and ideally have the opportunity to use my language skills.  My career to date has enabled me to do all of those things.

My role requires a strong analytical background, a healthy dose of curiosity and professional scepticism, a solid grounding in risk and controls, and a proven ability to communicate complex subjects in language that others can understand. You need resilience, tenacity, and the ability to work in dynamic and changing environment. I think these are essential skills in leading a team effectively and inspiring confidence. I have always loved languages and speak Spanish, which is becoming increasingly important as we work more closely with our Latin American teams.

What is a typical day like for you?

Every day is different!  I might start the day by reviewing reports or talking to colleagues in Hong Kong, the middle of the day is often focused on UK based work or meeting with the team, and then in the afternoon I might be speaking with Argentina or Brazil about help that they might need with modelling or pricing projects.  Last year I travelled to Brazil, Panama and Hong Kong … but it never ceases to amaze me how small the world feels with the technology at our disposal - email, instant messaging and phone or videoconferencing – you just have to remember which way the time zones work and I have now realised why London is an ideal local from which to work those to your advantage!

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I love the variety and diversity of my role - the fact that my work covers both developing and developed markets, the different geographies and cultures that come with that, I enjoy the combination of quantitative and qualitative, and the fact that I engage with a number of different people from different disciplines across the bank.

How did you acquire the skills for your job?

I took Mathematics and Spanish at university, and became a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 2002.

I began my professional career with Skandia Life in Southampton and then relocated to London to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers in their actuarial practice. My time in consultancy gave me a breadth of experience, working on and leading projects for insurance companies and financial institutions throughout the UK and in Europe and South Africa. I joined HSBC as Deputy Regional Chief Actuary for Europe in 2010 and my current role arose following the reorganisation of our business in 2012. 

If I reflect on my career to date, the combination of working for a corporate, many years as a consultant followed by the regional role at HSBC has given me a variety of different experiences and challenges from which I continually draw in my current role.

What would you like to achieve in the future?

I have always been interested in taking the actuarial skills set and thinking about how those skills can be applied to other, less traditional, areas so this will always be something that I think about.  Topics such as proposition strategy and market segmentation are areas that I would like to explore further, but I am also keen to have more exposure to some of the different discliplines within Risk that we have across the bank. 

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

Probably two things ….

1.   An actuary needs to be more than the numbers - an ability to communicate complexity in language that others understand is becoming ever more important, as is the need to be able to engage effectively with a variety of stakeholders, be risk conversant, lead teams, drive change and have a commercial edge – so we must all keep our skills relevant.

2.   You can achieve whatever you want to achieve, just believe in yourself and make it happen – the opportunities will not come to you, you have to go and hunt them down!