First job: Actuarial trainee in the actuarial department of the CIS.

Key steps between first job and current one:

• 1991: joined CIS from university and was involved in the manual quotation of benefits for 'special' policies;
• 1993/4: assigned to the model office team working with the PROPHET system;
• 1995: qualified as an actuary and moved to head up the team;
• 1997: moved to HSBC as an investment consultant with responsibility for developing the ALM capability. Later moved to head up the investment strategy team and manage a client team.
• 2005: moved to Hewitt Associates as Senior Investment Consultant
• 2008: moved to Buck Consultants as Senior Investment Consultant

Current work

I provide strategic investment advice to UK pension schemes.

Opportunities for others

Investment consulting is an area that lends itself to actuaries with a desire to work with external clients. The strategic problems that are being addressed span the whole area of investments and opportunities exist within consultancies, fund managers and investment banks.

Hurdles to surmount

This area is not the sole territory of actuaries. I work with other professionals doing a very similar job to me and this is the case for all of the other organisations mentioned above. The actuary has to demonstrate his problem solving, analytical and client facing skills as much as any other professional and whilst the actuarial qualification brings added value on the liability side, other professionals can bring added value on the corporate finance or asset side.

Original reason for becoming an actuary

I was looking at "accountant" in the careers directory and "actuary" was on the same page, but looked more interesting! In addition, at the time there were over 100,000 accountants but only 3,000 actuaries.

Subsequent thoughts

I am very satisfied with my choice of profession, and the fact that I have effectively changed career has been a definite plus point.

Career history

Summarised in key steps above.

Other comments

The actuarial qualification is a great qualification to have if you are valued in your company as an individual. It is not necessarily perceived as the mark of a valuable individual in itself, because we compete with other professions and have to show what actuaries can bring to a role that other professions can't.