17 October 2018
In this blog, Chloe Hung, Amazon best-selling author, talks about the range of specialities you can go into as you train as an actuary.
Traditional actuarial work is largely divided into three main areas: life insurance, general insurance and pensions. All three areas offer great career opportunities but there are pros and cons to each area.
Most students specialise in the area in which they start their career.. Hence, my advice to all students is not to worry about where to specialise because this will largely be determined by where you start your career.
The likelihood of you switching to a new insurance area diminishes as you advance in your career because of what employers look for when they are hiring experienced actuaries. When employers are hiring for a more senior position they want actuaries who have a proven set of skills and experience in a specific area. For example, if a company wants to hire a qualified actuary into their life pricing or product development team, they will look for an actuary who has experience in these areas. This saves the employer time and money as they don’t need to upskill the new employee.
If you’re concerned about your career benefits, compensation, marketability and long-term prospects, a good thing to consider is the supply and demand within your area of specialisation. Under the simple law of economics, high demand and low supply creates better employee benefits, compensation schemes and marketability for candidates. The more specialised your area, the higher your salary and compensation and the better your marketability because there are fewer actuaries with your skills.
For example, pension actuaries are more common in Western countries such as the USA, Europe, Canada and so on but they are less recognised in Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. Hence, if you think you’ll want to work as an actuary in Asia, this is something that you should consider. Since the pension actuary’s work is more compliance based, candidates who want to specialise in this field generally have a preference for the more theoretical side of the actuarial course materials.
General insurance actuaries tend to prefer the more statistical part of their course because this is an area that uses more probability and statistical concepts. The general insurance sector is also smaller than the life insurance sector and can be very specialised. As a general insurance actuary, you may choose to specialise further in a specific area, such as homeowner’s insurance or liability insurance and so on.