Do you like construction? Building stuff? Cars? Machines? Computers?

Data systems? Excel?

Clearly you don't like labs, chemicals, microscopes, cells and that sort of stuff.

You said so yourself, Engineering. Physics or subfields like Astrophysics are less practical but you can explore them.

We are discussing Actuarial Science and it's pretty much an office-type profession but you can get into interesting things like project finance, funds management, hedge funds, like I said airlines, casinos, if you're lucky.

If you like Financial Modelling then you don't necessarily have to do Actuarial. If you're good at Maths, go ahead and study Maths, and eventually Mathematical Finance, Mathematical Modelling or Computational Science, or Computational Finance/Quantitative Finance/Financial Engineering. Since a lot of those are graduate level study.

Or you could start with Engineering. Because you need to be really smart, otherwise you need a qualification in Maths or Engineering to do FinEng/QuantFin later on.

There are also some MSc degrees, in case you prefer not to have full-on quant, since not all of these are.

It won't be exams for years, but you will have studied more, longer (and much harder stuff) than those 3 year Accounting or Finance people.

This is going to be more interesting than just modelling pensions or probabilities of accidents and lifespans. You can go into equities, equity derivatives, energy derivatives, currencies, precious metals, rates (fixed income), all manner of exotic and structured products. Very technical shit.

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Added on October 14, 2012, 2:41 amSome people do a Physics PhD and go on to a MS FinEng after! Which is bizarre since they are/should be already so good at Maths and they are a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics of all things. There are also those who start out with Actuarial, but eventually go and study a MS FinEng after many years, and get CFA and everything.

This post has been edited by LightningFist: Oct 14 2012, 02:41 AM

You're right, a bank does pay high salaries, at least big or successful banks do.

But there's also job security. And both careers/industries work differently.

How many analysts and traders were laid off during the financial crisis? Or the recessionary periods that followed?

An insurance company employs actuaries, but not a huge number of them. And a small number of those are the 'heads' or 'chiefs'. They probably have to compete with less people to move up to CRO, CFO, CEO or COO.

A bank's structure is larger, it had many VPs and Heads, with people holding and working different positions at the same time. But these employees compete with more for top positions.

A successful trader's salary is obviously going to beat an actuary's, when even analysts lose to them. But I think nowadays it's more difficult to get an analyst, trader, or sales job at a good, big bank. So many of them have graduate Financial Engineering degrees, and/or MBAs and CFAs. Probably less time than it takes to get Fellow status as an actuary, but still a considerable amount of work.

Also maybe at the higher level, an actuary doesn't need to work as long as a banker. If you care about per hour pay.

High risk, high volatility industries or jobs.

Oil and gas. Trading/brokerage. Diving.

Being a pilot pays I think more for the qualification and skill more than the risk, since risk is generally low. Also the industry has become more stable over time, but profits are still affected by fuel prices.

Anyone can comment on SOA vs UK/Australian qualifications, in terms of the difficulty of the exams/of qualifying?

I noticed a lot of actuaries are SOA-qualified, even those that went to Australian and British schools which provide for IoA/FoA/IoAA exemptions, and many students are doing the SOA series too.

I know UK/Australian preliminary exams when passed can be converted to SOA exam exemptions, and vice versa.

Also, can anyone comment on the different specialisations? What are the implications/consequences of the choice of specialisation - does it restrict job opportunities for qualified actuaries?

For example for STs Health/Care and Life go together, or Pensions with either, the two General subjects go together (but there is only one SA for General), there are two distinct Finance/Investment subjects (but two similar SAs), and ERM (no SA).

Yeah, I was wondering about access and logistics too. Several thousand AUD for each of the four final part Australian exams. And each is scheduled to be 15 weeks long. Though they claim to have exam offices/centres in KL, Singapore, Hong Kong too. Anyway any face-to-face is probably in Sydney, if it isn't the web based stuff.

I'm aware the closest place for the UK one is Singapore's SMU. Which is fairly close I suppose, given the exams aren't taken so frequently, just twice a year at most.

Wasn't aware that Australia's was comparably more expensive, or that SOA had more frequent exams.

Thanks for enlightening me. Could I ask some straightforward questions:

1. How frequently can you take SOA exams, and how many times are you allowed to repeat for fails (and what happens - consequences - if you do)?

2. Do you mind telling me where you are working (type of firm and country) and where you plan to work after qualifying?

FYI CT9 is not the same type of written exam as the first 8. The crucial thing is CA1. That I think can only be found at Irish schools (undergrad), or graduate (or AU Honours) Actuarial degrees. But it is a lot of money.

Not unusual that it is that way at Warwick University since they merely have an Actuarial concentration. Not a straight Actuarial degree.

The strange thing is the schools (teaching Act Sci) without quite as many CT exemptions. Because why do an Actuarial degree (which not many people understand) if not to focus heavily on Actuarial material...

There's is also the implication of exemptions... they replace exams and help lead to qualification, but they are no substitute for work experience and practical skills... so a fresh grad with half the exams done isn't necessarily better off even in the Actuarial field vs a fresh grad without many exam passes but who steadily completes them. Maybe because firms think these fresh grads expect more pay with exemptions (because normally exam passes increases pay) and prefer to hire others.

No Malaysian school gets any direct CT exemptions.

The maximum allowable exemptions for any school are the 3 SOA/CAS VEEs, which correspond to CT2 and CT7 and part of CT6.

1. Depends, on the school, on the timing. If you're talking about double degrees, you're talking about Australia, and they have 2 semesters you might start in. For at least some cases, in the past, it may have been easier to do a double degree if you enrolled during a bad semester, making Actuarial/Economics, or Commerce, or Finance, easier than straight Actuarial. That was fixed so straight Actuarial degrees are easier now. But still, Actuarial + Econ/Comm/Finance/Stats is not much more difficult (Stats>Econ/Finance, Comm depends on major) compared to straight Actuarial, but Law probably is, Maths definitely is harder.

3. Mktg and Business don't really have requisites.

In Actuarial you only do up to Intermediate Macroeconomics (considered 3rd year by NUS/American standards), and basic Intro Microeconomics. So you only need to be average at Econ (at least a 60/65 by Australian standards).

The bulk of the work is Statistics, either Applied Stats or Mathematical Statistics. Given 8 classes a year / 4 every semester, I have in the entire degree only 1 pure Math (not Stats related) class, 3 Econ classes, 1 Accounting class, 5 compulsory Finance classes (although 1 is Mathematical Finance), 4 electives (they don't have to be Business related), the rest are Stats.

Overall Warwick is clear first, Soton second. For Actuarial City is clear first, Soton is not bad, Warwick doesn't have all exemptions in 4 years but it should be a good school.

This. Aptitude is more important. You might understand a class reasonably well (say more than half) and get 70-90+ in assignments or mid term exams, but end up failing the final exam because you couldn't do three quarters of it. While someone who could do about half the exam ends up with an A. It applies to Maths or Physics at A Level or Pre U too, to the extent that it scales with ability (someone capable of enrolling in a Maths degree won't feel that way during A Level, but other people not so good at Maths might).

Understand that at university, most all the people doing what you do, your peers, are also better at Math than average. But if you can beat them, by just a little bit, you can get As and Bs.

This post has been edited by LightningFist: Jul 8 2013, 07:26 PM

I'm not an actuary (respect) but what you say here doesn't seem fully correct based on what goes on in European, North American, Asian and Australian markets.

You are right in that most actuaries work in insurance ... that's where the need for them is because the finance side can be filled by non actuaries with accounting, risk, financial or investment backgrounds. But these is plenty of actuarial outside of insurance, in learning and in practice.

You talk about actuarial like actuarial maths = insurance maths. The latter may be true, but non-insurance can and often is 'actuarial'.


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Out of the UK/Australia beginner exams, most are not focused on insurance (and don't even need to bring up the word insurance): Financial Maths (easily banking/finance), Financial Reporting (easily banking/accounting/finance), Probability & Math Stats (just normal Maths or Stats), Models (Stochastic Modelling and Survival Models can have 100% non-insurance applications), Econ (normal), Financial Economics (normal Finance and Quant Finance)

only 2 out of these 8 are explicitly insurance... Contingencies and Statistical Methods (or Risk Theory and Credibility Theory)

Half of the 6 SOA tracks do not have to be insurance related - CFE, QFI, and Retirement

Half of the available IFOA ST and SA exams do not have to be insurance related... ERM, Finance, Investment, Retirement

Half of the IAA Part 3 specialisations do not have to be insurance related... Finance/Investment and Retirement

So you see one can actually go through the entire system and still not have any advanced knowledge on insurance... the real specialised knowledge comes from choosing the life/general/health tracks, and working in the industry


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There are many examples of people who have switched to the 'banking' industry (I mean the banking side not the insurance products side) after qualifying. Some of these are commercial banks. Some are investment banks. Many have wealth (funds) divisions. Many have quant (trading) roles. The IBs have corporate advisory and capital markets. The retail banks have savings products. They can touch insurance but they absolutely don't need to. The ones who work with credit risk, market risk, investment risk, funding risk, insolvency risk, interest rate risk, even ERM can still be actuaries (not just from the FSA/FIA/FIAA).

Actuaries can work in Capital Modelling (like you pointed out) which applies to all regulated retail banks or depository institutions, they don't need to sell insurance

Also as pointed out Asset Liability Management, Superannuation or Pensions, Asset Management, Corporate Finance, Trading/Structuring, even Marketing (Wealth or Funds) ... not insurance unless you make it

And non traditional stuff like Energy and Weather, if there is a financial risk, can be Actuarial

Besides, if you work on insurance products then you're in the insurance industry too whether it's a bank selling them or not

LSE's reputation has slipped quite a lot in recent times

of course Asians worship LSE... you will have a good shot at interviews... losing only to or competing with Cambridge, Oxford, and Ivy League equivalent and those are friggin rare in Malaysia

basically in Europe and North America it'll still be one of the top schools for Economics. in actuarial it's nothing special (doesn't even have 8 exemptions) but it's closely related enough (some like to call actuarial an economic science) that it would be a pretty good school

that said, it's still one of the most prestigious schools you can go to that teaches a full Actuarial degree... it is the one uni that everybody everywhere knows, no matter what the ranking, 50 or 200

and you get to live in London

not sure if they still get a lot of world class guest speakers... but do not go in expecting to get world class teachers in all your classes, many Malaysians go to LSE or have graduated from there so you should be able to find out more

last thing i wanna say, don't be fooled by rankings. my school was a few years ago very highly ranked, but obviously without LSE or Ivy prestige. it could not possibly justify the international student fee, even with a better ranking, especially given how rich the school is (bad spending). ranking doesn't mean anything. repute is worth some.

sometimes the good schools with talent and that do cutting edge research in their specialist fields are not very reputable... eg City and Macquarie may be pioneers in Actuarial and have all the markers but they don't grab attention as the schools with all the sought after graduates

You seem to be a bit confused! I never claimed actuaries were intimately linked to "selling insurance". One doesn't need to be a qualified actuary to understand the difference!

You may be right about the role of actuaries in some pension markets shrinking, and about DB vs DC. You're based in North America. In Australia superannuation has been growing (funds industry here is something like 3rd largest in the world, and indeed the capital market here is one of the top 5 in the world by size) and is projected to expand, and not only that, the compulsory rate for contributions will be increasing quite quickly as a result of legal changes. As an actuary you should know better than anyone that not everything you study in the exams is directly applicable to practice (for example, actuarial exams do not have all that much accounting in them but financial reporting is a large part of some actuaries' work). This is the case in retirement/superannuation, where actuarial expertise is valued, even if you certainly do not need to be an actuary to do the job.

Of course only a credentialed actuary (either associate or fully qualified) is an actuary - how could anyone confuse this?

You have a point, that some of the non-insurance exams can be intricately linked with insurance, ERM for insurers or hedging and ALM for insurers, and of course capital management is increasingly being linked back to the risk of insurance products if the institution sells those products. But you can damn well do the exams, and work in ALM or hedging and have nothing to do with insurance (unless you want to call all options and derivatives "insurance" when clearly they are not always the case).

This is true for most actuaries you would meet, especially in Malaysia. A lot of actuaries are life actuaries, and while they do use some Maths (financial mathematics to work out the values of future cash flows, survival models to model mortality or lapses, "Maths" to count ages of policyholders etc) it is nothing like the Maths that rocket scientists or astrophysicists use.

But if you are one of the few actuaries that prices derivatives, or models catastrophe risk using quantitative methods, or fits distributions to claims data, you might use a bit more difficult Maths

Off topic a bit.

Malaysia is very competitive because of the huge supply of graduates mainly from Malaysia, UK, USA, Australia, relative to the number and variety of positions available. You can contrast Malaysia to other countries... Australia's General Insurance industry is as big as its Life industry in terms of the number of actuaries, while it has one of the world's largest pension fund pools, and a vibrant Retirement & Employee Benefits industry. The UK is similar... other than GI and pensions, both markets also employ actuaries in areas like solvency and capital management, asset liability management, finance and investment, risk management etc. In Malaysia, some actuaries work in General but I think most are in Life... and they do pricing, valuation, reinsurance, marketing, product development, that's mainly it - there's little specialisation in or separation into capital, risk, or investment.

But I would say connections and luck are more important. It's not usually the case that the person with the most exams passed and the highest uni grades gets the job. Even overseas, it is like this... new hires, even graduates, come from a variety of backgrounds (in terms of work experience) and differ in number of exams passed. What they have in common is maybe only an Actuarial degree.

It's not 'tradition' or a must. But you should know very well that exams are important even if they do not come before work. I don't think 4 exams before graduating is a lot - true, they are external so they may be very time consuming, but they are multiple choice (some) and intended to be preliminary, and supported by your tertiary education. Those university exemptions (outside SOA or CAS) are not easy to get either, as the schools are free to set much harder exams.

I find it incredible that you are asking these questions given you already have an engineering degree. You would know more about engineering and at least have a far better idea of civil eng than most lay people.

I'm going to make an educated guess and say civil engineers have an easier time looking for work than student actuaries. Actuaries add value to financial services and risk management, and sometimes statistical modelling, but nothing quite as solid as buildings and the environment. I'm sure there are more engineers than student actuaries in each graduating class, but very few people want to employ actuaries for their specific skillset or training. It is a lot easier to replace actuaries than engineers, and you don't need as many. The conversation will forever evolve around what actuaries or students can do outside of insurance, pensions, finance, and risk. Well, they may be smart or good with numbers and technical stuff, but who the hell knows what actuarial science is?

The market for entry level student actuaries is pretty bad everywhere you go. This is because schools and courses have bloomed in the past couple decades and supply far exceeds demand. It also takes very long for most people to pass the exams so they stay at analyst level quite some time (meaning an even bigger oversupply). Most people (at the entry level) find jobs via luck or connections (though most would hold the qualifications to merit the job).

a lot of actuaries are terrible at Maths (also see comment below). even actuaries will acknowledge that PDEs and SDEs are not natural to their thinking, rather that is the domain of physicists and mathematicians.

majority of actuaries will never use geometry, trigonometry, linear algebra in practice. there are exceptions to this. those who do investment modelling (rare) might use some matrix algebra in optimisation. some will do curve fitting in life insurance (survival models) and this would entail some heavy calculus. those in reinsurance (especially general reinsurance) might do heavy modelling, which means difficult equations and statistical software, and maybe stochastic models. but it must be stressed that most actuaries you will ever meet never come close to touching these, because insurance belongs to financial services, it is a business discipline. actuaries need formula to model reserves, liabilities, and to price risk, but for business reasons it cannot be the most complicated version every time. even the actual probability and stats used in practice is often simplified (how many actuaries use stochastic models which aren't automated or pre-programmed, and how much of the mathematical techniques learnt in school is ever used).

actuaries (in traditional practice) look at cashflows. then they consider factors which affect the size and timing and probability of occurence of the cashflows. you have some modern trends which are derivatives, energy, enterprise risk management, which are a bit different.

true that. majority of actuaries are not mathematicians, and most aren't even statisticians (don't count the lecturers and academics with their MScs and PhDs). some actuaries work as quants, i'm not completely sure how they managed to do it, i'm assuming they were very smart to begin with. there are some people who start with a Bachelor's in Act Sci and move on to an MQF or Comp Finance graduate degree.

someone asked me this so i'll answer here



actuarial is also $$ and figures. anyway, i wouldnt advise anyone to take CFA unless they had compelling reasons. I know a lot of people who understand what the CFA is about (and I think I do), but I still wouldnt recommend them to take it. In your case i think you have no idea of what the CFA truly is which is why it would be worse for you to do it

that said, the industry can be very superficial. what do i mean? let's say there's an oxford engineering grad or lse management grad. they might get interviews and even get the job, with some luck, without being the best fit or even genuinely interested in finance for what it is (outside of money). this totally depends on the interviewer and how good they are at assessing fit and aptitude, and to an extent how much they care about what type of talent they hire. they might not even know that much about finance (not really a big deal tho). their main edge was brand name. same for CFA, it might be a false signal which can help you land interviews, even though a large chunk of the finance industry (if you extend this to all financial markets activity, including banking) wont care about it much.

in actuarial, no one really cares what school you went to. can be Curtin, or some Asian uni. we even know (we being actuarial students and actuaries) that most of what you learnt in school never gets used (other than say Contingencies which is the core of life insurance, or Financial Maths which is the core of anything to do with actuaries, plus other specific examples) but we still like actuarial graduates because they tend to have been tested hard while at school with some very silly exams. also compared to a Maths or Econ grad they would be further ahead with their exams, which is advantageous for consultants, and also beneficial for direct companies because less resources are spent on education and study

since we're not only talking about actuaries, but finance more broadly, this is relevant.

this is a sticky point. there are some people who come from actuarial backgrounds (studied actuarial science, even worked for insurance companies) that are making loads of bank... I'm talking retire rich at 30-40. Think hedge funds, prop traders, investment bankers, some partners in consulting firms, certain brokers. they may not all work as actuaries but they all started from that same place. it is due to the uniqueness of their business, and the fact they make money off commissions and fees rather than products. to make money off products you need to be exceptional (Apple iPhone) but commissions are easy when the service you provide is not easily replaceable.

which brings us to insurance. sounds very much like investment banking, prop trading, hedge funds. the operators must bear huge financial risk (although this is of course mitigated or limited by reinsurance and derivatives). the ability to supply capital is not their value driver or business model, because any rich investor or cash rich company can play that role - even a government or pension fund. it is their appetite for risk which is their main source of value. so why aren't insurance actuaries all rich, if insurance companies can generate so much economic value in theory...? many reasons. structurally the industry relies heavily on financial advisers who take huge cuts, leaving little for the rest. insurance companies face huge capital requirements so they are usually public owned (listed) or a subsidiary of a listed company - at least the major ones are these days. which means the company works to produce returns for shareholders, whereas in a small advisory practice or fund the workers are also owners and they can keep a lot more money. insurance also has a deeper purpose, and that is to pay claims so that people can get on with their lives and businesses can survive hazardous events, even as a for-profit company (hedge funds, traders etc exist only to make money for themselves or their customers, and take a fee in the process, although those who have a role as investors do facilitate the financial markets)

I wouldn't know how many graduates are produced locally, but don't assume all those who start out as students in first year will graduate in actuarial science - a number will drop out.

As for the 20% odds, this is generous I think. You're overestimating the number of companies that hire Actuarial Students (i.e. Analysts). For example, some reinsurers are small branches of larger regional hubs (in Singapore or Hong Kong) and these guys generally do not need recent graduates, so 2-3 per year is unrealistic. Now there are about 7 reinsurers I can think of that operate in Malaysia but if you understand the nature of their business you'll know they don't often want or need grads. I'd say two or three that are big enough to want a couple of grads every year or two. The pure brokers are even more extreme, because they are even smaller branches with even less staff - no room for graduates except once every few years (and they actually don't really need Actuarial Students anyway).

You're right that there are about 4-5 prominent consulting firms that provide actuarial services but only two of them are big and active, the rest don't really need graduates except once in a while. Now of the direct companies I can count below 20 prominent companies in life and/or general and takaful, with about half that have life and general (there are a few more very small companies that have very little presence). In my experience only very large life companies will need 2-3 recent graduate Actuarial Students per year, and this is if they are being aggressive. So the top 5-10 life companies may want 2.5 grads per year, general even less so maybe 1 per year for the top 5. This makes sense too, if a life actuarial dept has only 20 staff then about 10% taken in as grads is realistic, if a little optimistic for the smaller companies.

My count is 25 (life) + 5 (general) + 5 (reinsurance) + 5 (consulting) = 40 positions for graduates.

If you want to estimate the number of people competing for these few positions, do not just count those who leave school. There are plenty of people who graduated in actuarial science in previous years, and are looking for these jobs too (whether or not they have found a job elsewhere). They could be holding out for actuarial jobs for a year, they could be working for a year or more and be hunting for actuarial jobs for several years.

6 schools in Australia teach Actuarial Science. There are 20 or more combined in the UK and Ireland. In America I don't even want to count (because exams are external, in theory you could do any major from Maths, Business, Econ, Finance, Stats, Comp Sci, even if there is no formal Actuarial major), let's say 60. Then you have a few from Hong Kong, Singapore but I won't count these. Let's say you have 10 Malaysian actuarial graduates from each school and half come back to compete for these jobs, that's well over 400 people.

can't really answer this because we didn't really have a 'batch' at uni, and I wouldn't know everybody

e.g. if you start on the same day as me but study two degrees you could be my classmate but i graduate earlier than you, so you're not my graduating batch even though we started together

when i graduated there were 9 or 10 people in total, even though my school probably produces 50-100 actuarial graduates per year.

it would be easier to estimate how many vacancies there were or hires made, and therefore how many graduates got into the actuarial field