A view from overseas

As some of you will be aiming to work overseas, I thought I'd share my view with you. My background:

Uni degree: Property Management
Exams: 11 exams with UK Institute of Actuaries
Experience: New Zealand, Australia, Dubai (now)

I'd like to tell you my story because I am not your standard actuarial student. This is to prove that as long as you are interested to be an actuary and got the capabilities to be one, you can become one. As you can see from my background, I didn't study a "related" degree, I am no Maths whizz and I don't think I am going to be filthy rich any time soon.

I first heard of the word actuary when I started looking for a job, I studied for the exams at home when I joined an insurance company who would pay for my studies. I got tired of exams (after only passing 2!) and switched to an IT/ Marketing job for a couple of years, which somehow proved to be quite useful for me personally. I later got an actuarial post with a consultancy where they utilised a lot of my programming skills, in fact I think that is why they hired me in the first place. From there I continued my exams and made good progress. I have recently married and started up a new life in Dubai, working in a reinsurance company, STILL continuing my exams.

So the morale of the story, you don't get stucked once you go into the actuarial profession, you can switch to other professions you like. The actuarial profession is very wide and is not confined to insurance companies only, there is also investment, pension funds, health systems, government departments, even weather forecasts!! As to what qualification you need to have to sit the exams, I saw a 16 years old sitting the exam once (his dad is an actuary), so I'd say no special qualification needed.

Of course, this is my experience overseas, it may be a different story in Malaysia.

I would also like to add my two cents about the "good in Maths" part. To become a good actuary you have to be very market conscious, your technical pricing maybe 100% sound but it doesn't mean your product will sell. Judgement is very important, if not more important than your maths! My actuarial manager once told me if he copied the competitor's pricing, our product will sell better than pure technical pricing. I studied no maths in uni and now finding the applications paper in the later stage of the course easier, I was told some maths whizz struggles with the applications paper in the end while passing the technical papers without any problems.

Also, I would like to urge you to be prepared to give a significant portion of your life away for a good 6 years if not more. Especially for the females out there, think about how it is going to affect your prospects for marriage and having kids. I say this because I see a lot of girls' relationship suffer because of the lack of time for love, and sadly end up single (and deemed "unapproachable" by most guys) when they qualify.

Ok, I hope you are still awake and I have given you some useful info about working in the actuarial profession overseas.

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Added on April 6, 2010, 8:02 pmOne more point to make if you are in it for the money.........

In Dubai, my husband, a civil engineer, earns DDOOUUBBLLEE my salary. He just got his job this year too, so you may as well do engineering!

This post has been edited by dubai_gal: Apr 6 2010, 08:02 PM

You can work in the actuarial field without any exams, especially in places where accredited university actuarial courses are not available. A lot of companies hire statistics grad to fill actuarial position. Most companies will hire actuarial students who are determined to go through the whole exam system. However, you only advance to more senior roles after passing exams. Usually, you are stucked at manager level and cannot proceed to director level without being fully qualified.

As to the exam system, the UK system requires you to pass 15 papers to become fully qualified. The more exams you get, the more you will understand the work that you will be doing. You cannot learn all the technical knowledge by practising because too much technical knowledge will be assumed as people are given basic knowledge through the exams.

For info on the exams and how to sit the exams, visit this website
http://www.actuaries.org.uk/students

There are even some past year exams there you can look at if you want. Also bear in mind the syllabus can change over time, it used to be 9 exams 20 or so years ago, now it is 15.

You can find study guides for each exam here:
http://www.acted.co.uk/Html/paper_study_guide.htm

You also order materials from this site, if you reside in Malaysia you qualify for reduced rate fees and materials.

Please bear in mind that I am not working in Malaysia and I do not know how they hire over there. From experience, companies overseas hire whoever they think is suitable, just like some engineers will get into investment banking jobs.

I graduated from the grand University of Auckland! LOL

I have no actuarial degree and no actuarial exams when I got my first actuarial job. In fact, when I graduated from uni I have not heard of actuaries before.

The message I am trying to get across is...
An actuarial degree do not guarantee you a job in the industry; and
No actuarial degree and no actuarial paper do not mean you won't get a job in the profession if you are truly interested in the field.

My understanding of the "accredited university actuarial papers" vs the "institute exams":

- there are 15 (UK) institute exams to pass before you become a fully qualified actuary. Other institutes have different number of exams.

- one or two university papers map to an institute exam, if you get good enough grades in the university papers, you get exemption from the institute. i.e. you passed that institute exam as well. Otherwise, you still have to sit the institute exam if all you have is borderline university paper pass. "Good enough grade" varies by university.

- you can sit the institute papers without any uni degree, all you have to do is enrol as a student with the institute and study by correspondence.

The best outcome from a university actuarial course is you get 10 exemptions (maybe higher for some UK unis). However, if you don't get any, you still have a better standing when you start the institute exams as you already have the background knowledge from your university course. There are people ordering books without any prior knowledge or maths like me and try to self learn the hard way.

You can enrol with the institute of actuaries UK and sit exams in Malaysia, for a list of exam centres, see http://www.actuaries.org.uk/students/exams...entres_overseas

Of course you may want to check out other options first.