It doesn't really matter what subjects you take for your A-Levels as long as you take Math and Further Math. Maybe if you take Econs you will cover your Micro and Macro Econs for your first year of your Actuarial degree course. And well if you're aiming for the top unis A in science > A in arts.

You recognition as a qualified actuary depends solely on your association with the actuarial body you took the test wth and who certifies you.

You won't be tied to the book unless you really want to complete all the actuarial papers. With the knowledge you learned from your degree course, you can easily go to any financial, investment, marketing or business line.

1) Actuaries aren't focused on the insurance industry. They specialization is basically risk management and in order to do that they have to have a wide range of knowledge. As long as you work as an 'actuary' you pay in roughly the same regardless of what industry you work in. Of course some companies demand more skills from you and some less and there may be a little difference, but just a little in general.

2)Actuarial grads don't learn accounts as far as i know, at least they don't have to. Accounts is not needed for them to do their job. Actuarial grads don't learn some stuff finance grads learn. Finance is basically managing the company's finances and an actuary is risk management and they help out in estimating prices, returns of investments, premiums, marketing etc.

3)More papers you pass higher your qualification

4)You are not any more important than the window cleaner.

It really depends on the company and the actual job/position you're applying for.

No. Both are stingy universities. They don't have aid for foreign student unless you're extremely exceptional, which in such a case you wouldn't be doing ADP now.

No

There see, someone in the field has spoken. You can get a job without the papers. Please don't listen to the rubbish that an actuarial degree is a useless piece of paper.

Why didn't you take Further Maths?

Haih, let them say what they wanna say. In the end it's up to actuary wannabes to actually do some research on the job prospects so they can leave then wannabe stage and get on course to be someone really working in the risk management field. Anyone who has tried any actuarial papers and speak to people really working in this field know that there can't possibly be an over supply of actuaries, now and in the future.

Btw, decided where you wanna go already?

Where's the Add Math? Actuarial science is all about math. Actuarial science is applying math to make future decisions based on date collected in the past. Whether accounts, hr, economics and all is essential to become a successful corporate executive or not is a different story. Actuarial math is the quantitative part of businesses and that means math, math and more math. All my actuarial subjects are either pure math subjects or applied math with alot of probability. Accounts has really nothing to do with the actuarial field. Economics and Finance are related and the related parts are mostly quantitative too, in other words, applying more complicated math. That Perdagangan subject is just a bunch of useless business term. All my actuarial exams are all math too (SOA here). Wanna disagree? Don't bother, just take the exams and see for yourselves, in fact you can download sample papers online. You wanna believe people who haven't studied for the actuarial exams you and answer based on hearsay, well that's your choice not to research properly and you're in for a big shock during your studies.

I'm talking about the need to take add maths so that you have the basics for differentiation, integration and trigonometry. It helps alot to study it slowly for two years and making your foundation rock solid before you take actuarial science in college. And I say that " Perdagangan subject is just a bunch of useless business terms" because I took the paper and that's really what it is.

I'm aware of the Economics and Finance credit which can be fulfilled by relatively easy or introductory course. A-Levels Econs is already enough of the Economics VEE. The most basic Finance course in my former uni fufills the Coporate Finance VEE. Accounts has absolutely nothing to do with the actuarial field. And the math I'm dealing with is a tough as as what the Engineering students do. I don't know about physics. Well the Malaysian students in my former uni were either doing actuarial science or engineering, so I do know at least that much.

Do you know what accounting is?

ps: Anyway, I'm not interested in trying to convince anyone any further that accounting is nor part of the actuarial field. Not trying to be lanci, just that I've done my part to summarize what I've learned so far since I'm doing an actuarial degree myself. To anyone who is interested in going into this field as well, it's you can either do more research beforehand or discover it sooner or later during your studies.

This post has been edited by mumeichan: Aug 9 2010, 09:49 PM

I've not graduated and I'm only preparing for my first paper. But I've already gone through the detail syllabus of all my subjects and also the actuarial papers. My friends have all passed at least two papers and the seniors have passed 4. Some are even working as full time employees in consultancy firms already. And also, even if I didn't know all these people, that actuarial doesn't involve accounting is a simple fact that can be easily reasoned if one knows what actuarial and accountancy means.

There is certainly a paper on Financial Math and Coporate Finance but there is no paper on financial reporting because that's not what actuaries do. Actuaries don't analyze financial statements, accountants do that. Accountants don't do date sampling that's not their job and it won't benefit them to study high level mathematics. Accounts maintain the flow of business through the records of all transactions that happen in a company. It's doesn't involve alot of math(the hardest is areas and gradients of simple graphs) and all calculations are done using computers.

An actuary doesn't analyze financial statements. All the financial terms he'll ever need to know to use in the mathematical models and method of analysis he has learned is though within his actuarial subjects. There is no need to even take the most basic accounting course to figure that out.

The most basic job description I can give about an actuary is that they count that 10% of the policy holders are going to get into an accident and if the company need at least 1 million to pay them all of or else they are screwed. Or he might calculate that the value of a property is set to raise at 3% per annum. Or that 15% of Malaysia like Coke Pepsi and 7UP only. It hardly matters if the company doesn't even have accounts. The accountant on the other hand analyzes where the cash is coming from, which ares are giving problem, which areas have delays, where payments are going, is there excessive wastage somewhere, what should be declared as what for taxation, what are potential assets and liabilities which are so apparent, managing the value of assets and liabilities and so on. And at the end of the day the managers and directors make the calls. It's not the actuaries problem if they decide to prepare just 9 million for claims and take the risk, it's not the actuaries concern if they decide to screw the account to evade taxes, it's not the actuaries concern if they decide to label an appraising piece of land as a liability.

This post has been edited by mumeichan: Aug 10 2010, 12:03 AM

Whatever you're studying, it's not actuarial science. How are they going to be able to manage all that? Simple, they don't. I'm sorry to say, your lecturer is misinformed about the actuarial profession. I'm not saying the that a person with an actuarial degree or a member of an actuarial society is stuck to a certain kind of job, different companies structure their human resource differently, that's for sure. However, when talking about the field of actuarial science and the profession of an actuary in a bigger companies and consultancy firms when job responsibilities are kept specialized and separate I know you're wrong.

I can be so sure because all other hi bye acquaintance aside, I've a friend who I've spoken to in great detail about her job scope as an actuary from Great Eastern, London and one of my professor is holds multiple senior positions in many actuarial societies in US, including the SOA and CAS and has held a very senior position as both an actuary and an auditor in an insurance company. I will probably not meet someone as authoritative as him in the actuarial field until I reach a senior position in a big company.

I gain nothing really from writing on this forum. I don't tell you who I am, where I study or even who my professor really is. I'm not putting anyone down nor am I trying to boast. I could just be a keyboard warrior posting nonsense and the truth is I studied for some time, dropped out of college and I'm now starting back again. The reason I'm posting here is because I've seen and met many people who regret halfway during their course of study and also after they start work because they have been ingrained with misinformation stemming from erroneous hearsay and they're lost when then reality of the situation hits the fantasy in their head. I'm not at all surprised that people think accounts is part of the actuarial field. I've also heard countless comments that claim accounts is part of the actuarial field. In fact, I was studying to take the CAT exams a few years back. I myself and lucky I met some people who woke me up. My post alone isn't going to fully convince anyone, but it's a different voice from what's normally heard and I hope I spurs a person to look deeper into their area of interest and consult more credible and authoritative sources then you and me.

It's pointless if you keep making more and more elaborate statements about the same thing which I say if not true and ask me "how are they going to do that?". We'll just go around in circles since my point is they don't do all of that. It's just going to be whose words over whose and who gets the last say.

We're not arguing about anything, me, jpysh, sear and the other are all taking out time to type what we've have learnt so far. If you're already working and wish to tell us how your perspective changed from a student to an actuary then we're all ears.

If you're not interested in contributing anything, why don't you just stfu and masturbate to porn.

Well stuff like finance, engineering and computer science all involve alot of math. And those math will serve as the foundation for your actuarial papers, that is if you wanna be an actuary through the professional qualification route. Of course they are many kind of jobs that are called actuary and many different titles doing actuarial work, and difference companies have different requirements. The main question if do you want to learn actuarial math or not? Whether you're gonna be called an actuary, a risk manager, a financial consultant, a manager, the big boss or whatnot comes later. At this stage, you gotta ask yourself what you wanna learn first before you can see what you can be with what you have learned. Like I said the actuarial fields is all about math used to calculate probabilities and values for business to you. Other majors like computer science and engineering provide the pure math basics. While degrees like finance provide the financial management and investment parts. But the actual actuarial models are part of these course and you've gotta study them yourself. These stuff makes up some of the actuarial papers.

[quote=tanjinjack,Aug 18 2010, 12:16 AM]
Just a bit correction there. Computer Science does Discrete Maths while Engineering involves mainly calculus, differential equations and numerical/computational methods.

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Added on August 18, 2010, 12:23 am

Oh ya, discrete math is not needed for actuarial science. But well don't computer science use calculus and linear algebra also, vectors, trigo, matrices and stuff? I see that alot when I read about programming(I do abit myself) and yea I know comp sc is not programming, so I could have assumed wrongly. For Eng, the calculus, differential equations, linear algebra stuff is the same. The probability for engineering books I see also cover the same probability topics. But I do believe engineers learn quite abit of number theory, those CRT, polynomials, manipulations, residues, system of equations stuff, series and stuff right? Correct me if I'm wrong. Well, so all those stuff also is not needed for the actuarial papers. Well, if I'm mistaken again correct me thx.

Substantial amount is a dangerous word.

Algebra is a wide area, you will do linear algebra dealing with matrices, vectors and solving linear systems, but nothing to do with complex algebra manipulations.

You'll learn pretty much as much calculus as you can in the undergraduate level. This serves as the foundation for the calculations you'll use in probability and the actuarial models, financial model and economic models. Don't think too much of the work model, it's well just a logical set of calculations put together to get a certain value. Like say, you know GDP? GDP is not some natural value that exist in this universe, it's a value humans created. So to calculate the GDP, we've to rely on the definition of it and what's supposed to go inside. Just an example, actuaries don't calculate GDP.

Probability, all the actual actuarial subjects are applied probability.

Statistic, well to get the probabilities of most things, we need statistical data right, that's as much as well learn. We don't learn statistics as deep as stats majors. In my uni, the statistics isn't applied, that means just the statistical theories and nothing applied to the actuarail profession itself.

Programming, different universities have different ideas on this. I've got to take 1 programming class, the most basic one. Isn't applied to the actuarial field. I still don't know how I'll use programming during my job though. Maybe this is for further study.

If you're gonna do it in UK, you need to take Further Maths, they won't teach you from scratch. In US, even if you didn't take Add Maths in SPM it's ok because you can just start from all the basic subjects.

Buy Spivak's "Calculus" it isn't really a calculus book, it's an analysis book. If you can do all the questions in that book on your own, then you're good enough to do actuarial math. There's no foundation better than that book.

No, I'm studying in the US.



This post has been edited by mumeichan: Aug 25 2010, 07:50 PM