Actuarial Careers
Careers with a degree in Actuarial Science
Actuarial work can be very highly paid, but the professional examinations are very
demanding. See our interview
reports for a range of feedback on actuarial interviews.
WHAT SKILLS DO ACTUARIAL SCIENCE GRADUATES DEVELOP ON THEIR COURSES?
Employers will consider problem solving, thinking logically and high level quantitative and numerical skills as obvious acquisitions on an actuarial degree. You will also gather specific knowledge such as statistical methods, applied mathematics and actuarial technical skills such as Prophet. See our skills section at www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/skillsmenu.htm
DESTINATIONS OF KENT ACTUARIAL SCIENCE GRADUATES (EU Students).
These statistics only cover the first six months after graduation. The latest destinations for all subjects (1999-last year) including postgraduates can be found at www.kent.ac.uk/careers/fdrbases/destinations.htm
YEAR |
07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 |
POSTGRADUATE STUDY
|
2 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
EMPLOYMENT
|
10 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 8 |
SELF EMPLOYED Actuarial Analyst - Towers Watson, Director - Authentic Fashion |
- | - | - | 2 | - |
VOLUNTARY WORK Teaching Assistant - School, College, Research Assistant - Village Service Trust |
- | - | 3 | - | 1 |
| NOT AVAILABLE to work or not seeking work e.g. taking time out to travel | 3 | - | - | 3 | 1 |
STILL LOOKING for work or study 6 months after graduation |
1 | - | 1 | - | 1 |
| UNKNOWN | 4 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 6 |
| TOTAL | 20 | 22 | 21 | 22 | 19 |
Destinations of Kent MSc Applied Actuarial Science graduates
|
|
Destinations of Kent Postgraduate Diploma in Actuarial Science graduates
- Aviva Life - Actuarial Advisor
- Aviva - Actuarial Analyst/Tr. actuary
- Rich May Commodities & Freight Services - Ass't Acounts Mngr/Inst. Of Actuaries
- Aon Hewitt Actuarial - Associate Consultant
- The Phoenix Group - Actuarial Technician
- Codean Financial - Quantitative Analyst
- Fidelity Investments - Performance Analyst
- Mercer - Actuarial Technical Support Administrator
- Cass Business School - MSc Actuarial Mgmt
- Univ. of Kent - MSc Applied Actuarial Science (5)
Example Actuarial CV
www.kent.ac.uk/careers/cv/actuary-cv.htm
Interviews for actuarial traineeships
If you have been to an interview or assessment centre recently please fill in our interview report form to help other students.
Basic questions asked
- Why did you choose to study at Kent University? (Towers Watson) (Grant Thornton) (KPMG)
- Why did you choose your degree subject? (AXA)
- Why did you choose your A-level subjects? (Mercer)
- Why did you choose to do a Masters in Statistics? (KPMG)
- Why did you choose to do a Masters? (Hewitt)
- Explain what you have been doing at university over the last two weeks? (AXA)
Personality and Self Awareness questions
- What motivates you? (KPMG)
- What de-motivates you? (KPMG)
- Describe yourself in three words? (Hewitt)
- How would your friends describe you in three words? (Hewitt)
- Tell me about yourself. (Grant Thornton)
- What other skill/talents do you have? (Grant Thornton)
- What activities do you do in your spare time? (Prudential)
- What skills and strengths do I have that would be important for the job? (KPMG)
- Why should we employ you? (KPMG)
Competency questions. See our page on How to Answer Competency-based Questions
- Teamwork
- Can you name a time when you have worked in a team? (Mercer)
- Describe a situation where you have worked as part of a team. What was your role? (Britannic Assurance)
- When have you been part of a team that has had to change its approach to achieve something? (AXA)
- Describe a time when you offered support in a team you were a part of. (Mercer)
- Name a time when you have been working as part of a team and didn't agree with the direction the group was taking? (KPMG)
- What are the characteristics of a good team? (Britannic Assurance)
- Describe a situation where you helped out in a group. (Mercer)
- Projects and targets
- Explain a project which I have had to plan and see through to a successful conclusion. (Deloitte)
- Describe a project that you have seen through to completion. (Britannic Assurance)
- When have you set a difficult or demanding target for yourself? (Deloitte)
- Name a time when I have had to complete a task or project to a particularly high standard? (Hewitt)
- Describe a situation where you have had to research and plan a project through to a successful conclusion? (Mercer)
- Problem solving
- When have you had to come up with a new solution to a problem? (Deloitte)
- When have you had to deal with and analyse complex data. (Deloitte)
- Describe a time when you solved a problem innovatively. (Towers Watson)
- Explain a complex problem in layman terms. (Mercer)
- Flexibility
- When have you had to change your approach to achieve something? (AXA)
- Name a time when you have had to change your tack to achieve something? (KPMG)
- Describe a situation where you have to give up on something as it really wasn't working? (KPMG)
- Describe a situation where you have gone through change; How did you handle this? (Britannic Assurance)
- Achievements
- What has been your biggest accomplishment in the last 18 months? (AXA)
- What is your greatest achievement? (KPMG)
- What is your greatest non-academic achievement? (Mercer)
- Other
- When have you have had to try and change someone's point of view. (Deloitte)
- Describe a situation where you have put other’s needs before your own. (Britannic Assurance )
- When have you had to motivate yourself to do something you did not want to do? (AXA)
- Name a time when I have had to deal with disappointment? (Hewitt)
- Describe a situation where you have had to deal with failure? (Mercer)
- Name a time when I have had to make a difficult decision? (Hewitt)
- Name a time when I've had to work under a lot of pressure? (KPMG)
- Describe a time when you exceeded a client or customer’s expectations of you. (Towers Watson)
- Describe a situation where you have been in disagreement with someone? (Mercer)
- Describe a situation where you have had to balance work and social activities? (Mercer)
- Describe a time when you faced opposition in making a decision. (Mercer)
- Name a time when you have had to communicate something complex to someone else?
Commercial Awareness Questions. See our page on How to answer Commercial Awareness Questions
- Why do you want to be an Actuary? (AXA) (Mercer) (Prudential) (Hewitt) (Grant Thornton)
- Why do you want to work for us? (Mercer) (Towers Watson)
- What do you know about us? (Mercer) (KPMG)
- Where else are you applying to? (Hewitt), (Deloitte), (Mercer) (AXA) (Grant Thornton)
- How would you choose between companies if you were to receive more than one offer? (Deloitte)
- How do you think KPMG would differ from large actuarial consultancies like Mercer and Hewitt? (KPMG)
- What areas of actuarial research are you interested in? (Grant Thornton)
- What makes a business successful? (Deloitte)
- What businesses have interested you? (Deloitte)
- What other news stories have interested you? (Deloitte)
- Talk about a successful company, why I think it is successful, what is its future? etc. (KPMG)
- Talk about an unsuccessful company, why it is unsuccessful, what it can do? etc. (KPMG)
- What do you know about general insurance? (Grant Thornton)
- What do you know about stochastic modelling? (Grant Thornton)
- What do you know about pensions? (Mercer)
- Give me an overview of the pensions industry in the recent past. (Mercer)
Questions on the actuarial exams!
- What do you know about the Actuarial exams? (Mercer)
- How long do you think it will take you to qualify as an Actuary? (Hewitt) (AXA)
- How many hours do you study in a week? (Prudential)
- How do you think you will cope with the Actuarial exams? (Mercer)
- How will you cope with the hard task of working whilst studying for exams? (AXA)
- How would you deal with failing the institute exams? (Deloitte)
Questions on the assessment centre. See our page on second interviews
- What role do you think you took in the group exercise? (Mercer)
- How well do you think the group performed? (Mercer)
- Who was the best team member in the group and why? (Mercer)
- What would you do differently if attempting the group task again? (Mercer)
- How do you think you performed in the interview? (Mercer)
- What would you like to have done differently in the interview? (Mercer)
- Have you attended other similar assessment centres and how do they compare to Mercer's? (Mercer)
Tests given to candidates. See our practice aptitude tests
- Numerical, verbal and personality tests all done online before the interview. Numerical test, 30 minutes multiple choice data extraction type questions. Verbal test about 30 minutes, read passage and say whether statements were true, false or couldn't say from the passage. (AXA)
- Numerical and verbal. Both were 30 minutes, verbal test involved reading a passage and saying whether statements are true, false or can't tell from the passage. Numerical test involved analysing small amounts of data, multiple choice answers. (Deloitte)
- Numerical and written tests. Each 45 minutes long. The numerical was the usual extract data from graphs, pie charts. It gets more complex as you go along but from what I’ve seen it’s not important to finish and more often than not you are not expected to finish given the time constraint as they also look at your accuracy. The written test was a situation of a client who has a policy and dies and you as an actuary have to give your opinion on how the money should be distributed. The individual who dies has a child who is below eighteen, one over, a spouse who seems like they would be self-dependent on their own and a mother who needs support. (Hewitt)
- Numerical and written tests. Numerical and written both lasted 45 minutes, numerical test was extracting data from tables, multiple choice answers. Written test was to write a report from notes given concerning a client. (Hewitt)
- Verbal reasoning test. 25mins link to example questions was given in invite to interview email. (KPMG)
- Verbal. 35mins for 35 questions. Reading a passage and then answering questions about that passage. (Mercer)
- Verbal reasoning test. 35mins, questions involved reading a passage and answering multiple choice questions relating to that passage. (Mercer)
- Numerical and written tests. 45 minutes each. The numerical test was the interpretation of graphs and pie charts and the questions get harder as you go along. The written test was one of those where you are given a paragraph and you are supposed to say if 'true', 'false', or 'cant tell' given a set of questions, and they get trickier as you go long. (Prudential)
- Numerical on-line . Verbal on-line. (Towers Watson)
Group exercises. See our page on assessment centre exercises
- Nails exercise: Balance as many nails as possible on another nail which has been hammered into a piece of wood. Blindfold exercise: Given different shapes in different colours and told to identify the missing shapes and in what colours. Blindfolded so you couldn’t see. Describe shape to others in the group and ask the assessors, what colour they were. (Britannic Assurance)
- Group task was to choose a famous person to be the CEO of a company, had 10 minutes to prepare individually then 1 minute each to present to the rest of the group why our person would be suitable then 20 minutes discussing and coming up with a person to be CEO. (Hewitt)
It seems like this particular company doesn't change much of their recruitment strategy from year to year because when I went for the assessment centre, most of what I had read from the report on this kent career website was there. With this particular group exercise however, you need to make sure that you are up to date with important people in society so that you are able to contribute sufficiently to the discussions as to why a particular individual should or should not be CEO. Also people tend to be very competitive so as to make their suggestion be the 'CEO' of the company. If it so happens that you have not heard of the individual that one of the group members suggests, make sure you take down notes as they explain about. (Hewitt) - Group task was to choose a famous person to be the CEO of a company, had 10 minutes to prepare individually then 1 minute each to present to the rest of the group why our person would be suitable then 20 minutes discussing and coming up with a person to be CEO. (Hewitt)
- Group task to design a home page for a company just venturing into e-commerce. Also choose an IT company to make the website and decide on how to publicise the new website. (KPMG)
- Had to figure out if a company should change suppliers. (Mercer)
- Group exercise in which we were supposed to be members of a board of directors for a clothing company decided in where to locate a new production plant, working from information given on sheets. (Mercer)
- You are told to assume there has been a plane crash and you, the people at the assessment centre are the only survivors. You are given a list of items that you have managed to salvage from the crash. You are first supposed to rank them individually, given 10 minutes after which you are supposed to discuss with the group, and agree on how you choose to rank them in order of importance. You are also supposed to agree on someone who will present what you agree on to the interviewers. It however seems like the decision made is not important, but rather how you interact as a group. (Prudential)
- In tray exercise. Basically computer program on a laptop and I was given a list of messages which had to be put into the correct trays and prioritised. Then I had to list actions to take in response to them and write two of the responses. About 1.5hrs (KPMG)
Other components
- We were asked to write a report advising on whether a company should be restructured or not given some info. We were also asked to present our recommendations to the board. (Britannic Assurance)
- There was a presentation organising a media event. You had to choose a suitable media event and 3 celebrities who you think you could use in that event giving reasons why you think they are suitable. Expect lots of questions to do with, for example, why you did not choose a certain alternative. (Hewitt)
- Presentation exercise was ten minutes organising a celebrity dinner party, with three guests of my choice for a fly on the wall article for a journalism competition. (Hewitt)
- Pre-prepared presentation on a company that interested me. (KPMG)
- Had to present a topic individually that was sent beforehand. Had to complete an income statement. (Mercer)
- Just introducing ourselves to the rest of the group at the beginning. (Mercer)
- Given a tour of the offices and taken to a pub for lunch with some of the trainees. (Mercer)
- There was a sort of case study where you own a restaurant and you are to pick between opening a new restaurant or renovating the one you already have and there are so many things to take into consideration such as competition, and you are also expected to show how you allocate the funds. (Prudential)
Tips
- The tests were both very tight for time so you need to work quickly through them. (Deloitte)
- Be calm, cool and collected. Participate as much as you can. (Britannic Assurance )
- Be prepared to talk in detail about anything you mention as interviewer seemed to always probe for more detailed explanations, even to the simplest questions! Do not try to drive there – use train/tubes!! (Grant Thornton)
- Prepare thoroughly for the presentation exercise with a lot of extra research. (Hewitt)
- Research thoroughly recent relevant business stories and have an opinion on them. (KPMG)
- Prepare thoroughly for the presentation.. With the in tray exercise, do not take too long reading all of the messages as time is really tight. (KPMG)
- Certainly have a think through examples of times when you demonstrated the competencies that they are looking for. (Mercer)
- Read up on the business as much as possible. Practice your presentation in front of people so you aren't stumbling. (Mercer)
- Relax and be friendly to the interviewers and other candidates. (Mercer)
- Seemed like you had done the hard work getting to the second interview and they were just seeing they would like to work you, so don't need to try and sell yourself as much. (Mercer)
- There is a lot of "good cop, bad cop play", so make sure you focus and leave a good impression on everyone even those interviewers who don't seem 'interested'! (Prudential)
- The interviewer was from the graduate recruitment team and made a point that they didn't know any of the technical aspects about the position. The main focus was on the applicant's employability skills. (Towers Watson)
- Be calm, cool and collected. Participate as much as you can.
- Research thoroughly recent relevant business stories and have an opinion on them.
Comments
- Very lengthy application process. CV, application form, phone interview, three online tests, first interview, two day assessment centre. (AXA)
- The whole event was well organised and it created an excellent impression of the company. (Britannic Assurance )
- Interviewer was very friendly and not intimidating. (Deloitte)
- There is a lot of scope for you to say whatever you like. So take some control over the direction of the conversation to highlight your best qualities. (Grant Thornton)
- The company seemed very impressive but, it was a very formal atmosphere throughout the day. (Hewitt)
- Everyone was very friendly and relaxed. (KPMG)
- Good overall impression, everyone very friendly. (KPMG)
- The assessment centre was very laid back and the people friendly. (Mercer)
- Everyone was very friendly, interview was very relaxed and not an interrogation. (Mercer)
- Very relaxed informal office environment, everyone was very friendly and seemed very happy working for Mercer. (Mercer)
- Great company! You have to work for the position!! (Prudential)
- The interviewer was very strict at keeping to the time limit of 40 minutes. (Towers Watson)
Links
- University of Kent Vacancy Database www.kent.ac.uk/careers/jobs/index.htm
- Institute of Actuaries www.actuaries.org.uk You can open the list of actuarial vacancies here
- Inside Careers Actuarial Careers Guide www.insidecareers.co.uk Excellent Guide to Actuarial Careers and Employers
- Chartered Insurance Institute www.cii.co.uk now has a new website about insurance careers called Discover Risk www.discoverrisk.co.uk
- The Emerald Group www.emerald-group.com offer entry level positions in to the actuarial profession and the students do not need to have experience within an actuarial role. Also able to help students find placements by putting them in contact with companies that offer summer internships or placement years
- Acumen Resources www.acumen-resources.com specialise in Actuarial Recruitment
- GAAPS www.gaaps.com Actuarial Recruitment Agency. Attended the Kent Actuarial Careers Fair
- Hays Actuarial Recruitment www.hays.co.uk/job/insurance-jobs/actuarial/index.htm
- Darwin Rhodes www.darwinrhodes.com specialist recruitment consultancy serving the Actuarial market.
- Newton Recruitment www.newtonrecruitment.com recruitment consultancy specialising in actuarial careers
- Insurance Jobs Board www.insurancejobsboard.com insurance industry vacancies
- Insurance Jobs www.insurancejobs.co.uk has an actuarial vacancies section.
- The Supply Curve www.thesupplycurve.com job board dedicated exclusively to employment opportunities for Economists, Statisticians and Econometricians
- Hillman Saunders www.hillmansaunders.com specialist recruiters for Insurance, Financial Services, Secretarial and Human Resources
Some major Actuarial Employers
- Mercer www.mercer.com Consultants: includes HR Consulting and Investment Consulting. Very pleasant and friendly working environment.
- Hymans Robertson www.hymanscareers.co.uk
- Axa http://jobs.axa.co.uk/graduates/actuarial.html Attended the Kent Actuarial Careers Fair
- Deloitte http://careers.deloitte.com/united-kingdom/students/csc_general.aspx?CountryContentID=12531 Attended the Kent Actuarial Careers Fair
- First Actuarial www.firstactuarial.co.uk/Careers/WorkingWithFA Attended the Kent Actuarial Careers Fair
- Towers Watson www.towerswatson.com/careers/united-kingdom/graduates.asp Global consultants formed by a merger of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt
- Punter Southall www.puntersouthall.com Provide actuarial services to occupational pension schemes and related employers.
- Barnett Waddingham www.barnett-waddingham.co.uk Consultants
- Aon Hewitt www.aongraduates.co.uk
- Standard Life http://ukgroup.standardlife.com/html/careers/careers.html
- Alexander Forbes www.alexanderforbes.co.uk
- Austin Professional Resourcing (APR) www.aprllp.com specialises in providing high quality interim actuarial solutions: temporary extra support or specialist skills in the areas of life assurance and pensions.
- Redington www.redington.co.uk independent Investment Consultancy providing innovative, clear, cutting-edge advice to institutional investors
RISK MANAGEMENT
See our new page on this at www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/risk.htm
Vacation Work
The Institute of Actuaries www.actuaries.org.uk lists employers with vacation work and work experience opportunities in the Careers & Jobs section of their website
Actuarial science graduates can also enter a wide range of other careers which utilise their mathematical skills including
- Accountancy www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/accountancy.htm
- Banking www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sitebank.htm
- Insurance www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/insurance.htm
- Tax Inspectorate www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sitesgov.htm#FINANCE good area if your A level grades are weak as they don't select on these.
- Teaching mathematics www.kent.ac.uk/careers/siteach.htm
- Risk management, statistics and operational research.
See our Mathematics careers page www.kent.ac.uk/careers/Maths.htm for details of these
Once you have read this, visit the Careers Centre (in Keynes Driveway). You can browse in there as you would a library and ask at the help desk if you need help.
Bruce Woodcock - Careers Adviser for Actuarial Science
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts--for support rather than illumination! Andrew Lang 43.78% of statistics are meaningless. There are three kinds of people; those who can count and those who can't. |
Last fully updated 2012