Actuaries: The Myths, The Reality
The Myth: Actuaries are number crunchers with their noses in statistics books.
The Reality: Actuaries are risk professionals with a strong quantitative focus. The nature of our training and education provides broader expertise than most insurance professionals. Our training gives us exposure to all of these areas and readily complements the skills of an accountant, attorney, underwriter and even marketer. This is why we can hold positions throughout financial services organizations and are well suited for the executive suites.
The Myth: Actuaries' expertise suits them solely for insurance or insurance-related fields.
The Reality: The training we receive in risk and stochastic analysis, and our sensitivity to probabilistic issues and uncertainty, suits us to work in many areas outside of insurance. For instance, banking, securities, and energy require the strong quantitative skills and risk analysis focus that all actuaries bring to the table. Employers, if they think out of the box, could conceivably employ actuaries in such diverse industries as retail and advertising.
The Myth: Actuaries are math geeks best suited to back room pencil-pushing.
The Reality: Actuaries are out in front more and more often, meeting with clients, closing deals and dispelling this very myth. The recent explosion in actuarial consulting, the increase in the utilization of actuaries by brokers and reinsurers and other changes in the profile of the "typical" actuary have pushed today's actuary further and further from this lingering stereotype.
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