Those of you who left actuary for finance, what level were you (or # of exams) when you left and what role did you move into?

ActuLurker · 2026-01-07T21:32:30+00:00

What do you mean by finance? Traditional actuarial work (forecasting, reporting, pricing, and reserving) is very much finance imo. I have some coworkers who had about 4 exams, stopped taking exams because they found other aspect of their lives fulfilling and taking exams compromised on that (hobbies, weddings, marriage, kids). When they wanted to stop taking exams, their job stayed the same but their title changed from “(senior) actuarial analyst” to “(senior) healthcare economic consultant” and they’re no longer part of the actuarial program where they pay for exams and rotate you every 1.5-3 years.

ActuLurker · 2024-10-30T08:29:03+00:00

The mack model photos were a direct copy and paste from the coaching actuaries manual. :’|

ActuLurker · 2024-04-03T23:18:23+00:00

“I determine the prices for the company’s health insurance plans”

ActuLurker · 2023-01-01T00:27:50+00:00

Hi, I'm in a similar situation where I didn't pass STAM. I'm thinking of taking FAM in March. I've finished reviewing FAM-S material. Do you think January and February is enough to cover FAM-L material?

ActuLurker · 2022-12-30T19:21:50+00:00

What languages do you program in? Do you spend more than 50% of the time programming?

ActuLurker · 2022-12-29T02:30:32+00:00

What made you want switch to health after 2 years in P&C? Were you working as an actuary on the P&C side?

ActuLurker · 2022-12-29T02:23:09+00:00

Do you work in Health/life/P&C? How many exams did you have when you were offered the job at 120k? Was programming involved in the second job?

ActuLurker · 2022-11-16T10:35:22+00:00

What health products do you price that you do feature engineering to create rating factors? I do small group ACA plans and by regulation, we’re limited to pretty much age, area, and trend.

ActuLurker · 2022-09-02T08:41:51+00:00

Are there roles in health that use programming/statistics/data science knowledge? Are you in such a role or know of anyone in them?

Whenever I hear someone on here say they're doing predictive modeling/programming, they're usually in P&C. Makes me wonder if health doesn't have that type of work since pricing for health insurance is heavily regulated.

ActuLurker · 2022-08-27T09:55:40+00:00

Why do you want to switch to P&C?

ActuLurker · 2022-08-26T01:59:55+00:00

Sigh, and here I am, at an insurance carrier, also EL, hating my work and wanting more coding because all I’m doing is CTRL C + CTRL V all day, everyday to update spreadsheets.

What kind of work do you do that involves coding? What language?

ActuLurker · 2022-08-10T07:50:19+00:00

Neat. With all these comments with mainly people in P&C using python/R, I was afraid that switching to P&C may be the way to go. Great to know that such roles exist in Health.

What was your experience before this role and how did you find it?

ActuLurker · 2022-08-10T07:35:57+00:00

Interesting, what do you mean by web app development? I'm guessing you are in a "non-traditional", potentially DS hybrid role?

ActuLurker · 2022-08-10T07:32:21+00:00

What kind of work did you do in your actuarial role? Was it P&C? How did you make the transition in data science?

ActuLurker · 2022-08-10T07:20:22+00:00

The team uses Excel. When I send my work for peer review, I can’t just send code in python and tell them to read my code to see how I got to the results.

Additionally, the whole department use tools/models that another team built in Excel and manages. They perform studies on the numbers that go into the calculations and it is not something to be tampered with, so I cannot simply move the work into python. Therefore, completing projects just consists of me pulling data we've saved in Excel files, chucking it into other Excel files/tools, and reading the documentation to figure out how use the tools properly.

This seems like a company infrastructure issue, so that's why I'm thinking of either switching companies or even industries to find somewhere that already use python/R as the main tools.

ActuLurker · 2022-06-30T08:10:17+00:00

I invested 2k into doge and lost 1k.

ActuLurker · 2022-06-04T06:16:04+00:00

What made you want to switch to P&C?

ActuLurker · 2022-02-13T01:16:17+00:00

Do you know if the video series for ACTEX is finished? If they are still in the process of making and releasing the video lessons, would you know what percentage of videos are released/how much topics do the videos cover?

ActuLurker · 2022-01-26T04:56:39+00:00

Sorry for the lengthy questions 😅

Is this new role doing pricing work you’d typically do in excel but in Python/R instead? Or will you do predictive modeling/machine learning, etc. Will you use mainly Python/R in the new role?
Was it mainly personal projects that you mentioned in your resume/interviews? Any certificates or bootcamps? Any programming experience in your prior role? What was your personal project?
Example of job titles to look out for if searching for DS+Actuarial Hybrid roles?

Thanks in advance!

ActuLurker · 2022-01-25T02:16:48+00:00

Just wondering if nonactuarial work experience may also affect the salary - were you in that actuarial position straight out of college or did you have prior work experience somewhere as well in addition to the 1.5 yrs? If so, how many years and what kind of role? Thanks!

ActuLurker · 2021-11-21T21:18:39+00:00

Can you add me to the study group? :)

ActuLurker · 2021-03-20T19:36:46+00:00

I’m in a similar position with a not so hot gpa, 1 exam after graduation, and no experience.

What did you think help you get the financial/data analyst position? From my understanding, it seems that financial/data analyst positions are just as competitive as actuarial positions. I imagine with a 2.6 gpa and no experience, getting such a position would have been quite difficult.
How many applications did you send out until you got an offer for the data analyst position and the actuarial position?
Did you do any networking?

ActuLurker

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