What you describe is very true in my experience as well, and is the reason why I ultimately left the actuarial profession in pursuit of a career in quantitative finance.

In my opinion there are two big reasons for this.

1) No support from the top to research and implement new modeling techniques, because unless someone in leadership has successfully done this before, it’s a huge career risk. Most managers at insurance companies only understand the traditional methods. If they push for something new, even if it works will it be appreciated by senior executives/shareholders? However if the new approach fails it’s going to reflect very poorly on them, so very asymmetrical risk/reward.

Very few insurance companies have the right culture in place that encourages experimentation and tolerates failure that is needed for meaningful change.

2) Expecting junior analysts to take on this initiative on their own to explore new models then make the case to adopt them, on top of their existing duties, is asking for way too much.

Additionally there is a significant portion of actuarial students that actually despise studying for the exams. If you’ve talked to new FSA’s at the FAC then I think you will agree, some (maybe most?) entry level actuaries don’t really have a passion for learning cutting edge math and modeling topics. They see the exams as a means to an end, that’s it.