Have you ever considered a career in actuarial services? If instead of a “Yes” or “No” answer, your response was “What are actuarial services?” then we are sure you are not the only one. Whilst careers such as teacher, lawyer, and accountant are all well known, and the path to becoming one fairly clear, the path to becoming an Actuary is less so.

That is why we are going to go through, first, what an actuary is and the important work they do, and then we will outline the skills you need to become an actuary and to follow a successful career in actuarial services.

What Does An Actuary Do?

It stands to reason that if you are going to consider a career as an actuary, it will help to know what they do. Actuaries work within the finance sector advising upon products such as investments, insurance and pensions. Their clients can include both businesses and private individuals.

Their primary role involves the assessment of risks, and they do this by using tools such as mathematical models, statistical models, historical data, and the analysis of trends, to name but a few. By bringing these skills to the fore, an actuary can advise their clients as to the level of risks involved in a given scenario, and that allows those clients to make better informed financial decisions.

As with any profession which carries a high degree of responsibility, actuaries need to have a significant skillset. However, rather than list every one of them, we have instead highlighted the most important of them below. We hope this makes it easier for anyone considering actuarial services as a career to evaluate if they have the key skills required.

Mathematical Skills: It should come as no surprise that the first skill we highlight that actuaries require is mathematics. Your work as an actuary will involve using numerical data and statistics to make calculations, build mathematical models, and the ability to apply statistics to real-world scenarios to make the most accurate assessment of any specific risk.

Analytical Skills: As well as knowing how to utilise the numbers, statistics, and data you have available, it will mean nothing if you cannot then make judgements about them thereafter. To do so will require an analytical mind that knows how to assess and analyse the information you have so that you can then make accurate risk assessments. An example is analysing health insurance claims data and spotting an increased trend in claims for a specific type of illness.

Attention To Detail: Whilst most professions require a good level of attention to detail, the work that an actuary does means that level is far higher. With all the statistics and data that an actuary processes having such importance to the recommendations they make, just one error could make these recommendations erroneous.  Given that the financial implications for clients could be significant, attention to detail for an actuary needs to be laser-focused.

Problem-Solving Skills: Although an actuary’s work will often be to present problems such as risks to a client, they are also part of finding solutions for their clients too. Specifically, an actuary will present mitigation actions that their clients can take to minimise or even eliminate any risks which have been identified and present them clearly so they can be understood.

Communication Skills: We have just mentioned a clear presentation of solutions to clients, and this forms part of the communication skills an actuary should have. Actuarial services need to explain complex and often complicated mathematical and statistical data and whether this is done in writing or verbally, an actuary should know how to communicate it all in a way that can be understood.