Actuary?

Not sure where to post this but can you become an actuary with an engineering degree? If so, what are the steps involved?

Thanks

Interested in actuary now, what happened

I'm a trainee actuary with an engineering degree. Of course it's possible. I'd recommend it to anyone.

how did you do it?

how's your work like? lot's of client interaction?

Engineering is a great degree if you decide to move into the actuarial world. Engineering is about using maths to model physical systems. As an actuary you'll be building mathematical models all the time. If you're interested in business but also enjoy or are good at maths then actuarial is the way forward.

I really enjoy my work. I work in insurance in Pricing and It's my understanding that this is one of the more technical areas of actuarial work. Call me biased but I would think it's got to be the most interesting. The impact you can have on the business is phenomenal. This does depend on the company. Its very easy when you're a new graduate to be drawn to the familiar names and assume they must be the best employers but I think you'll do more and have a better experience at a smaller organisation. Thats backed up by colleagues who have come from bigger companies.

My 'clients' are internal, mainly underwriters and yes there is a lot of interaction with them. I guess my manager is a client. He gives me a task, I have to come up with a plan to tackle that task, talk him through that plan and share results and my suggested recommendations with him before taking that to his manager and ultimately the business- it's a lot of responsibility to get so early on in my career. There are some actuarial roles in insurance companies with little interaction with other departments but that's not true for pricing! Reserving, for example doesn't look so great. It can be frustrating to work with underwriters at times as they're not as technically minded but it's a nice challenge!

I work on big pricing projects that will have a big impact on our rates so there's a lot stakeholders within the company who need to buy into what we/I'm doing as there's a lot of risk involved and ultimately it's the most senior people in the company ( incl. CEO, actuarial director, finance director) that I present my analysis, recommendations and impact analysis to. To get some idea of scale, I recently saw the budget figures for next year and the project I've been working on for the last 6 months as the sole analyst is predicted to bring in £millions in extra revenue.

yeah I spoke to some guy today who worked in the actuary field for 15 years and he highly recommended the career to me, although he mentioned having to do exams to become a fully qualified actuary (7 exams in his time apparently? not sure if this is still the same now?) and said that he never actually passed them but he did manage to do get on as an actuary (just not fully qualified) and worked in real estate.

I'm considering it tbh as engineering seems kinda boring now? (idk for sure until i do an engineering internship) to be honest and i feel i can get more outself doing something more worthwhile like actuary

Yh don't disregard engineering, explore your options. The link that someone pasted above will tell you about exams etc. I get 1 day off a week for study for exams which is pretty standard. I took exams end of September and will start taking my weekly study day (actually 2 half days) for April 2015 exams in mid- November and I'll have 2 weeks or so right before the exams off as a study- that's not affecting my holiday allowance ... So the support is pretty sweet.

Thanks, one last question ....are the majority of the companies in London?