Can I get into actuarial profession with a Music degree...

My graduate CV was a one-pager. I agree with the logic of the TSR crew - graduates going for high-end roles (such as your actuarial analysts or investment bankers) will tend to have limited relevant experience in the profession. I found myself questioning why employers would want a detailed breakdown of ultimately irrelevant roles, aside from a mention of the relevant skills (communication, technical etc.) that I clearly demonstrated. You'll then be able to drill those skills home because you'll most likely have a competency-based interview.

Having said that, I did have to tinker quite a lot with page borders, compression of information and the lark to get that badboy to fit with a decent amount of white space and ARGH I HATE CVS

How far are you? You in any kind of job? If not I imagine you can put in a two-three week slog and finish the notes quite quickly. I finished the notes and couldn't remember half of it, but training myself on past exams sorted me out. It's all good.

I finished CT4 this afternoon

Yeah, I kind of agree with their logic, but I have five institutions in my "education" section, and even with only two jobs listed that's a whole page in 11.5 font and fairly small margins. It would be really hard for me to add on stuff from uni - even if I left off most of it. I did have a one-page CV for a while, but I kept getting rejected anyway and EVERYONE I talked to about it said, "Well, you have barely any of your experience listed on here, why is it only a page? Make it two," as though this was a really obvious thing to do. I think the vast majority of people have two-page CVs so I'm hoping it won't be a disadvantage to have mine the same. Although sometimes I wonder if I should cut it down again.

Man, I HATE geometric progressions.

By the way, are you asked for many proofs in the exam? They're the worst.

If it isn't possible to get it on one page without missing necessary information out then make it two pages. Common sense really

Geometric progressions? Dude how far in are you? Isn't that mainly section one stuff?

Nah you don't get asked for many proofs in CT1 IIRC. Any proofs asked will be relatively simple.

[...] but I have five institutions in my "education" section [...]

Screenshot of my CV:

What do you mean by section one? If you mean chapter one, then no! That doesn't even have any maths in it. But if you mean part one, i.e. chapters one to seven, then yes, I am only in that section still I know, I need to hurry up. For quite a while I just wasn't studying for long enough stretches of time - I think I was too blase about it all - but now I'm better at actually getting down to it. Don't judge me

Better update your CV - it's the "Institute and Faculty of Actuaries" now

**** the Scots, I'm an institute member and proud

Srsly, I'm not all that clued up on the profession, but why didn't the merger happen a long time ago? It makes no sense to have two bodies set up when UK folk can opt to join either of them. Sheeeeeesh what are they, gay at business and finance or something?

Just curious, but are the reports from wiki/google of an average salary of £45k once fully qualified true or are these being exagerated?

Lol, who knows... I only realised because I had to write the Pensions weekly newletter at my work...

Hey Jelkin. Hope you're not too stressed out at the moment. Just saw this post and it raised alarm bells slightly. Do you have one month left? If you haven't reached part 2 yet then I would strongly advise you to do so quickly. If you don't have enough time you may have to 'cherry pick' topics. Normally if the exam have questions based on chapters 1-5 they are mostly worth only 3-5 marks. They love to put questions worth like 15-20 marks in based on the later chapters! And obviously these are the most important questions to tackle. My suggestion is probably working hours on end everyday until the exam (if you're not doing so already) and look at past exam papers too. Sorry if I come across as a dick in this post

The Actuaries Profession website has it at £43,930. I'd say, however, that £45k - £60k is a truer figure, but of course this depends on the firm you're working for and the location, and importantly on how good you are as an actuary. (Two actuaries at the same firm with the same responsibilities won't necessarily be on the same salary.)

As for your question, I can't help I'm afraid, but hopefully someone else will. I could suggest trying to get hold of a copy of The Actuary, or phoning up recruitment agencies

Thanks, I didn't actually think of checking in The Actuary or to phone recruitment agencies! Do you have any tips on which recruitment agencies are good? I only know of Reed. Also GAAPS.

I'm really tempted to ask some of the people at Fortis, or the contact I had who I got the internship through, but they want me back and so I don't know how they would feel about helping me find an internship elsewhere. Even if it's just to gain a greater insight into the actuarial world and decide on which field is definitely for me. They're probably not spiteful like that, and wouldn't mind helping me decide on which area is right for me, but I just can't help thinking it might put them off or something.

The man has a point. Being at the end of the first section doesn't really mean you're a quarter of the way through the material.

Stuff

It's gone a bit quiet here; everyone studying hard I bet lol.

About to go to uni but I lost my accommodation offer cos I didn't confirm it I know, silly huh? Well, now I'm homeless atm and have to commute to London...yey.

EDIT: By the way, there is a "Graduate Career" supplement in The Times today and it has an article about how graduates should go for less sought-after careers - with the example, "Accountancy is saturated with applications, but actuaries are much less sought after." I wasn't happy about this ...

The Times advising all prospective accountancy applicants to try for actuarial schemes doesn't bode well for us at all!

Yep, I've been studying, and it's been going pretty well overall. I managed to get into an email correspondence with a guy from LCP and he was quite positive, which was nice. I'm going to apply there today and also to EMB, I think.

I know

Hopefully many of these applicants will go for it assuming it's similar to accounting and without doing much research

...

I've been to the office in Epsom, and they seem like swell people. They have an awesome northern doorman

They run lots of training courses for people working in general insurance (I believe they specialise in GI), and also run courses for all the various software they produce such as Emblem (used by pricing teams to price test when you have interactions between rating factors) and ResQ (used by reserving teams to, err, reserve). I think they also sell other software packages such as Igloo, but I don't know what they do TO BE HONEST.

I'm ******. I still haven't finished reading CT2

Also, actuaries > accountants. If accountants have to do the stuff in CT2 as their job, and I had to sit the ACA exams or something, I think I'd slit my throat

As do i, one of the reasons acturies are paid so highly is because there are not that many and i also do not want to spend years at university to have 1000 other people going for the same position.