6 months into Actuarial Graduate scheme at an general insurance company - AMA

I'm trying to get a graduate role in the Actuarial field, so a few questions:

What company do you work at?
What's the daily life like?
And can you give any advice for applying for these schemes (or maybe even recommend me to get hired lmao)?

How do you find it overall? Is the work interesting? Do you see a lot of potential for the future of this industry? How integrated are new technologies into your role? Are you making progress towards qualification and how does your company support you with this? What's the progression like in terms of position and salary?

Hi,

Thanks very much for doing this! I have very much applied to many actuarial positions, and now finalising whether this is, indeed, the route that I want to take. I'm currently deciding between Life and GI offers, leaning towards Life because of the "more relaxed" lifestyle and more focus on finance atm.

Anyway,
-How big is your firm? Was it a large or small joining co-hort? What do you and your colleagues do for lunch? Is it usually sit at desk lunch or going out?
-What are your working hours during normal time? Apart from these exceptional times, is working from home a regular thing, or frowned upon, especially for junior staff?
-Which industry has the most jobs (I know GI is growing rapidly compared to Life). From your insights, 5 years down the line, which industry do you think it would be easier to find a job, e.g. when relocating or something?

Thanks in advance!

I enjoy it, I work in Specialty at the moment so I like how interesting the risks are. A lot of Data Science techniques are being integrated into the profession so if you can learn these it will give you an advantage. As of 30 minutes ago my exam progression is being somewhat halted due to Covid19 so my planned exam sitting for April has been cancelled and I’ll sit it in September instead. A bit annoying but ah well. You get salary increases for passing each exam ranging from £500-2000 depending on the size/difficulty of the exam. In terms of progression I’m on a rotational grad scheme so I’ll be moving to other roles in line with mine rather than up the ladder as such, but this is only for 3 years and I think more beneficial for later in my career.

The insurance company I work for has about 3000 people worldwide. They hired 25 graduates worldwide for 2019 intake and 4 actuarial grads.
We have monthly team lunches where we go out to a nice place for 1-1.5 hours. On a normal day I usually meet the other grads and chat to them whilst eating for 45 mins to an hour. If I’m going to the gym (45 min class) I’ll eat lunch at my desk but that’s my choice. My manager has lunch at her desk but she has PT sessions at 3pm so that’s effectively her lunch break instead.
My advice was to be in the office as much as possible in my first 3-6 months and after that I can work from home more often. In the past they’ve been fine with me doing it because of appointments, waiting in for Broadband engineers and even when I got back from a flight at 6am from NYC but didn’t want to take annual leave.
On an average day, working hours usually starting between 8:15-9:30 and leaving between 5:30-6. This depends a lot on your team though. Our standard hours are 9:30-5:30.
In London its very GI heavy. Outside of London Life is bigger, so where you want to be geographically should impact your decision between the two. There are very few GI roles outside of London (there are some just not as many). Personally I liked GI due to finding niche insurance products like Space, Kidnapping insurance etc more interesting. I work for a specialty insurer though so I encounter more of these than most people do. I’m probably not experienced enough to predict which would be better in 5 years but just go with which you find more interesting to you. This will help at your interviews too as the interviewers will appreciate you being genuinely interested in the field.

Thanks for your reply!

How long do you anticipate it will take you to qualify fully as a fellow of the IFoA? I've read that 5-7 years is usually what is expected?