| Topic Name: |
Actuarial Consulting |
| Message Name: |
45k for consulting? |
| Date Posted: |
08/19/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
Secsot,
I am currently an actuarial consultant so I can probably answer a few of your questions.
First, you need to decide if you want to be a Life/Health or Property/Casualty actuary. The first couple of exams are the same, but then you have to choose one path. Also, this will effect where you work.
As far as consulting, there are a few places to work. I used to work in pensions and benefits consulting and the best firms there are William M. Mercer, Towers Perrin, PwC, and Hewitt. I worked at Mercer and found the work fairly boring and moved to property casualty consulting and now work for PricwaterhouseCoopers. Other strong firms in the P/C consulting business are Tillinghast-Towers Perrin and Milliman and Robertson. I would avoid the Big 5 firms outside of PwC b/c their work consists mostly of audit support and you won't be exposed to a variety of projects.
In general, if you want to be an actuary, I would recommend starting at an insurance company. The pay isn't quite as good, but you learn a lot more, get to move through job rotations, and get more time to study for the exams. Plus, you'll build a stronger of network of contacts that you can leverage into future client relationships if you do move to consulting afterward. McKinsey does hire actuaries for their insurance consulting practice, but they prefer candidates that have finished (or are at least close to finshed) with the exams and have substantial work experience (i.e. experienced hires).
One warning about the actuarial career. Don't let the ease of the first exam or two fool you. The first few exams are easier b/c the competition isn't very stiff and a lot of people get weeded out. After that the exams become extremely hard, with pass rates around 35-40% and you have to pass nine exams to become credentialed. The average time to completion is about 9 years.
If you are mathematically inclined and willing to live in the New York, I would recommend looking into sales and trading or quantitative analysis jobs. You'll make the same or better money and you won't have to study for two or three hours every night when you get home.
To answer your original question (sorry for wandering off), in New York I would expect starting pay between 45K and 55K depending on the employet. Any decent employer should offer exam support (study time and paid expenses) and if they don't, then don't even consider them. AIG is an excellent company with operations based in New York. They are recognized as an industry leader and several of their actuaries have left for high level positions in other companies including a few as CEO's (Brian Duppereault at ACE is an example and I believe Ron Ferguson at General RE is another). |
| Message: |
Is that 45-55k for consulting or for an insurance company?
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