Actuarial

Actuarial

As an actuary, you’ll work with uncertainty. Using complex financial and statistical theories to calculate the likelihood of events – anything from a natural disaster to a wholesale IT system failure – you’ll work out what that means financially for clients. It's highly technical work. And it’s made all the more challenging by the fact that you’ll have to present your complex findings in simple, easy to understand ways.

How you’ll benefit

Whichever area of Actuarial you join, you can experience the different services we offer and work with different types of clients.

What you'll do

You can choose from one of two business areas: Human Resource Consulting where you’ll focus on either pensions or reward consultancy; or Actuarial & Insurance Management Solutions where you’ll advise life insurance and general insurance companies, and apply actuarial techniques to issues in non-traditional areas such as banking and outside financial services. Whichever you choose you'll help clients minimise risk by carrying out complex calculations and modelling. At the same time you’ll train for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries exams. And if you’re looking for financial support for your studies plus expert extra tutoring, you’ve got it. While on average it takes six years to become a fully qualified actuary, with us you’re likely to qualify in less than four.

Next steps:

You’ll either work in our pensions teams or rewards team: There are two key areas within Human Resource Consulting (HRC).

Actuaries in Pensions – You'll work with a wide variety of companies, from large multi-national organisations to smaller UK-focused businesses, advising them on how best to achieve their objectives in relation to their pension/benefit schemes. You’ll consult on a spectrum of issues including redesign of pension benefits, de-risking legacy pension schemes, negotiating with trustees on how to fund schemes, potential Mergers or Acquisitions, and the impact of legislative changes. The key is to help clients manage the risks within their pension schemes while also achieving their long-term goals.

Actuaries in Reward Consultancy – You’ll mainly focus on the best way to reward senior executives. In particular, you’ll play a big part in helping clients design, evaluate and manage their incentives arrangements, such as long-term share schemes, as well as executive pensions. As part of a multi-disciplinary team, you’ll use financial modelling techniques and broader consulting skills to develop reward structures which support business strategy and are acceptable to shareholders and employers alike. Early on, you’ll go with colleagues to client meetings and presentations, ultimately developing your own network of contacts. And from day one you’ll be learning from talented people and working as a valued member of the team.

Next steps:

During your first few years, you'll split your time between office, clients and studying to qualify as an Actuary with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. You might be part of a multidisciplinary team analysing the financial strength of an organisation so you can work out how much it can afford to pay into its pension scheme. Or you could be advising a company on different ways to reduce the shortfall in its pension fund and manage the volatility and risk around the money it has earmarked for future pension payments.

In the Executive Reward team, you'll play a big part in helping clients design, evaluate and manage long-term, share-based incentives as well as executive pensions. You'll gain extensive financial modelling skills, including stochastic modelling. Then you’ll use these skills to assess performance in different scenarios and recommend the most appropriate incentive design. Often you’ll use interactive modelling tools to help our clients appreciate the key issues they face.

Whichever team you work in you’ll be mostly office-based. Although there are client visits, you’ll rarely spend weeks away from home so you won’t need to live out of a suitcase.

Next steps:

Your training combines on-the-job coaching, formal courses and study for professional qualifications. During your first few years, you'll divide your time between working in the office, visiting clients and studying to qualify as an Actuary with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. You start working towards this during your induction training and it's a hefty commitment, calling for a great deal of self-discipline and motivation.

You’ll benefit from:

  • a structured induction programme that helps you pick up basic but vital technical and business skills and helps you settle in quickly and meet new colleagues
  • study leave (about one day a week) and full financial support for the cost of study materials and external tutorials; plus your own study mentor, someone whose first-hand knowledge of the exams will prove invaluable
  • a pay rise each time you pass an exam to reward all your hard work
  • practical experience of working with multi-disciplinary PwC practices such as tax, business recovery or deal experts on a wide range of client projects. This will you develop analytical, technical, communication, project management and networking skills while building your business awareness and industry knowledge.

Ultimately, however, your development is down to you. At every stage of your career, including coming up to qualification, we'll encourage you to identify your own development needs and choose the right training to meet them. That might include secondments.

Next steps:

Actuarial work is highly analytical and technical. And as many of our clients are in human resources, finance or on the board, the terminology we use isn't something they're usually familiar with. That’s why we need people who can explain complex subjects to non-actuaries in plain English - making a flair for communication and good all-round commercial awareness both crucial.

Above all, you must be highly numerate as you'll be carrying out complex financial calculations and modelling work.

What you need:

  • A 2:1 or above in any degree discipline
  • A UCAS tariff of at least 320 including a B in maths at A-level (or equivalent)

Your intellect, willingness to learn, ability to build relationships, to put yourself in others’ shoes , while  always making a positive impact with our clients and each other.

Next steps:

Actuarial work is demanding. Your first few years will be intense, especially as you start working for your qualification. But the more committed you are, and the harder you work, the faster you’ll see the rewards.

You’ll have a huge variety of clients and projects to work on. You'll be constantly challenged – while enjoying all the support you need. And you'll be encouraged to play to your strengths. Let’s say you develop a particular talent for business development for instance. You'll be able to build on that with client selling or relationship management responsibilities.

In both the Pensions and Reward Consultancy teams, you’ll focus on finding solutions. You’ll show clients you can do more than simply understand the issues they come across: you’ll also develop the expertise and business insight to solve them.

Next steps:

Here you’ll help advise clients on a host of institutions. Your advice could cover solvency, reserving, economic capital, risk management, mergers & acquisitions, company restructuring and de-risking, financial modelling, underwriting, new legislation, the viability of new products and the efficiency of claims or reporting processes.

You might help analyse the impact that the new capital requirements under the new European solvency regime will have on an insurance company’s balance sheet. Or you could be revising businesses’ projections and making sure they have adequate reserves. Whatever the project, you’ll make the most of your analytical skills to deliver real commercial insights. Insights that will help our clients prepare for issues you might see regularly on the news.

You’ll have the chance to work on projects in both the life and non-life insurance markets and in the banking market and corporate sector.

Next steps:

You’ll work with clients from the insurance industry (both life and general insurance), but also those in retail and investment banking, non-financial services corporates like energy and utilities, plus healthcare and the public sector.

Get more from life

Life insurance covers a range of long-term (some policies last 50 years or more) financial and protection products. Working with companies, you’ll assess the risks to these products and to the companies themselves, helping them understand and quantify these risks which could be economic, demographic or to do with policyholder behaviour. You might need to build, run, understand and interpret the output from complex mathematical models. Or you could be investigating and implementing new ideas to manage these risks, such as derivatives or other complex financial instruments. Thanks to the range of products and risks, there’s a wide variety of projects to get involved with.

From homes to hurricanes

Non-life looks at other areas of insurance. At the more everyday end of the scale there’s car and home insurance. But you could also work on far-reaching events like global warming. Its potential effects – more hurricanes and floods for instance – raise a huge question mark for insurers. The more accurate your calculations, the better you’ll be able to help businesses and individuals plan strategically.

Outside the norm

If you want to stretch the traditional boundaries of actuarial work, there are growing opportunities in our team dedicated to non-insurance clients. Here you’ll get exposure to an array of projects from the world of retail and investment banking, non-financial services corporates such as energy and utilities, to healthcare and the public sector.

You can chat each of these areas through with us at careers fairs and on-campus events or during your interview. Whichever one you join, you’ll get exposure to our full range of assignments and a broad view of actuarial work. And whatever projects you tackle, you’ll spend some time out of the office. Your clients could be a few streets away or in another city. So travel will be part of your working life. And as projects typically last three to four weeks, you’ll enjoy plenty of variety.

Next steps:

Your training combines on-the-job coaching and formal courses with study for professional qualifications.

During your first few years, you'll divide your time between working in the office, visiting clients and studying to qualify as an Actuary with the Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, usually within four years. You’ll start working towards this during your induction training and it's a hefty commitment, calling for a great deal of self-discipline and motivation.

You’ll benefit from:

  • a structured induction programme that helps you pick up basic but vital technical and business skills and helps you settle in quickly and meet new colleagues
  • study leave (about one day a week) and full financial support for the cost of study materials and external tutorials; plus your own study mentor, someone whose first-hand knowledge of the exams will prove invaluable
  • a pay rise each time you pass an exam to reward you for all your hard work
  • practical experience of working with multi-disciplinary PwC practices such as tax, business recovery or deal experts on a wide range of client projects. This will help you develop analytical, technical, communication, project management and networking skills while building your business awareness and industry knowledge.

Ultimately, however, your development is down to you. At every stage of your career, including coming up to qualification, we'll encourage you to identify your own development needs and choose the right training to meet them. That might include secondments.

Next steps:

Actuarial work is highly analytical and technical. And as many of our clients are in regulation, finance or on the board, the terminology we use isn't something they're usually familiar with. That’s why we need people who can explain complex subjects to non-actuaries in plain English - making a flair for communication and good all-round commercial awareness both crucial.

Above all, you must be highly numerate as you'll be carrying out complex financial calculations and modelling work.

  • A 2:1 or above in any degree discipline
  • A UCAS tariff of at least 320 including a B in maths at A-level (or equivalent)

Your intellect, willingness to learn, ability to build relationships, to put yourself in others’ shoes , while always making a positive impact with our clients and each other.

Next steps:

Bobby

Consultant

"I was immediately attracted to a role in Actuarial Insurance Management Solutions (AIMS) at PwC because of the variety of work available. This includes opportunities to work with clients from the insurance industry (both life and general insurance clients) and non-insurance clients, such as banks and large corporations. This was important for me as I wanted to be able to sample different types of client work before concentrating in one or two areas. PwC actively encourages this, so much so that after three years I’m still working on a range of life and general insurance clients!

Working in AIMS has given me the opportunity to work with other actuaries in my department as well as clients. I've worked directly with insurance clients helping them to improve their financial reporting processes, presented to clients on a reserving exercise I’ve been responsible for, and worked with my colleagues on important research into the insurance industry.

I’ve also had the opportunity to build relationships with people from other areas of PwC, as so much of our work involves consulting with the wider firm. For example, I get to work with our accounting colleagues on audits and also with our legal colleagues when helping clients completing a merger of two insurance companies.

I wouldn’t say there’s such a thing as a “typical” day at PwC as there's so much variety, but my days generally consistent of a combination of client and internal meetings, producing work for my managers to review and coaching and assisting more junior staff. PwC also supports me through the actuarial exams by providing a study mentor and financial support."

 
Next steps:
As a guide, key dates for our 2013 recruitment process for full time graduate places are as follows, however please note that interview and assessment day dates may vary from region to region. Please make every effort to ensure that you remain available over this period.
 
Date Description
Monday 3 September 2012 Vacancy opens for online applications
Monday 5 November 2012 Vacancy closes for online applications
Week commencing Monday 19 November 2012 First interviews take place this week
Week commencing Monday 3 December 2012 Assessment centres take place this week
Week commencing Monday 10 December 2012

Second and final interviews take place this week
Friday 14 December 2012 Offers made on or before this date

Please note that this timetable does not apply to 2013 internship places.

Next steps:

Actuarial

 

Overview

As an actuary, you’ll work with uncertainty. Using complex financial and statistical theories to calculate the likelihood of events – anything from a natural disaster to a wholesale IT system failure – you’ll work out what that means financially for clients. It's highly technical work. And it’s made all the more challenging by the fact that you’ll have to present your complex findings in simple, easy to understand ways.

How you’ll benefit

Whichever area of Actuarial you join, you can experience the different services we offer and work with different types of clients.

What you'll do

You can choose from one of two business areas: Human Resource Consulting where you’ll focus on either pensions or reward consultancy; or Actuarial & Insurance Management Solutions where you’ll advise life insurance and general insurance companies, and apply actuarial techniques to issues in non-traditional areas such as banking and outside financial services. Whichever you choose you'll help clients minimise risk by carrying out complex calculations and modelling. At the same time you’ll train for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries exams. And if you’re looking for financial support for your studies plus expert extra tutoring, you’ve got it. While on average it takes six years to become a fully qualified actuary, with us you’re likely to qualify in less than four.

Human resource consulting

What we do

You’ll either work in our pensions teams or rewards team: There are two key areas within Human Resource Consulting (HRC).

Actuaries in Pensions – You'll work with a wide variety of companies, from large multi-national organisations to smaller UK-focused businesses, advising them on how best to achieve their objectives in relation to their pension/benefit schemes. You’ll consult on a spectrum of issues including redesign of pension benefits, de-risking legacy pension schemes, negotiating with trustees on how to fund schemes, potential Mergers or Acquisitions, and the impact of legislative changes. The key is to help clients manage the risks within their pension schemes while also achieving their long-term goals.

Actuaries in Reward Consultancy – You’ll mainly focus on the best way to reward senior executives. In particular, you’ll play a big part in helping clients design, evaluate and manage their incentives arrangements, such as long-term share schemes, as well as executive pensions. As part of a multi-disciplinary team, you’ll use financial modelling techniques and broader consulting skills to develop reward structures which support business strategy and are acceptable to shareholders and employers alike. Early on, you’ll go with colleagues to client meetings and presentations, ultimately developing your own network of contacts. And from day one you’ll be learning from talented people and working as a valued member of the team.

Your job description

During your first few years, you'll split your time between office, clients and studying to qualify as an Actuary with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. You might be part of a multidisciplinary team analysing the financial strength of an organisation so you can work out how much it can afford to pay into its pension scheme. Or you could be advising a company on different ways to reduce the shortfall in its pension fund and manage the volatility and risk around the money it has earmarked for future pension payments.

In the Executive Reward team, you'll play a big part in helping clients design, evaluate and manage long-term, share-based incentives as well as executive pensions. You'll gain extensive financial modelling skills, including stochastic modelling. Then you’ll use these skills to assess performance in different scenarios and recommend the most appropriate incentive design. Often you’ll use interactive modelling tools to help our clients appreciate the key issues they face.

Whichever team you work in you’ll be mostly office-based. Although there are client visits, you’ll rarely spend weeks away from home so you won’t need to live out of a suitcase.

Training & Development

Your training combines on-the-job coaching, formal courses and study for professional qualifications. During your first few years, you'll divide your time between working in the office, visiting clients and studying to qualify as an Actuary with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. You start working towards this during your induction training and it's a hefty commitment, calling for a great deal of self-discipline and motivation.

You’ll benefit from:

  • a structured induction programme that helps you pick up basic but vital technical and business skills and helps you settle in quickly and meet new colleagues
  • study leave (about one day a week) and full financial support for the cost of study materials and external tutorials; plus your own study mentor, someone whose first-hand knowledge of the exams will prove invaluable
  • a pay rise each time you pass an exam to reward all your hard work
  • practical experience of working with multi-disciplinary PwC practices such as tax, business recovery or deal experts on a wide range of client projects. This will you develop analytical, technical, communication, project management and networking skills while building your business awareness and industry knowledge.

Ultimately, however, your development is down to you. At every stage of your career, including coming up to qualification, we'll encourage you to identify your own development needs and choose the right training to meet them. That might include secondments.

What we look for

Actuarial work is highly analytical and technical. And as many of our clients are in human resources, finance or on the board, the terminology we use isn't something they're usually familiar with. That’s why we need people who can explain complex subjects to non-actuaries in plain English - making a flair for communication and good all-round commercial awareness both crucial.

Above all, you must be highly numerate as you'll be carrying out complex financial calculations and modelling work.

What you need:

  • A 2:1 or above in any degree discipline
  • A UCAS tariff of at least 320 including a B in maths at A-level (or equivalent)

Your intellect, willingness to learn, ability to build relationships, to put yourself in others’ shoes , while always making a positive impact with our clients and each other.

AIMS

What we do

Here you’ll help advise clients on a host of institutions. Your advice could coversolvency, reserving, economic capital, risk management, mergers & acquisitions, company restructuring and de-risking, financial modelling, underwriting, new legislation, the viability of new products and the efficiency of claims or reporting processes.

You might help analyse the impact that the new capital requirements under the new European solvency regime will have on an insurance company’s balance sheet. Or you could be revising businesses’ projections and making sure they have adequate reserves. Whatever the project, you’ll make the most of your analytical skills to deliver real commercial insights. Insights that will help our clients prepare for issues you might see regularly on the news.

You’ll have the chance to work on projects in both the life and non-life insurance markets and in the banking market and corporate sector.

Your job description

You’ll work with clients from the insurance industry (both life and general insurance), but also those in retail and investment banking, non-financial services corporates like energy and utilities, plus healthcare and the public sector.

Get more from life

Life insurance covers a range of long-term (some policies last 50 years or more) financial and protection products. Working with companies, you’ll assess the risks to these products and to the companies themselves, helping them understand and quantify these risks which could be economic, demographic or to do with policyholder behaviour. You might need to build, run, understand and interpret the output from complex mathematical models. Or you could be investigating and implementing new ideas to manage these risks, such as derivatives or other complex financial instruments. Thanks to the range of products and risks, there’s a wide variety of projects to get involved with.

From homes to hurricanes

Non-life looks at other areas of insurance. At the more everyday end of the scale there’s car and home insurance. But you could also work on far-reaching events like global warming. Its potential effects – more hurricanes and floods for instance – raise a huge question mark for insurers. The more accurate your calculations, the better you’ll be able to help businesses and individuals plan strategically.

Outside the norm

If you want to stretch the traditional boundaries of actuarial work, there are growing opportunities in our team dedicated to non-insurance clients. Here you’ll get exposure to an array of projects from the world of retail and investment banking, non-financial services corporates such as energy and utilities, to healthcare and the public sector.

You can chat each of these areas through with us at careers fairs and on-campus events or during your interview. Whichever one you join, you’ll get exposure to our full range of assignments and a broad view of actuarial work. And whatever projects you tackle, you’ll spend some time out of the office. Your clients could be a few streets away or in another city. So travel will be part of your working life. And as projects typically last three to four weeks, you’ll enjoy plenty of variety.

Your training & development

Your training combines on-the-job coaching and formal courses with study for professional qualifications.

During your first few years, you'll divide your time between working in the office, visiting clients and studying to qualify as an Actuary with the Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, usually within four years. You’ll start working towards this during your induction training and it's a hefty commitment, calling for a great deal of self-discipline and motivation.

You’ll benefit from:

  • a structured induction programme that helps you pick up basic but vital technical and business skills and helps you settle in quickly and meet new colleagues
  • study leave (about one day a week) and full financial support for the cost of study materials and external tutorials; plus your own study mentor, someone whose first-hand knowledge of the exams will prove invaluable
  • a pay rise each time you pass an exam to reward you for all your hard work
  • practical experience of working with multi-disciplinary PwC practices such as tax, business recovery or deal experts on a wide range of client projects. This will help you develop analytical, technical, communication, project management and networking skills while building your business awareness and industry knowledge.

Ultimately, however, your development is down to you. At every stage of your career, including coming up to qualification, we'll encourage you to identify your own development needs and choose the right training to meet them. That might include secondments.

What we look for

Actuarial work is highly analytical and technical. And as many of our clients are in regulation, finance or on the board, the terminology we use isn't something they're usually familiar with. That’s why we need people who can explain complex subjects to non-actuaries in plain English - making a flair for communication and good all-round commercial awareness both crucial.

Above all, you must be highly numerate as you'll be carrying out complex financial calculations and modelling work.

  • A 2:1 or above in any degree discipline
  • A UCAS tariff of at least 320 including a B in maths at A-level (or equivalent)

Your intellect, willingness to learn, ability to build relationships, to put yourself in others’ shoes, while always making a positive impact with our clients and each other.

If you'd like to apply to one of our vacancies, please visit our website from a non mobile device.