Working in Actuarial as a graduate

If you are joining our Workforce teams, you’ll also be aligned with our Tax practice, giving you the opportunity to work in either our Pensions team or in our PwC North practice, the Strategic Reward team.

• The Strategic Reward team works with clients to design and implement reward strategies for both executives and the wider workforce to get the best from their people and meet strategic business goals. As part of a multidisciplinary team, you’ll draw on your problem‑solving skills to advise clients in this complex and challenging area, using financial modelling and analytical techniques to develop and test reward structures that support business strategy, drive appropriate behaviours, and are considered fair to shareholders and employees alike.

• Our Pensions team work with a variety of companies, from large multinationals to private listed businesses. Using our market-leading pensions analytics tools and range of expertise, you’ll help clients develop and implement their pension strategy or benefit schemes, consult on how they should manage both liability and asset risks within their pension plans, negotiate with trustees on how to fund schemes, design plans to help employees save for retirement and advise on potential mergers or acquisitions.

Your training combines on-the-job coaching and formal courses with study for professional qualifications. You'll divide your time between working in the office, visiting clients and studying.

If you join our Actuarial and Risk Modelling Services or Workforce teams you’ll study with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA). Once you’ve completed the exams, you’ll then be fully qualified and a Fellow of the IFoA. You’ll start working towards this during your induction training and it's a considerable commitment, calling for a great deal of self-discipline and motivation.

You'll need to have achieved or be on track to pass an undergraduate degree or above in any subject. We determine whether you're on course to pass based on the grades you achieved in your last completed year of academic study. Although we do not look for any specific degree or A Level subjects, please note that the IFoA offers some guidance to those considering a career as an Actuary. 

The IFoA qualification syllabus is rigorous and the examinations are highly demanding, so they recommend applicants have a maths-based degree. If you do not have a maths-based degree, they recommend you take one of their non-member exams before starting your IFoA to prepare you for the IFoA qualification process.

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We seek to develop accomplished consultants, not just technically strong analysts. Compared to traditional Actuarial firms, with PwC you’ll gain practical experience of working with multidisciplinary PwC practices such as tax, accounting, audit, regulatory, business recovery or deal experts on a wide range of client projects. This will help you develop analytical, technical, communication, consulting, project management and networking skills while building your business awareness and industry knowledge.

As an Associate, you’ll work on a variety of clients so you build a global commercial awareness across different financial and non-financial institutions. From day one, you’ll have project management responsibilities and will be given opportunities to present the results of your statistical modelling to senior colleagues and clients. To support you in your exams, you will be given time off to study. As well as a study mentor, you’ll have a large network of other actuarial students there for support and celebrations for exam passes.

We’re proud of our inclusive culture and have a strong focus on well-being. An important job for an Associate is to organise social events for their team that could range from go-karting, escape rooms or dinner out.

The era of AI is an exciting time to start a career as an actuary. With access to data increasing, so is the demand for actuarial expertise. The growing capability of machine learning reduces the time spent processing and cleansing data, and increases the focus of the actuary’s role to challenging assumptions and results. The crucial skill of an actuarial consultant will be the ability to demystify these models to clients and clearly communicate the conclusions that can be drawn from data trends.