"What’s an actuary?"
That’s a question most actuaries are painfully familiar with. We’re members of a fairly small profession that doesn’t receive much attention outside the insurance industry.
The classic dictionary definition is "a person who calculates insurance and annuity premiums, reserves and dividends", which is a narrow, but traditionally correct description. If you want to know who to blame for your insurance rates, or who will make sure that your insurer has enough money on hand to pay its claims…well there’s usually an actuary involved somewhere.
More recently, actuaries have been expanding out from the bread-and-butter pricing and reserving work, and are moving the profession towards a broader specialization in assessing the financial risk of risk and uncertainty.
Characteristics of a good actuary include good puzzle-solving skills, a knack for business communications, decent programming or database skills and a broad understanding of statistics, finance, and business operations. A certain tenacity (and/or masochism) is also required, as in much of the world a prospective actuary must pass a series of grueling exams.
For more information, you may want to check out some of the following links:
- Wikipedia’s entry for "actuary"
- Be an actuary — general introductory information about the profession
- Ceranalyst.org — information on the new Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst designation
- Society of Actuaries — the North American educational society for life actuaries
- Casualty Actuarial Society — the North American educational society for casualty actuaries
- American Academy of Actuaries — professional society for actuaries in the United States
- Canadian Institute of Actuaries — society for the profession in Canada
- Faculty of Actuaries / Institute of Actuaries — society for the profession in the U.K.
- Actuarial Outpost — an unofficial web-forum (professional & social) for actuaries