Actuaries Working in New Fields: Part 2

While Andrew and Keri work within companies that employ actuaries in core practice areas, they are both working in roles that actuaries are not typically placed in.

Andrew’s career journey

Andrew is currently the Head of Agency Strategy at AIA Hong Kong. Andrew started his career in an actuarial role in a large multinational professional services firm.

Upon qualifying and obtaining his FIAA, he indulged his curiosity to live and work abroad by taking up the opportunity to move to Hong Kong with management consulting company NMG.

Here, Andrew discovered a keen interest in working across a broader variety of topics and clients. He further expanded his exposure by moving to other larger management consulting firms in subsequent years.

In these roles, he continued servicing insurance clients across strategy, distribution and product topics while helping clients in other industries, including property, transportation and manufacturing.

A decade into his career, Andrew concluded that he was most passionate about helping people secure their family’s future wellbeing and joined the life insurance industry. Starting in a distribution strategy role, Andrew has progressed into a frontline sales management role, which enables him to put his ideas into practice.

Keri’s path

Keri is a Senior Risk Partner for Asia at Marsh and is based in Singapore. Like Andrew, Keri also started in consulting within the general insurance space, where she worked predominantly on traditional reserving as well as reserving dressed up in other forms, like M&A due diligence. During this time, Keri also relocated from Sydney to Singapore.

After almost 10 years, she decided to move to Marsh, helping set up Marsh Analytics Solutions in Asia and supporting clients to optimise their insurance programs. This was very much still actuarial work, leaning heavily on actuarial techniques, albeit applied in non-traditional ways.

After a couple of years in this role, successive broader opportunities within her company began to surface, one after another, each representing slight pivots further from her initial actuarial role.

The first step included taking on responsibility for the business development of Analytics Solutions. This led to the development and implementation of Marsh’s digital tools before stewarding and growing a portfolio of top clients from an advisory (Marsh’s consulting business) perspective. Most recently, Keri has driven the growth of Marsh Advisory across Asia.

Trying new things

Reflecting on how their careers have developed to date, there is a clear theme of natural curiosity to try new things, overlayed with a deliberate approach to how they have gone about enabling opportunities to come to fruition.

While Keri didn’t purposefully pursue a career outside of core actuarial work, she says there are two contributing factors without which she wouldn’t be in her current role.

When asked if interested to step in – or up – to fill a role, Keri says yes. She makes it known to her colleagues that she is always willing to take on a challenge, even if it involves doing something completely new.

“I imagine that if I had declined certain opportunities or been known as someone who was comfortable always doing the same type of work, I would probably still be happily running reserving models and delivering actuarial reports.”

Andrew also says that most of his career moves were not planned, but that he was “ready to assess and embrace” opportunities as they arose.

Communication skills are key!

Andrew and Keri highlight that communication and stakeholder collaboration are two of the most important skills to move outside core actuarial functions. In particular, they both point to the ability to adapt their communication style with other professionals who may not share a similar mindset or language.

Keri reflects that her biggest takeaway has been to learn how to work with people from more varied backgrounds and roles:

“In my actuarial roles, I predominantly worked with other actuaries with a handful of other stakeholders, such as clients and colleagues in other departments. As I transitioned into broader roles my number of stakeholders started to balloon and I realised that managing these relationships was key to success.”

Andrew also points out the many benefits of being able to talk “actuarial” in a sales management role:

“While I am spared the technical details of reserving bases and applying actuarial judgment in setting model assumptions, being able to understand and clearly communicate the drivers of insurance products’ design and financials helps me engage more effectively with advisers and build trust.”

“The connection with internal actuarial colleagues is similarly smoothed over when I can translate the advisers’ feedback into more corporate or technical language.”

Transferrable skills

While moving to broader roles has led to significant learning opportunities, both Keri and Andrew still use their actuarial toolkit on a regular basis.

As Andrew states,

“The structured problem-solving skill that we develop as an actuary is universally applicable, irrespective of the discipline we work in.”

Keri shares, “I apply actuarial principles every day. I help clients and colleagues understand that having a sound understanding of risk exposures and enhancing risk mitigation and resiliency measures translates to better risk transfer outcomes. This is the essence of risk consulting.”

Advice for those considering similar moves

Keri and Andrew see the skills they have acquired through their actuarial training as being beneficial in helping them progress to where they are now.

They highlight that moving into any new role involves developing new skills. However, many skills gained through being an actuary can be repurposed when applied in a different field.

Keri offers the following advice for those who are curious about exploring a role outside core practice areas:

• Be curious about what your company and colleagues offer outside of actuarial functions. Find out what your colleagues do, which regions and client segments drive growth, what drives success for your firm and what’s important to your clients. You will gain a whole new perspective on where your current role fits in and where your skills will be welcome.
• Seek opportunities for growth, always.
• Keep learning and innovating.

Andrew shares:

• Remain inquisitive beyond one’s current line of work.
• When opportunities in new areas emerge, try to find out as much as possible about it by talking to insiders already working in those areas. Alumni networks are great for this.
• And finally, follow your heart on whether it is the right fit.

Andrew and Keri’s career journey highlights how actuarial training can serve as a springboard into broader business roles that many may not have initially envisioned.

Their journeys underscore that the structured problem-solving approach and analytical rigour developed through actuarial work are highly valued across various functions and as the profession continues to evolve, unexpected opportunities will arise.

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