Actuarial Science deals with evaluating risks and maintaining the economic stability of insurance or financial organizations. Actuaries use Mathematics, Statistics, and Probability principles to anticipate future events and take preventive measures. The main goal of Actuarial Studies is to develop the knowledge needed to perform an actuary’s job and to prepare students to pass their actuarial exams faster. But, there are certain myths associated with Actuarial science courses in India. Let’s look at some of them today.
Myth 1: One needs to be extremely intelligent
We believe Actuarial science is an exceptionally specialized calling and an aspirant with a reasonable level of insight, motivation, persistence and right guidance can easily achieve the desired result. The actuarial assessments are comprehensively organized and specialized as Core Principles, Core Practices, Specialist Principles and Specialist Advanced series. The prerequisites for all these three arrangements of papers are genuinely extraordinary. Along with reasonable intellect, one also needs tolerance, consistency and reasonable experience to excel in this field.
- One needs to be to excellent in mathematics and statistics
Mathematics and statistics are tools through which we apply the actuarial principles and hence these subjects are the foundation of this profession. But along with this, we also have other elements like risk management, economic principles, modelling, communication and more. The work involves a lot of reporting, analysis, data validation, modelling and experience studies making the profession much more interesting and diverse than it may sound in the first place.
- Actuaries are the highest paid professionals
An individual who has pursued actuarial studies would know that the package in the industry could drastically vary depending on various factors. Key factors that decide one’s package in this domain are – the number of papers cleared, the domain you belong to (life insurance, pension, general insurance etc.), the number and quality of work experience that you have, your area of expertise, whether you work for a domestic company or an MNC, etc. It is a combination of different factors that decide your package. But certainly the growth curve for an actuary is steep as you gain more experience compared many other career options currently available.
- Coaching is the only option
There are multiple ways in which an aspirant can pursue actuarial studies. There are many who do clear papers without seeking any guidance and successfully manage to clear exams with self-study. Others prefer coaching classes to get personal attention and guidance. A trend in the most of the western countries is to pursue actuarial studies under the formal education system i.e. most of the renowned universities offer an actuarial science bachelor’s and master’s degree program which directly compliments professional papers. Students complete their graduation in actuarial science and either get exempted up to certain papers if the degree program is accredited with Actuarial body or give professional papers alongside. In this field, selective studies can land you in trouble during job interviews. One needs to be thorough with the concepts as the subject never leaves you, even when you have cleared it.
- Actuaries only work for insurance companies:
While insurance sector is certainly the biggest employment generator in the actuarial domain. Actuaries in the recent past are in strong demand in other fields’ like- banking, strategy, business planning, risk, finance. Actuaries due to their strong math and statistic skillsets are venturing into new age career options such as data science, AI, ML, etc. Actuarial Science course focuses on a variety of topics and skillsets; like modelling, financial economics, statistical methods, insurance principles, investment principles, enterprise risk management, communication essentials and more. We believe with a strong foundation actuarial science opens up many doors for following career options:
- Risk management
- Equity Analyst
- Portfolio Manger
- Investment Banking
- Data science
Actuarial science skill sets would help a person move into a lot more areas than what is generally perceived, after all, at the end of the day, the skills acquired matter more than the degree.
In all to summarize a student with reasonable intellect and right motivation and perseverance can become an Actuary, Math and statistic is the bed rock for becoming a successful actuary, pay scale of an actuary can vary based on many parameters but certainly the growth over a period of time with right experience and skills is steep, many options to pursue actuarial studies one enroll for professional papers and prepare offline or pursue actuarial studies under formal education system such as B. Sc. In Actuarial Science and Quantitative finance degree program offered by Patkar-Varde College, University of Mumbai in association with IAQS and is India’s only IFoA accredited bachelor’s degree program and last career options on pursuing actuarial science is not limited to Insurance but many other finance domains.
