In the property and casualty industry, there are certain roles that are more common for CAS students and credentialed actuaries. It is very common, especially early in a P&C actuarial career, to work in some capacity with pricing or reserving. Many students out of college find their first job or internship completing rate reviews and filings for a P&C insurance company. It’s a great way to gain an early understanding of what the actuarial profession will entail, but it isn’t the only route. Nontraditional roles can provide alternative means to jump-start an actuarial career or allow an experienced actuary the ability to flex unique skills and try something new.

Very early in my career, I was offered the opportunity to spend time working in a role doing more complex statistical analyses. It was still at an insurance company, but I worked closely with the claims department utilizing statistical methods in R and Python to create models, such as Gaussian GLMs and SARIMA time series. The uses for the models included predicting the number of catastrophe claims that would require an independent adjuster, identifying inaccurate payment behavior of internal claims adjusters and providing inputs needed for new claims department initiatives’ cost benefit analyses. There were also ample opportunities to master other critical analytical skillsets, such as SQL, data exploration and management, and various data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau).

These nontraditional experiences afforded me the ability to put exam knowledge to practice. I was in the process of sitting for MAS-I and MAS-II and could simultaneously apply the techniques I was learning to the daily work I was completing. A complaint I heard from pricing peers was not having many chances early in their careers to apply concepts from their preliminary actuarial exams in their day-to-day responsibilities at work. Being open to less traditional roles could be your door to exploring other applications of the knowledge gained through actuarial exams.

Currently, I am working to modernize the software platforms used to conduct pricing analyses. Having working data connections between pricing, underwriting and claims is critical to insurance companies being sufficiently streamlined and capable of keeping pace with competitors. It’s a role I wouldn’t have landed and had success in without first gaining the experience I did in a nontraditional space.

Nontraditional roles can also help bridge data science with actuarial science. As was noted in the March 2023 Future Fellows, “Data science is not a threat to actuarial science, but rather an enhancement” (“Actuaries and Data Scientists: How Can We Work Together and What Can We Bring to The Table?”). The CAS website states that the 10,000-plus CAS members “are employed by insurance companies, educational institutions, ratemaking organizations, state insurance departments, the federal government and independent consulting firms.” If you are seeking something nontraditional, there are plenty of roles to be found at these organizations and others. In general, the actuarial career path offers plenty of exposure to data science topics, and branching out by exploring nontraditional responsibilities will only benefit actuaries in the long run as the industry and global market become more data- and smart technology-driven.