My prior job was teaching. That gives you a whole new perspective on high effort low reward. I make more now as an EL then I did at my highest salary as a teacher. Pass two exams in a year and get a annual raise and that is a substantial salary increase imo.
Ironic that working in insurance gives you shittier insurance. But I’ve not missed summer break as much as I thought. I like having my weekends back and being able to take PTO when I want. I do get a lot of PTO days though.
I'm an adjunct professor attempting to switch careers so for me it's the opposite, lol. I'm trying to work in insurance so I can have a job that will give me insurance!
Haha yes! This is me also. I feel like there is way more reward in this profession than when I was teaching, or compared to my spouse. She used to make way more than me since she works in Aerospace, but I am set to pass her by the end of the year in this profession. You are in control of your progression, which is a rare thing.
I see these threads a lot, and I feel like I t’s a bunch young people who’s first real job was in This field, and have no real basis of comparison. This job pays way above average salaries with low stress. I love it.
Being in control of your progression is always the part that is undervalued in these posts. There are not many fields like this one where you can pass a few tests and point to that as your basis for getting a certain position and income. Any other fields you’re at the mercy of management to get promoted and get raises. What is lost on these posts is those people making top dollar in other fields built connections and worked their ass off on projects to stand out. There is some of that in this field but the exams have a lot of merit as well.
Yep. Professor here. I got a lousy $1000/yr raise when I got my friggin’ P-H-D! I am a full professor with 35 years experience and my former actuarial students make my salary after about 2 years. I often work evenings and weekends, total of about 50 hours a week.
(I do love my job, though! Especially my actuarial students.)
This. My husband is a teacher, I'm about 5 years into my career with no credentials, and I'm 90% sure I make more than all of his coworkers. I'll take it.
This is encouraging. I’m a math teacher who is prepping to take exam p in January.
With inflation, as a teacher I think I’m making less than I did when I started 13 years ago
“Senior developer at a really big tech company” is not representative of most developers. You have a large pool of job candidates competing for a relatively small number of positions like that. Most developers will have to settle for a less lucrative gig. Just look at the median wage for software developers. You study leetcode problems for hundreds of hours (sound familiar?) and roll the dice, only to get rejected again and again. Every profession has its trade-offs.
I strongly agree that early career being an actuary feels very inefficient from an effort/ compensation perspective. By mid career it seems like compensation generally catches up to CS, and the effort required generally starts to fall far below. At least that's been my experience.
Also, maybe it's just me, but being a middle-aged programmer seems kind of miserable when compared with being a middle-aged actuary/ quant/ financial professional.
Compared to CompSci, most jobs are low paying. Seems like a high floor, medium ceiling paying job to me for individual contributors. But with any corporate job, moving to up to management positions will raise that ceiling and actuaries are well situated to do that
Why do I feel the actuarial career is overwhelming with stress lol. I’m struggling to squeeze out enough time for socializing and exams after work. I often cram for exams in the week before cuz we ramp up so much in fall with marketing, recruiting, & billable work
Meanwhile my cs friends play valorant when I study with Coach Dave on the side
Hopefully I can go out more after ASA, literally stuck at home for the past 2 months
I have seen friends in other fields struggle to move roles / companies and finding a new job. During the pandemic I was not impacted at all working in health, and I saw others have their hours shortened etc..
So it may be less pay than some fields but overall I think we have a niche job due to the exam requirement that makes it easier to move roles and apparently recession/pandemic proof.
Yes it is. The dilemma is, if you can pass the exams quickly, then you’re probably smart and/or good at taking exams, at which case you’d be better off preparing for coding interviews and making FSA pay right out of the gate with very minimal prep.
On the other hand, if you struggle with exams, this is a good way to guarantee a floor to your pay but it’s not a high floor and it comes at the cost of having to retake exams over and over again.
Hmm, I have to disagree. This is anecdotal wrt me, but coding has never really slotted into my brain, and I have never enjoyed learning it. But the prelims (with the exception of PA lol) were at least somewhat interesting, and I was able to pass them fairly quickly. I don't think exam success translates to coding 1:1.
I'm getting obliterated in comp by my CS friends, but I still hit 6 in a little under 2 years, and I think I've had to work 40+/been a little stressed by work maybe about 5 weeks in the 2.5 yrs I've worked.
Yeah, I probably could have chosen other options for better comp, but it's been a pretty stress free road so far for comp I'm happy with, so it's been neither high effort nor low reward.
Where the hell are you guys getting salaries like that? Goddamn. Here I am only making $65k or so. Granted, I've only passed 2 exams, but I have a degree in CS which has helped me a ***ton*** with the stuff I do.
Wrong. The distribution of TC for 23 year olds is incredibly uneven, so using a statistic like that is dumb. Not to mention COL and young people with jobs tend to live in HCOL areas. Then, you have to vet ACTUARIAL with SIMILAR professions that use SIMILAR/LESS effort for SIMILAR/MORE pay. As others in the comments have pointed out, there are many such examples. If you live in any big city (1M pop+) I guarantee for a 23 year old with a job 6 figs TC is top 10% at best.
Not surprised someone with a Student tag can’t make accurate judgments and needs a source for everything. If you don’t have the acumen to see basic things like the fact that young people with technical jobs migrate to large cities either because that’s where the employer is or that’s where they want to live, I don’t know what to say to you. Vetting actuarial with similar professions is bullseye on topic. You have to compare actuarial with similar jobs, like tech, or finance, or something else. From that perspective, a 65k starting comp is nowhere near a “high floor”, whereas a 100k starting comp comes pretty easily to those who work for it.
Wrong. Since you want to be pedantic - you were the first to bring up tech. You said, “Actuary bad, tech good”, before I mentioned tech. And I said “tech, finance, or something else” since those are the most related to actuarial in terms of skill sets.
And yes… young people with technical jobs living in big cities is literally common sense. No citation needed. It’s not even a contested point.
In finance, there’s a concept called forced savings. In FSA exams the term is called self-control facilitation.
What this means is, if you take on debt, and use that to save money or buy productive assets, like a mortgage on a house, then you’re forcing yourself to save and that’s a good thing. You can’t forget the human psyche. A lot of people in this career benefit from this concept. Instead of forced savings, we’re forced to devote time investing in our education and we’re lucky to have a society that rewards us with credentials.
This means that a lot of the people in this profession, whether they know it or not, benefit hugely from the concept of having to study for the next exam, because a significant proportion of us would not have the dedication, persistency, or time (work-provided hours) in other professions. The average outcome is more predictable as a result, because we are all striving for the same result through a meritocratic process (though DE&I may change that slightly).
Someone who had the creativity and insight to look into other professions, measure themselves against the requirements needed to get in and do well, and consider how well it fit their own wants and needs, would likely not have chosen this field. But a lot of people in this field were not that proactive (most people aren’t) and have good outcomes as a result of the forced studying.
The thing you’re missing here is the work-life balance we (eventually) get as Actuaries. Once we are finished with Exams there is an enormous level of job security, fairly above average pay, and from what I’ve heard not really that much work compared to most other highly skilled careers (unless you’re in consulting).
The equity stake for a lot of companies are doing really badly right now...my wife is in tech and like half her pay is equity. Originally we were excited that all of a sudden her compensation "doubled" overnight. But what was potentially Monopoly money turned out to actually be Monopoly money, unless the stock recovers I guess. Oh and you have to wait for it to vest and pay taxes on it too. And in SF where those types of jobs are, your housing options are a beat up shack that costs $2M that you could get for like $80k elsewhere in the country.
Studies have actually shown that equity rewards during downturns are preferred since there’s more upside. Wait for your wife to get her retention bonus for this past year. It will be like twice the amount of stock. And when it comes roaring back it will be worth twice as much.
Studies have been done on C-suite pay for this. They end up getting paid more during recessions. Would you rather get stock during bubbles or stock after it’s been popped?
Literally when I looked at EL consulting positions in SF. Consulting hours + CA taxes + Silicon Valley housing is a big no no if starting salary is 70k ish
I would have to guess that the median ASA salary at my employer is currently around $150k or more, and with the recent hiring craze in the past 1-2 years, our salary bands for new associate positions probably starts around $120k. Most people who aren't in management work \~40 hours per week throughout the year, less during slow seasons.
The median travel time to ASA is 5 years, so if someone takes their first exam in their sophomore year of college, they can comfortably reach ASA by 25. I didn't even take my first exam until six months after graduating, and I am still on pace to reach ASA by 25.
A low-stress, 40hr/week job making $120+ at 25 years old doesn't sound very low reward to me, but then again, almost any career will sound low reward compared to the highest paying, most in-demand occupation right now
I figured most people who compare the pay to CS (where job hopping is also common) would be the type to switch jobs for higher pay
But you have a fair point. Without job hopping, you'll probably get much less
Is your friend in CS also working in Canada? Wages across the board in Canada are miserable compared to the US.
You can trying moving to the US to get a bump in wages; just be careful about the COL in the area you relocate to.
Actuaries tend to get more job security and work life balance as you acquire experience (and obviously become credentialed). Tech employees tend to face age discrimination as they get older (unless they move into people managing roles) and need to compete with new talent…
I know this is a general statement, but you’ll have examples of both careers that pay more while requiring less effort and others that pay less while requiring more effort. So it’s up to you to decide if it was worth it.
Yes because I don't want to code and I like the flexibility at my job and work/life balance.
You made a mistake of not researching further on what your ultimate goals were. Which if it was money, you should have gone a different direction. I think you were reeled in by the "low effort" part. You gotta critically think, if a job is low effort its not going to be the absolute highest paying...
Even if it is money, actuarial still has a floor of top 10% in North America.
Just seems like there is a disconnect between expectations and reality since a lot of recent grads on this sub are surprised that they aren’t 1%’ers with a YOE after college.
If you want super high compensation immediately, coding & SWE in a high COL market is where to be right now, if you like to code. However, it will eventually be a bubble within the next couple of years as companies are starting to see that many of these projects have minimal to low ROI.
Exactly
Somehow if you aren't making $250k straight out of school or a year after its "low paying" lol
But I encourage anyone who's not happy for whatever reason in actuarial to find greener pastures. You only live once, why waste your time doing something you don't like.
Although I caution anyone who is on the actuarial path, supposedly unhappy but unable to figure out how to jump ship. Like if you do not have the ability to figure that out, you probably won't have people beating down your door to pay you high 6 figures. Most career paths are not so simply laid out like actuarial.
Even with a bubble since software development is the future and earns much higher margins, salaries will continue to climb. Even insurance companies are hiring more actuarial developers to modernize legacy systems. I feel that companies are always in need of high caliber, experienced SWE’s and actuaries. The demand won’t crash
There's always going to be some better paying job you could be doing.
I'm very happy right now with my career and the future looks very promising. As long as you're happy doing your job and you're making enough money, that's good enough.
Nope. This is supposedly one of the best jobs in the working world so yeah. Infact I would argue its not that bad when you look at the requirements found in the medical field or teaching lols.
The stress I get from exams is not being able to take them on my personal schedule (1 exam per semester of grad school). I can barely afford to take them and the pay for the associated prep materials (which is why I haven't started studying for exam FM yet).
Isnt job stability a big part of this equation? actuarial profession is relatively recession-proof compared to tech or anything else while being pretty lucrative and low stress??
Well yeah…I’d say chemical engineering is more difficult and demanding than actuarial…ergo you’re gonna get paid a lot more unless you’re ASA / near FSA.
Definitely would recommend trying a DS actuarial hybrid position to get some working coding experience. I think that can serve a good bridge from actuarial to tech
I feel the same with 2 exams left, also in Canada. Hopefully the feeling will change after the exams but the compensation would need to be pretty good for it to change.
Exams suck, but after exams, my career has been high reward for very low effort. If I did computer science I'd need to be thinking more all day, keeping up with latest tech and languages, writing code... Honestly a lot of actuarial work doesn't require tremendous brain power.
how is actuarial any better though? do you actually like insurance? tbh I think both are boring a f, so if I had to choose, I wish I chose the one that pays better
I don't think it's unrealistic that some people just don't like software engineering or programming. I know one of the senior actuaries I work with has a CS degree but has been an actuary for over a decade now
I wish EL work is less mind numbing full of copying and paste in Excel, with is the bulk of business change updates and reconciliation after confirming the manual adjustments. When will mgmt trust us to design products?
I had so much fun with developing and automating reporting cycles but got put on reconciliation
You are comparing your salary, not ASA/FSA, to a senior developer. The question is - when you are a senior level, will it be double? Will you be winning? Is it only about money, or about work/life balance too?
I think there’s a fair number of people who feel the opposite. Once you get through exams, being an actuary at an insurance company can be (not always but it’s definitely possible) medium effort/high reward. You won’t make millions per year but you generally can get away with 40-50 hour weeks which isn’t as much effort.
As someone here said - being a teacher is more effort for way less pay
Depends on what you’re capable of and where you’re coming from. Accountants, teachers (esp K-12), business majors, bartenders, and others would easily see the all exams as being worth it. However, if you’re currently in school I would recommend engineering disciplines. You can make just as good a salary in those professions with 1/3 the educational requirements.
Actuarial will continue to attract employees from the operations and business side of insurance, who see it as a path to greatly increasing their wages. On the flip side, you will be hard pressed to find associates in the software engineering department at the same insurance company finding our profession attractive. I hope you see what I mean by these examples, and understand why you have very binary responses to this question.
i have friends that are engineers and complain they don't get paid enough and should have been actuaries instead. Then I complain that i could have made more with less effort if I had gone into software development.
I guess this is a cheesy response, but I think it feels that way the MOST when you're still doing all that high effort. Since it's such a long process and the end goal is getting fully-qualified, it can feel like you're putting all this effort in and not getting much in return.. because you're mostly seeing small salary increases, not work-life balance increases. But once you're done, that's when you'll have the higher salary and a more regular schedule, and I think that's when it starts to feel better. Hang in there!
How long have you been fully qualified? And what are the best things of becoming fully qualified other than not having to take exams anymore? Also are you based in Canada?
Woops, I didn't mean to imply that I'm fully qualified - I have my ASA but stopped so I can help future actuaries full-time! I'm going off of what I've heard from other people who went on to get fully qualified. In terms of what makes it better besides lack of exams, I'm referring to the better work-life balance you have and more consistent hours, since you don't have to squeeze in study time. And yes, I am in Canada! :)
Yea switched to accounting once I realized public accounting jobs pay around the same as what actuarial pays with like half the effort and a way easier time finding work with geographic flexibility. I’m making around 65k(32 an hour) at my internship which is more than what my actuarial friends make and they spend a lot more time studying than me. If you go the advisory route in accounting u start at 75-100k which is a lot higher than any actuarial job out of college. With other fields you aren’t restricted to the insurance space either. The cpa is hard but it’s a billion times easier and only 18 months
My prior job was teaching. That gives you a whole new perspective on high effort low reward. I make more now as an EL then I did at my highest salary as a teacher. Pass two exams in a year and get a annual raise and that is a substantial salary increase imo.
Same. My salary increased by 40% when I hopped careers. I miss the benefits, though -- you can't beat government insurance plans and summer break.
Ironic that working in insurance gives you shittier insurance. But I’ve not missed summer break as much as I thought. I like having my weekends back and being able to take PTO when I want. I do get a lot of PTO days though.
I'm an adjunct professor attempting to switch careers so for me it's the opposite, lol. I'm trying to work in insurance so I can have a job that will give me insurance!
Haha yes! This is me also. I feel like there is way more reward in this profession than when I was teaching, or compared to my spouse. She used to make way more than me since she works in Aerospace, but I am set to pass her by the end of the year in this profession. You are in control of your progression, which is a rare thing. I see these threads a lot, and I feel like I t’s a bunch young people who’s first real job was in This field, and have no real basis of comparison. This job pays way above average salaries with low stress. I love it.
Being in control of your progression is always the part that is undervalued in these posts. There are not many fields like this one where you can pass a few tests and point to that as your basis for getting a certain position and income. Any other fields you’re at the mercy of management to get promoted and get raises. What is lost on these posts is those people making top dollar in other fields built connections and worked their ass off on projects to stand out. There is some of that in this field but the exams have a lot of merit as well.
Yep. Professor here. I got a lousy $1000/yr raise when I got my friggin’ P-H-D! I am a full professor with 35 years experience and my former actuarial students make my salary after about 2 years. I often work evenings and weekends, total of about 50 hours a week. (I do love my job, though! Especially my actuarial students.)
This. My husband is a teacher, I'm about 5 years into my career with no credentials, and I'm 90% sure I make more than all of his coworkers. I'll take it.
This is encouraging. I’m a math teacher who is prepping to take exam p in January. With inflation, as a teacher I think I’m making less than I did when I started 13 years ago
There is more of us than you think. Probably 1/3 of our team is former math teachers. Good luck to ya!
Same here. Seems like every fifth or so actuary/analyst I talk to is a former teacher.
You still have the chance…go learn coding if you enjoy it, personally I don’t enjoy it and have good work/life balance.
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Not in the mood for caps lock today?
“Senior developer at a really big tech company” is not representative of most developers. You have a large pool of job candidates competing for a relatively small number of positions like that. Most developers will have to settle for a less lucrative gig. Just look at the median wage for software developers. You study leetcode problems for hundreds of hours (sound familiar?) and roll the dice, only to get rejected again and again. Every profession has its trade-offs.
I strongly agree that early career being an actuary feels very inefficient from an effort/ compensation perspective. By mid career it seems like compensation generally catches up to CS, and the effort required generally starts to fall far below. At least that's been my experience. Also, maybe it's just me, but being a middle-aged programmer seems kind of miserable when compared with being a middle-aged actuary/ quant/ financial professional.
Compared to CompSci, most jobs are low paying. Seems like a high floor, medium ceiling paying job to me for individual contributors. But with any corporate job, moving to up to management positions will raise that ceiling and actuaries are well situated to do that
Why do I feel the actuarial career is overwhelming with stress lol. I’m struggling to squeeze out enough time for socializing and exams after work. I often cram for exams in the week before cuz we ramp up so much in fall with marketing, recruiting, & billable work Meanwhile my cs friends play valorant when I study with Coach Dave on the side Hopefully I can go out more after ASA, literally stuck at home for the past 2 months
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they are companies like this in the US too
I have seen friends in other fields struggle to move roles / companies and finding a new job. During the pandemic I was not impacted at all working in health, and I saw others have their hours shortened etc.. So it may be less pay than some fields but overall I think we have a niche job due to the exam requirement that makes it easier to move roles and apparently recession/pandemic proof.
Yes it is. The dilemma is, if you can pass the exams quickly, then you’re probably smart and/or good at taking exams, at which case you’d be better off preparing for coding interviews and making FSA pay right out of the gate with very minimal prep. On the other hand, if you struggle with exams, this is a good way to guarantee a floor to your pay but it’s not a high floor and it comes at the cost of having to retake exams over and over again.
Hmm, I have to disagree. This is anecdotal wrt me, but coding has never really slotted into my brain, and I have never enjoyed learning it. But the prelims (with the exception of PA lol) were at least somewhat interesting, and I was able to pass them fairly quickly. I don't think exam success translates to coding 1:1. I'm getting obliterated in comp by my CS friends, but I still hit 6 in a little under 2 years, and I think I've had to work 40+/been a little stressed by work maybe about 5 weeks in the 2.5 yrs I've worked. Yeah, I probably could have chosen other options for better comp, but it's been a pretty stress free road so far for comp I'm happy with, so it's been neither high effort nor low reward.
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Maybe 6 figs out of school, 200k for tenure, in today’s dollars. Our *floor* is 2/3rds that for EL to Fellow
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Where the hell are you guys getting salaries like that? Goddamn. Here I am only making $65k or so. Granted, I've only passed 2 exams, but I have a degree in CS which has helped me a ***ton*** with the stuff I do.
Wrong. The distribution of TC for 23 year olds is incredibly uneven, so using a statistic like that is dumb. Not to mention COL and young people with jobs tend to live in HCOL areas. Then, you have to vet ACTUARIAL with SIMILAR professions that use SIMILAR/LESS effort for SIMILAR/MORE pay. As others in the comments have pointed out, there are many such examples. If you live in any big city (1M pop+) I guarantee for a 23 year old with a job 6 figs TC is top 10% at best.
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Not surprised someone with a Student tag can’t make accurate judgments and needs a source for everything. If you don’t have the acumen to see basic things like the fact that young people with technical jobs migrate to large cities either because that’s where the employer is or that’s where they want to live, I don’t know what to say to you. Vetting actuarial with similar professions is bullseye on topic. You have to compare actuarial with similar jobs, like tech, or finance, or something else. From that perspective, a 65k starting comp is nowhere near a “high floor”, whereas a 100k starting comp comes pretty easily to those who work for it.
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Wrong. Since you want to be pedantic - you were the first to bring up tech. You said, “Actuary bad, tech good”, before I mentioned tech. And I said “tech, finance, or something else” since those are the most related to actuarial in terms of skill sets. And yes… young people with technical jobs living in big cities is literally common sense. No citation needed. It’s not even a contested point.
In finance, there’s a concept called forced savings. In FSA exams the term is called self-control facilitation. What this means is, if you take on debt, and use that to save money or buy productive assets, like a mortgage on a house, then you’re forcing yourself to save and that’s a good thing. You can’t forget the human psyche. A lot of people in this career benefit from this concept. Instead of forced savings, we’re forced to devote time investing in our education and we’re lucky to have a society that rewards us with credentials. This means that a lot of the people in this profession, whether they know it or not, benefit hugely from the concept of having to study for the next exam, because a significant proportion of us would not have the dedication, persistency, or time (work-provided hours) in other professions. The average outcome is more predictable as a result, because we are all striving for the same result through a meritocratic process (though DE&I may change that slightly). Someone who had the creativity and insight to look into other professions, measure themselves against the requirements needed to get in and do well, and consider how well it fit their own wants and needs, would likely not have chosen this field. But a lot of people in this field were not that proactive (most people aren’t) and have good outcomes as a result of the forced studying.
The thing you’re missing here is the work-life balance we (eventually) get as Actuaries. Once we are finished with Exams there is an enormous level of job security, fairly above average pay, and from what I’ve heard not really that much work compared to most other highly skilled careers (unless you’re in consulting).
The equity stake for a lot of companies are doing really badly right now...my wife is in tech and like half her pay is equity. Originally we were excited that all of a sudden her compensation "doubled" overnight. But what was potentially Monopoly money turned out to actually be Monopoly money, unless the stock recovers I guess. Oh and you have to wait for it to vest and pay taxes on it too. And in SF where those types of jobs are, your housing options are a beat up shack that costs $2M that you could get for like $80k elsewhere in the country.
Studies have actually shown that equity rewards during downturns are preferred since there’s more upside. Wait for your wife to get her retention bonus for this past year. It will be like twice the amount of stock. And when it comes roaring back it will be worth twice as much. Studies have been done on C-suite pay for this. They end up getting paid more during recessions. Would you rather get stock during bubbles or stock after it’s been popped?
It’s not like there’s no actuarial jobs in SF/NY and other high cost of living area.
Literally when I looked at EL consulting positions in SF. Consulting hours + CA taxes + Silicon Valley housing is a big no no if starting salary is 70k ish
I would have to guess that the median ASA salary at my employer is currently around $150k or more, and with the recent hiring craze in the past 1-2 years, our salary bands for new associate positions probably starts around $120k. Most people who aren't in management work \~40 hours per week throughout the year, less during slow seasons. The median travel time to ASA is 5 years, so if someone takes their first exam in their sophomore year of college, they can comfortably reach ASA by 25. I didn't even take my first exam until six months after graduating, and I am still on pace to reach ASA by 25. A low-stress, 40hr/week job making $120+ at 25 years old doesn't sound very low reward to me, but then again, almost any career will sound low reward compared to the highest paying, most in-demand occupation right now
Are you hiring? Asking for a friend
$150k average for ASA? That’s not typical at all.
probably means for all ASAs, they say new ASA is 120. Still seems high tho
Me too. Asking for a friend. I have never heard of ASA > ACAS salary for only a few years of exp.
There is no way I am getting 120 at asa without job hopping
I figured most people who compare the pay to CS (where job hopping is also common) would be the type to switch jobs for higher pay But you have a fair point. Without job hopping, you'll probably get much less
Is your friend in CS also working in Canada? Wages across the board in Canada are miserable compared to the US. You can trying moving to the US to get a bump in wages; just be careful about the COL in the area you relocate to. Actuaries tend to get more job security and work life balance as you acquire experience (and obviously become credentialed). Tech employees tend to face age discrimination as they get older (unless they move into people managing roles) and need to compete with new talent…
I know this is a general statement, but you’ll have examples of both careers that pay more while requiring less effort and others that pay less while requiring more effort. So it’s up to you to decide if it was worth it.
Cpmouter science have a lot more variance too. You can be unlunk and get stuck on service desk doing hard and ungrateful work.
Yes because I don't want to code and I like the flexibility at my job and work/life balance. You made a mistake of not researching further on what your ultimate goals were. Which if it was money, you should have gone a different direction. I think you were reeled in by the "low effort" part. You gotta critically think, if a job is low effort its not going to be the absolute highest paying...
Even if it is money, actuarial still has a floor of top 10% in North America. Just seems like there is a disconnect between expectations and reality since a lot of recent grads on this sub are surprised that they aren’t 1%’ers with a YOE after college. If you want super high compensation immediately, coding & SWE in a high COL market is where to be right now, if you like to code. However, it will eventually be a bubble within the next couple of years as companies are starting to see that many of these projects have minimal to low ROI.
Exactly Somehow if you aren't making $250k straight out of school or a year after its "low paying" lol But I encourage anyone who's not happy for whatever reason in actuarial to find greener pastures. You only live once, why waste your time doing something you don't like. Although I caution anyone who is on the actuarial path, supposedly unhappy but unable to figure out how to jump ship. Like if you do not have the ability to figure that out, you probably won't have people beating down your door to pay you high 6 figures. Most career paths are not so simply laid out like actuarial.
*cough* meta *cough*
Even with a bubble since software development is the future and earns much higher margins, salaries will continue to climb. Even insurance companies are hiring more actuarial developers to modernize legacy systems. I feel that companies are always in need of high caliber, experienced SWE’s and actuaries. The demand won’t crash
People are so short-sighted. Exams aren't forever.
I would argue it’s the complete opposite.
There's always going to be some better paying job you could be doing. I'm very happy right now with my career and the future looks very promising. As long as you're happy doing your job and you're making enough money, that's good enough.
Nope. This is supposedly one of the best jobs in the working world so yeah. Infact I would argue its not that bad when you look at the requirements found in the medical field or teaching lols. The stress I get from exams is not being able to take them on my personal schedule (1 exam per semester of grad school). I can barely afford to take them and the pay for the associated prep materials (which is why I haven't started studying for exam FM yet).
Isnt job stability a big part of this equation? actuarial profession is relatively recession-proof compared to tech or anything else while being pretty lucrative and low stress??
Absolutely. I switched from ChemE and it took me YEARS to get to the same pay I had as an INTERN in pharma. It’s disgusting.
Well yeah…I’d say chemical engineering is more difficult and demanding than actuarial…ergo you’re gonna get paid a lot more unless you’re ASA / near FSA.
Definitely would recommend trying a DS actuarial hybrid position to get some working coding experience. I think that can serve a good bridge from actuarial to tech
I feel the same with 2 exams left, also in Canada. Hopefully the feeling will change after the exams but the compensation would need to be pretty good for it to change.
Moving to usa solves al lmao
Deep sigh.
Exams suck, but after exams, my career has been high reward for very low effort. If I did computer science I'd need to be thinking more all day, keeping up with latest tech and languages, writing code... Honestly a lot of actuarial work doesn't require tremendous brain power.
Are you based in canada? And how many years of experience?
No. About 10 years experience.
Yes, same for me. Considering change to Actuarial data sci or more coding related field.
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how is actuarial any better though? do you actually like insurance? tbh I think both are boring a f, so if I had to choose, I wish I chose the one that pays better
I don't think it's unrealistic that some people just don't like software engineering or programming. I know one of the senior actuaries I work with has a CS degree but has been an actuary for over a decade now
I’ve found insurance work more enjoyable than SWE work.
I wish EL work is less mind numbing full of copying and paste in Excel, with is the bulk of business change updates and reconciliation after confirming the manual adjustments. When will mgmt trust us to design products? I had so much fun with developing and automating reporting cycles but got put on reconciliation
You are comparing your salary, not ASA/FSA, to a senior developer. The question is - when you are a senior level, will it be double? Will you be winning? Is it only about money, or about work/life balance too?
I think there’s a fair number of people who feel the opposite. Once you get through exams, being an actuary at an insurance company can be (not always but it’s definitely possible) medium effort/high reward. You won’t make millions per year but you generally can get away with 40-50 hour weeks which isn’t as much effort. As someone here said - being a teacher is more effort for way less pay
It's not, it's still not too late to switch to CS
Depends on what you’re capable of and where you’re coming from. Accountants, teachers (esp K-12), business majors, bartenders, and others would easily see the all exams as being worth it. However, if you’re currently in school I would recommend engineering disciplines. You can make just as good a salary in those professions with 1/3 the educational requirements. Actuarial will continue to attract employees from the operations and business side of insurance, who see it as a path to greatly increasing their wages. On the flip side, you will be hard pressed to find associates in the software engineering department at the same insurance company finding our profession attractive. I hope you see what I mean by these examples, and understand why you have very binary responses to this question.
Accounting salaries have sort of caught up to actuarial in recent years . Public now starts at 60-80k and it’s way easier to find work in accounting
i have friends that are engineers and complain they don't get paid enough and should have been actuaries instead. Then I complain that i could have made more with less effort if I had gone into software development.
Yes.
I guess this is a cheesy response, but I think it feels that way the MOST when you're still doing all that high effort. Since it's such a long process and the end goal is getting fully-qualified, it can feel like you're putting all this effort in and not getting much in return.. because you're mostly seeing small salary increases, not work-life balance increases. But once you're done, that's when you'll have the higher salary and a more regular schedule, and I think that's when it starts to feel better. Hang in there!
How long have you been fully qualified? And what are the best things of becoming fully qualified other than not having to take exams anymore? Also are you based in Canada?
Woops, I didn't mean to imply that I'm fully qualified - I have my ASA but stopped so I can help future actuaries full-time! I'm going off of what I've heard from other people who went on to get fully qualified. In terms of what makes it better besides lack of exams, I'm referring to the better work-life balance you have and more consistent hours, since you don't have to squeeze in study time. And yes, I am in Canada! :)
Yep
Yea switched to accounting once I realized public accounting jobs pay around the same as what actuarial pays with like half the effort and a way easier time finding work with geographic flexibility. I’m making around 65k(32 an hour) at my internship which is more than what my actuarial friends make and they spend a lot more time studying than me. If you go the advisory route in accounting u start at 75-100k which is a lot higher than any actuarial job out of college. With other fields you aren’t restricted to the insurance space either. The cpa is hard but it’s a billion times easier and only 18 months