Insurance companies, consulting firms, rating agencies, auditing firms, regulatory agencies, reinsurers, brokerage firms and others hire actuaries, and the actuary's life is different in each of them. The big four (PWC, KPMG, Deloitte, EY) also hire consulting actuaries. McKinsey and Accenture also hire them. Sooner or later, many actuaries find themselves in a position to consider consulting work.
Some start their careers as consultants. Others start working for insurance companies and then evaluate the consulting option midway through their career or at retirement age. A career in actuarial consulting versus working at an insurance company is a topic that many actuaries (and recruiters) discuss often and extensively. Consultants select their opinion based on assumptions and actuarial interns, like me, put it into Powerpoint presentations for clients.
See the list of actuarial consulting firms for a list of firms, which is useful when you start applying for employment. Before entering the consulting world, actuaries must first assess their strengths, weaknesses, desires and aspirations, since they ultimately guide professional decisions. Of the 2 who hire, it is very likely that they will choose from the group of actuarial interns, since they have known them for 4 months. A company can hire 2 actuarial interns per semester or 6 interns per year, but only hire 2 full-time actuarial employees per year.
Recruiters have found that most actuaries feel that consulting is inherently appealing to them or not. Actuaries who want to be part of the consulting world need to know themselves and know the expectations of the firms they join. Junior actuaries in consulting firms are also often responsible for data-intensive technical work. A second consideration is that working in a consulting firm can offer actuarial students a wider range of jobs, thus expanding their skills and increasing their options for the next steps in their career.
Actuarial consulting firms provide actuarial services to companies, either by invoicing by the hour or by project. In the salary survey I saw that there are actuarial consultants, but I'm not sure where they are hired. You can also learn a lot as an actuarial intern at an insurance company, but an actuarial consulting firm exposes you to a wide variety of companies and best practices. Actuarial consulting firm — Professional services firm — Consulting firms are often called that.
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