A senior of mine, who freshly took a role as a Senior Actuarial Associate, once told me,
“I have done many excel courses and this by far, is one of the best ones I have ever come across”
when I asked him whether the program is worth it.
And while I am still at it, I have to say, it took me some time to figure out, but definitely I have become a lot more comfortable at excel and the usage specific to Actuarial work.
The Independent Program¹ I was part of spans over 6 weeks
Let’s explore the key takeaways from each topic:
Intro to P&C and Basic Technical Skills
It introduces you to Insurance, a bird’s eye view and to the understanding is that Insurance is just a medium/method of risk management, there are various other ways too. The most popular one is “risk transfer”, the one that insurance provides.
They introduce us to some basics in excel and some advanced commands and techniques that are useful for actuaries while they are playing with the data. I’ve listed a few that I had taken notes on:
COMMANDS:
countif sumif if textjoin vlookup hlookup xlookup
TECHNIQUES:
sorting, filtering, conditional formatting, multi-way lookup,
pivot-table(creating summaries), mappingData Visualization
Stresses on the importance of an effective visual communication. How the same data can be visualized in multiple ways, but one of them will have a higher impact over the rest. Viz comm. is also important for reducing ambiguity.
Simplicity is key!
They first explain why we should go for this type of representation if this is the goal and that is the data. Then they give us excel workbooks with a lot of tasks that I found quite challenging. They also left us with no micro-managed instructions to allow us to implement the data visualization knowledge we learnt from the seminar.
Pricing²
Explains what pricing means and why it is important. Also, introduces us to Rate Level indications and how we can calculate them if we are given historical data. And then how to use them to project future premiums.
We also are introduced to Telematics & Auto Insurance which is basically “using cutting edge technology in the auto insurance industry to better price products and promote a good moral cause”
We were also provided with a guided workbook, for us to explore the various components in a ratemaking process and how each component interacts with the overall rate indication being calculated.
Reserving²
Emphasizes on the importance of reserving in the Insurance industry and how fun it is to do reserving work. Also shows Actuarial Triangles in working and talks about how useful it is as a tool.
They also provide us with an Applied exercise which was very fun to do. There, we were able to see how to calculate the additional reserves required for claims coming from a certain Accident Year.
METHODS LEARNT:
Chain Ladder Development, Expected Loss Ratio,
Bornhuetter-Ferguson Method (in applied exercise)
CONCEPTS LEARNT:
IBNYR vs IBNER, Actuarial Triangles, Ultimate Losses,
Actuarial Practices (in brief)Predictive Modelling
Explores the data science aspect of Actuarial work. Leveraging the computational potency of modern computers and the cutting-edge statistical methods that can be used to make granular level analysis on data that couldn’t be done before.
A lot of overlap in the concepts learnt from the MAS³ exams. But the benefit I derived from it was the way everything was being talked about in an implementation perspective: “How do people in the industry use these concepts?” and “Why data processing and validation is the most time consuming step”
To add to it, they end with a banger
CONCEPTS & TAKEAWAYS:
Modeling project Lifecycle (an iterative process)
Exploratory Data Analysis is important (GIGO)
Predictor selection for the analysis.
Comparing models using Lift Charts (steeper = better)Career Opportunities for P&C Actuaries
This career is not only about having Technical skills and being able to produce results. It is also about being able to communicate those results effectively to people who may not be so technically adept. It is also essential to keep learning skills which will be indispensable in our progress.
Also, they had a panel discussion about CAS, which is exclusively focused on P&C, has 100+ year track record and about 10,000 members worldwide. There are also a lot of voluntary activities available which improve one’s knowledge and gives them the ability to network. The discussion then shifted to the actuarial journey of the Panel members, which also was quite interesting.
Personally, this was an eye-opener for me (and I am sure to many students like myself) because we tend to get lost in the process of preparing for and passing exams that we forget to pay attention to the essential skills and to add to our additional skills that will enrich our performance as our future role as Actuaries.
Journal Update: Finished the program on 8–2–2023 (W)
Overall, I really enjoyed the program and highly encourage budding Actuaries like me to go through it. One key element about the course that I really liked is that it’s very contemporary.
Meaning, they will keep updating the contents of the program, keeping the essential elements intact, yet fresh. I can say so, because a lot of discussion was revolving around things that are happening in recent times, which also made it easy to relate to.
Signing off…
[1]: I was actually lucky to be selected in the Mentor-led program but since it clashed with my college timings I had to opt for the Independent one instead.
[2]: Will be covered in detail in Exam 5
[2]: Modern Actuarial Statistics exam. Covers a lot of textbook Statistical concepts and also those that are relatively new in the subject. Here’s a post I’d recommend if you are planning to write it yourself.
