What Is It Like Being a Casualty Actuary?

Like doctors and lawyers, actuaries must pass a series of exams to gain status, standing and salary in the workplace. Uniquely, however, actuaries canenter the field as they study for and take their exams, which may take years to finish.

Casualty actuary Hayden Burrus says he spent a decade completing all ten exams he was required to take. Upon learning over email that he had passed his final exam at the age of 31, " I just took the rest of the day off," says Burrus, the principal of HB Actuarial Services in Delray Beach, Fla.. "I wasn’t at a company where I could celebrate with somebody else, so my experience was kind of anticlimactic. But for most people, it's like a graduation party."

We asked Burrus more about his work and what traits are common to successful actuaries.

When you're asked what you do, what's your response?

When I tell people I’m a consulting actuary, I get a variety of reactions. People who have heard of the actuarial field before — because they might have worked with an actuary or worked in the insurance industry — say, "Oh, you must be very smart."

But probably three-quarters of the time, people say, "What’s that?" They’ve never even heard of an actuary before, so they'll then ask for a little more detail. At a cocktail party, no one wants to hear a lot of details, so I try to summarize it the best I can in a sentence or two. I usually say something along the lines of, "We forecast financial results for insurance companies."

So let's ask a question that perhaps those people may not. Why did you choose this as your profession?

I’ve always been very good at math and in fact, was majoring in mathematics in college. Around my junior year, I was working with my college’s career services department, looking to get an internship that I hoped would help me figure out what I was going to do with my life after I graduated. A match came up with an actuarial intern position in New York City. I had never heard of actuarial work until that internship popped up. The pay was as good if not better than what I was going to make painting dorm rooms — my alternate job that summer — so I jumped on it. I ended up really enjoying it because it used and developed my math andcomputer skills. Itwas a good match for my talents.

What did you learn from the internship experience?

I learned what it takes to become an actuary. There is a significant and very rigorous examination process. At the time I was coming up, there were 10 actuarial exams, each six months apart. And the pass rate for each one was only 40%. So the rest fail. The young actuaries that I was meeting were telling me that it takes about 300 hours to study for an exam, and even then, you couldn't really guarantee that you were going to pass.

I also realized I loved the certainty of the profession. I like studying and I like learning and growing as a person. And here was a career where if I passed an exam, I got a raise. I loved that when I was younger.

What happened next after you decided to pursue actuarial work as your career?

As soon as I graduated from college, I entered the actuarial field, at age 21. But it took me until I was 31 to pass all of my exams. In the meantime, I got job experience — and raises too. Many companies will let you take around 100 hours off of work to study for your exams but still keep paying you.

It’s not that your starting pay is poor — it just doesn’t get to be excellent until you’ve passed a bunch of exams. By the time I passed all of my exams, I had moved to a consulting firm. I thought the work was interesting, plus consultants tend to make a little more money, which I enjoyed. The downside is that there's more stress, too, which I didn’t enjoy as much.

I eventually became chief actuary of a small insurer. I did that at a relatively young age — I was, I think, 34. Not many people get that sort of opportunity, to be that high on the totem pole that young, but I believe those early fellowships, like the one I had, can really help launch your career like that.