We are actuaries – Life Insurance

IN a previous article written by my colleague, she introduced what an actuary is and what they do (with a focus on the General Insurance industry).

- BY KASUN AMARASURIYA

To recap, her article defined ourselves as problem solvers and strategic thinkers, we use our mathematical training to evaluate the risk associated with future events.

I prefer to take a slightly different approach when introducing myself. "I model for a living". That usually gets an interesting reaction from the person at the other end. I don't model fashion, I model the probabilistic outcomes of uncertain future events (much less interesting, to some).

We are a very versatile bunch and the extensive training we undertake as part of our qualification means we tend to approach problems from first principles. This means that we are generally able to tackle a variety of problems that relate to probability and uncertain outcomes. A good example is an interview question used by my team: 'How much is spent on coffee in X city on a given day'. This is the type of question that gets a mathematical brain excited because we can make a number of assumptions and estimate an answer. We would start off by making an assumption about the population of the city (or source it from available statistics) then we need to make an assumptions about the portion of the population that works, how many work from home vs go into the city, what portion of the population would drink coffee, how many cups of coffee would an individual drink per day, how much is the average cup of coffee and so on.