Actuaries

Actuaries typically perform the following tasks: • Ascertain premium rates required and cash reserves and liabilities necessary to ensure payment of future benefits. • Collaborate with programmers, underwriters, accounts, claims experts, and senior management to help companies develop plans for new lines of business or improvements to existing business. • Analyze statistical information to estimate mortality, accident, sickness, disability, and retirement rates. • Design, review, and help administer insurance, annuity and pension plans, determining financial soundness and calculating premiums. • Determine, or help determine, company policy, and explain complex technical matters to company executives, government officials, shareholders, policyholders, or the public. • Construct probability tables for events such as fires, natural disasters, and unemployment, based on analysis of statistical data and other pertinent information. • Provide advice to clients on a contract basis, working as a consultant. • Determine equitable basis for distributing surplus earnings under participating insurance and annuity contracts in mutual companies. • Negotiate terms and conditions of reinsurance with other companies. • Provide expertise to help financial institutions manage risks and maximize returns associated with investment products or credit offerings. • Testify before public agencies on proposed legislation affecting businesses. • Determine policy contract provisions for each type of insurance. • Testify in court as expert witness or to provide legal evidence on matters such as the value of potential lifetime earnings of a person disabled or killed in an accident. • Explain changes in contract provisions to customers. • Manage credit and help price corporate security offerings.