 First time doing this. I see there's like some messages on Google saying learn more. It's too late It's too late Google to learn anymore. We just have to do it Like a typical Joe burger I'm five minutes early. It's it's one of the things once I've moved to to Cape Town I find everybody's like five minutes late, but in Joe book everybody was five minutes early, so Yeah, it means I'm I'm not normally at places ten minutes before anybody else in Cape Town but we'll see we are live and Well, that was the thing I was actually planning on using everyone's Questions and comments. Oh, no wait wait. We have someone is online. We've got our first message and it's it's hello So hello, how are you? You guys are more than welcome to ask a whole bunch of various questions around actuarial science I'm gonna do my best to to answer them and we got another one from Paul Johnson saying what's up MJ? Everything is good. Oh jeez. That's pretty cool. Someone see me like 99s US dollar cents. That is very very cool Okay, we're getting to the questions. First of all, thank you so much for that super chat I just enabled it. So I don't know what these things do, but let's actually get into it I want to click if there's a way for me to see the comments. Otherwise, they're just gonna like pop up and then disappear The first question has been on how did I pass CT1 and It's crazy because I'm busy actually teaching CT1 now So I'm prepping and I'm gonna be doing a seven week Zoom call session because no coronavirus. We've had to move the workshops to become virtual and It's quite interesting going through the material to see, you know, how you know, how bad was it and looking back now It is incredibly easy, but when I was at university, it was hard Like I remember looking at this stuff and being like damn, you know, how am I gonna pass this test and I barely passed I think what was my mark? It was it was like a like a low 60 which was crazy for me I came from you know school where I was getting 90s for everything and here I'm getting like 60 for the subject that I'm majoring in so it was quite difficult Our electorate that was he was quite I don't want to say mean But he he definitely threw in some challenging curveball questions Which you don't necessarily see when you do the exams through the actual profession So when you do it When you write the paper outside of university, it tends to be a lot a lot easier, but you're at at vits We did get some some curveball questions But what I do want to do I just want to check to see how I can see the comments on these videos Oh wait, I go on what will be more career rewarding specializing in finance or life insurance This is actually it's a question that I get quite a lot is people say You know should I do this or should I do that? And then at the day it depends very much on what you want to do so My advice is always research research the different roles see what you like about each and I mean generally as actuaries We've got quite a broad range of things that that interest us And I've seen quite a lot of my colleagues They tend to like lots of things and a lot of them Actually wanted to do medicine and for them they go into health insurance, which is great For those of them who wanted to maybe do you know become accounting or go into investing or CFA then majoring in in finance makes sense And then I guess if you want the pure form of actuarial science Then that is life insurance because you know the studying of mortality is is what is the traditional role that the actually plays Of course, we've branching out and we're in all bunch of weird and wonderful things now So it is exciting to to go into those those crazy places, but from a job security point of view I mean the regulators say that you need a an act tree to sign off on life reserves So if you just want to stick out more to the traditional role, I would say life insurance over over something like finance I do want to see how do I get all of these messages? Should have I should have figured this out. How do I see the messages? They might be coming through on On the other one hold on if I go live chat Okay, no wait, I've got that. I've got it. Whoo. I have figured out how to do it. Okay. Oh gosh There are a lot of questions We did how did you pass CT1? So you're passing with great difficulty Hi, is the job market for actuaries getting harder after the pandemic? In fact, I would say it is the opposite the pandemic what it has done It's caused a shockwave in the economy. It's shown people how important risk management is so if anything the coronavirus has Increased the demand for actuaries because why there's a lot more uncertainty in the world that needs to be managed And that is what actuaries thrive on We were very good at dealing with financial chaos and the uncertainties around it So if anything coronavirus is gonna increase the demand for actuaries I mean, I haven't been looking at the actual statistics of the job market in actual science But I do get emails from the actual society of South Africa regarding new jobs and they have been quite a few popping up recently So, yeah, don't be disheartened about the the pandemic. I mean, it's gonna hurt I mean, it's devastating areas like tourism and and those sectors, but when it comes to risk management The coronavirus is gonna increase it a lot I mean, I was creating a course on enterprise risk management and actually go through it again And just add in all the areas about how you know what with the pandemic now We can also do this this and that and with the pandemic this this and that we can actually add in a couple couple of other steps Got someone saying hello from Senegal. That is awesome. I don't it's I don't think I have many subscribers from Senegal So that is very very cool Do you watch world's strongest man and do you think Eddie Hall would be Thor in a boxing match? The answer to that question is I don't know and I've got a feeling that's gonna be the answer to a lot of my a Lot of the answers are gonna be I don't know In your opinion, which job is more secure from big data and automation stuff I guess life and cat is the best I mean, this is the thing and I made a video about it when coronavirus kind of first hit is Coronavirus has proven that or shouldn't say proven. That's that's the wrong word. He is Coronavirus has been a hurdle or an obstacle for automation machine learning and artificial intelligence because you can imagine Here's the machine that's only looking at at the numbers and suddenly the numbers just start changing drastically You know, the program hasn't been told what a pandemic is. In fact, a lot of us didn't even know what a pandemic was I think the last big one that hit the world was before any of us were born So automation machine learning and artificial intelligence took a big smack and the whole belief that they're going to be Replacing our jobs. I think has to be revised Where these things help is they help us with the boring parts of our work So some of the boring things that you have to do as an act tree is Monitor the situation. The fun part is developing the solution You know and building the models and doing all this cool decision-making and then the boring part is monitoring it Looking at reports allowing for that feedback and this is stuff that automation and machine learning can add to And can actually ease and make your job a lot more enjoyable So don't be scared that machine learning or artificial intelligence is going to replace an act tree I don't think that's going to be the case in the next couple of years If anything, they're going to be tools to help us do our job a lot better Let me just come back in to see some more of the messages This is a nice one. What are the what are other career opportunities for actuarial graduates who do not want to continue with the exams and This is it's another question because the answer is very broad I mean if you go to a job like any any kind of job interview and you tell people look I've got an actuarial science degree what you're communicating to that potential employer is that you know how to think and You've done some really hardcore quantitative work and that means no matter if it's you know credit risk or it's banking It can even be outside of the whole financial realm What you've done is you've you've shown or you've demonstrated by getting that actuarial science degree that you know how to think and that is So valuable in the workplace. So you don't have to continue with the actual exams You don't have to continue in the whole financial sector Once you get that actuarial science degree you can go into a whole bunch of other other areas and it's something which Which I really appreciate about actuarial science is that it teaches you to think in a slightly different way If you know make sure thought pattern Focus a lot on uncertainty. Whereas generally we like to round up probabilities to one round them down to you know zero Or we you know have rules of thumbs and these kind of things which for most of the time is fine But when accuracy is of importance, they can get us into a lot of trouble and actuarial science helps you hone in on uncertainty and be comfortable with chance and probability and I think that's going to be very valuable in all forms of industry so whether it's mining Even tourism now, I mean risk management in tourism is is huge So actuaries can play in other spaces or or actuarial graduates. They can move on to to other areas And that's why we very much encourage it there's this whole idea of the actuarial wider fields and The idea behind that is that actuaries are encouraged to work in in other areas I remember when I did my my Sarah So that's the charter did enterprise risk management risk analyst course There was a guy called actuary in a hot hat and he's gone into infrastructure and You know building building things. What is that? I think it's called infrastructure or something So there are other areas that you can get into if you're like because I mean some people they look at mortality tables And they're like this is boring, you know I don't want to do this for the rest of my life and and if that is you don't be disheartened You can use your degree to get into a whole bunch of other areas Let me pop up another look at some of the other questions How much does one need to open an insurance company? It's it's a good question It depends very much on the country that you're in different countries will have different regulations Some regulations are quite friendly others or not And this is why we will tend to see a lot of insurance companies tend to or specifically Reinsurance companies they will they'll start up in like weird places like Bermuda, which is this little island in like the middle of nowhere and they set up in these places because the regulation is friendly towards it and What you want with your regulation is you want it to be fair You want to prevent ruin, but you also want it to allow for innovation and allow for new competitors to come in Some of the time some companies of some countries have regulations that are very very strict and they require You know extensive capital before you can start operating as an insurer However, that's it if you do have a good insurance idea And this is a space where a lot of innovation and entrepreneurs are coming to the market you can always hop on board and use another company's license and There's a company called God Risk here in South Africa that creates these things called cell captives and What they do is they basically allow for you to sell your own type of insurance while using their license and it's a little bit of a regulatory loophole and Actually before the whole coronavirus happened I was trying to set up a meeting with them in Joberg to go and chat about because I've got some I've got some crazy ideas of mode Wanted to go and chat to them about it But of course the virus happened and then things got a little bit crazy Quite a lot of job opportunities popped up that then required my immediate attention and I couldn't I'd put like the crazy entrepreneurial ideas on on hold but if you do have a good insurance idea it might be worth looking at creating a captive and Leaching off another license rather than trying to set up your own specifically in the beginning I mean with business. I like that whole idea called the the minimum viable product or fail fast So try to get your mark your product to market as quickly as possible use somebody else's license If it's working if it's profitable, they may be looking creating your very own insurance company from the ground up Let's check some of the more of the questions How can I prepare for cm1 exam the ct5 part is very confusing? I must say that's one thing I do not like about this reshuffle of the syllabus is Unfortunately here in South Africa. We have resisted it and we've stayed with ct1 and ct5 as two separate subjects where The new syllabus seems to have combined those two together Which I think is a bit of a horrible idea. It makes it quite confusing. I mean ct5 on its own Was a challenging subject now to add ct1 to that as well so that's financial mathematics and life contingencies that they've kind of joined together and It is a tricky one. I have not looked at that cm1 That I haven't looked at that syllabus In detail to to be able to give you guys a good answer yet because like I said in South Africa We are still doing it the old-fashioned way, which I think is a lot a lot better for the students I mean if you're going to change the syllabus by all means that's all right, but then do a complete Overhaul, you know start from the ground up I kind of feel that they took the subjects and they try to awkwardly remove one section and then they put a chair and then they took this subject and they try to squeeze it here and Yeah, I'm not not a big fan of these new exam setups But maybe that's because I'm biased towards the ones that I wrote which weren't perfect either because it was quite confusing on You know, they would have numbered ct1 to ct8 But it was like you do ct7 first and then ct2 and then ct1 then ct3 So the order wasn't wasn't chronological like how the numbering was um Let's get some more of the questions coming up How are job opportunities in cave town versus jobberg for jobs in the financial sector? It's getting better. It's getting better But I remember my lecturer told me that it was career suicide to move to cave town He told me because what happened is I had quite a bad armed robbery in my house in joeburg So I was kind of like over joeburg. I was just like I need to get out of this place It's not working for me and absolutely fell in love with cave town and this the robbery happened while I was at vits and I couldn't just go to uct because the The two courses are a little bit different But the vits lecturer would you know, he'd used to help us like find out jobs when you're at vits And he was like, okay, you know, Michael what company do you want to work for? What are your strengths? What are this and I said, I want to work in cave town And and he was very upset with that answer very upset. He's like there's no jobs in cave town cave town's Most well known for old mutual and sunlamps. So those are the two big big life insurers And there are some financial companies. I mean allen graze here coronations here and a couple of boutique hedge funds There's also all the banks also here. So it's not like there's no jobs in cave town But there's definitely a lot more in in sentence. So but I mean Yeah, it's probably I do know of people who've left cave town to go up to joeburg to to find work specifically In like around the b-com area Like I said as an actuary you'll get snapped up quite easily by by old mutual and that if you if you're looking at those areas But job the general trend is that joeburg more jobs than cave town But now with corona virus and everybody working virtually You know, I think I think times are definitely going to be going to be changing I want to see the next question Um overseas job opportunities for for actuaries Oh, someone says talking about steve. Yes kelly. Yes, you know steve steve wasn't very happy that I moved to cave town Overseas job opportunities for actuaries. It's I mean overseas it's overseas is a big place Some countries like let's say england and ireland and those places that Recognize an actuary as a full profession and there's a lot of respect around it Very easy to to find a job there London's also very much like a financial capital of like the world. So very very easy there Europe, I don't I don't know enough about the european actuarial scene. Are they Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't know and then what I I have heard is quite a lot of people get jobs Um in singapore and hong kong from south africa. So they'll move to those places again. They are financial hubs I've had people move to bermuda that crazy little island. I was telling you about earlier that does the reinsurance So there are job opportunities overseas. Of course with america You know, you got to get a green card and there's there's all those kind of restrictions, which Yeah, I'm not too not too clued up on But yeah, I think I think this is this is the lovely thing about actuarial science is Financial risk or financial uncertainty is universal. It's everywhere. So no matter where you go You can add value. It's not like let's say south african law, which is based on the roman dutch system Where I think only us and like indonesia kind of really use that system So if you're a lawyer and you try to look for a job overseas, you've got to rewrite your exams You've got to do a lot more studying actuarial science not so much So if you are thinking of immigrating Actuarial science is going to put you in a better position than like something like law, which is very much dependent on the local Rules and legislation of the country Let me check another question Hello from india. Hey, mj. Thanks more bro. I'm currently doing cfa and frm and planning to take a few tests of actuary How different is frm from from actuary? So frm stands for financial risk management and I mean actuarial science You can almost think of it as underwriting risk management and what we refer to as the underwriting risks is Mortality, so that's life insurance Mobility, which is health insurance and then like general insurance, which is kind of like everything else You know car insurance business insurance and all these kind of things So actuaries focus primarily on Underwriting risks, of course, I'm a little bit different. I specialised in finance and enterprise risk management So in finance, we cover a lot of market risk Investment risk credit risk and then in enterprise risk management. You also cover operational risk as well Where with frm, you're going to be focusing primarily on Financial risk management in the financial Sites of the market and those type of things So it's a more focused version But that's something that actually kind of pride ourselves on is we we try to rather have the the view of the forest Rather than some of these other things which are very much You know an understanding of the tree. So we tend to have more of a top-down view where some of these other ones are more of a bottom up view and That makes the amount of stuff that you need to learn for actuarial science A lot There is there's definitely a lot that you have to learn for actuarial science because we're trying to understand everything And we try have this view that you know risk is inter Linked and there's correlation and there's systemic risk that so you have to look at everything at the same time Which like I said makes a lot where with financial risk management You're kind of like specializing on one certain thing Which is interesting because when you get a job It's more likely that they will depending on the organization you work at You like the bigger organization the more specialized you're going to be on just like you could even be on like a certain type of market risk So likely say interest rate risk that could be your entire job in which case you don't necessarily have to You know learn about all the other risks But if you're working for a small organization or an actuarial consultant And you need to be flexible and understand all the different types of risks so that you can help out in all these different ways Then that's where the actuarial science will be a little bit more more valuable Um Let's get back to these questions. So I'm using the phone. So I've just like touched it every single time I I get this I'm from Nigeria But I intend doing my masters in actuarial science in South Africa Will I get exemptions from some of the ifoa exams from the papers past? Who it's I don't know. I don't know. I know that there is An agreement between the ifoa. This is the actuarial society in england and asa, which is the society here in South Africa and essentially The two of them there is a you know, they do talk to each other So as a fellow of the actuarial society of South Africa, I can go and apply and I can become a fellow Of the institute and faculty of act trees. So I can do that So once you graduate or become a fellow in the one you can transfer to the other Whether you can do some exams with South Africa and some exams in england and try to bring the two together I don't think you can do that. I don't think They allow for for that because it's just like an administrative burden for them That might change in the future and I might be wrong about that. So Send people who work at those organizations emails for a for a better response But I think the answer is no you can only transfer once you hit the fellowship or associate status top chat Is doing a masters in actuarial science worth it in terms of career growth or does it not really matter once you've qualified It's interesting. So I'm looking I'm looking at Like applying for maybe a job at uct next year. So as a as a lecturer And there one of the requirements are that you have to have your masters in order to get the senior lecturer position So I've always said you don't need the master's degree because you know with the fellowship levels and all these other things Those are more important. So it's more important to get exemptions and all these other things And I still think that's the case except if you want to work in academics Then having a master's having a phd It's still seen as having a good thing to have and I guess the fellowship Well, this is the criteria is that you're a qualified actuary and you have your master's degree Whereas I think in other working environments if you have your fellowship degree or your fellowship designation They're going to be more than happy with it. So the masters I think is only worthwhile in academia In actuarial science if you're doing something else or if you're not getting into a profession Then definitely getting a master's is going to help you with your with your job prospects Let's come back to the question. Sorry guys. I'm skipping a lot of Of your one so feel free if I haven't answered it just to copy and paste it again Because like I said, there's quite a few popping up and I'm just looking I want to see let me go Um The quants first actuary salary I mean, I don't know More like I don't know that much about the quants salaries at the moment Um, but it very much will gosh I guess a general like yeah, I get quite a few questions about about salaries And I remember my first actuarial salary was like was very low In fact, I'll tell you how low it was Look, I was desperate because you can imagine I've come from but my lecture told me it's career suicide And I wanted to get my three years done so I can become a fellow actuary So I was prepared to to work for nothing In order to get my first job to just try to get those years of experience So and I think they read that in the negotiation room So I got paid a monthly salary that was so low that now as a fellow actuary I make that in a single day. So You can see that there's definitely The salary you earn depends very much on how well you're able to negotiate. Of course, it's supply and demand um and the most specialized and You know the more better you make yourself That means that the amount of competitors that you're competing against reduces So the supply of people like you decreases And if that demand still up then you can ask for a much higher salary And that is going to depend on Location and all these other things so comparing a coin salary to an actuary salary It's a difficult thing to do because you're comparing literally apples with oranges But at the end of the day the more Better you can make your cv. So the more experience you have the more Designations the more professions you're part of the more cool projects you've done The more desirable you make yourself the higher your salary is is going to be and At the end of the day both coins and actuaries are going to make more than enough money in their life So I wouldn't use that as the determinant on what to what to study Rather look at what your passion is and what you want to do and chase that rather than the money because like I say Actuary quant the money you make you can invest in the stock market and you can push it up You know another big chunk So don't worry too much about the salary that you're earning because like I said you'll by investing it yourself You'll make make whatever difference or whatever money that you still need In life. You'll you'll be able to get it back Let me see you're getting some more messages Once we become a qualified actuary is it possible to move to Finance domain abroad from life insurance where I'm currently working So what I've heard is that you can move around within the actuarial industry I know a lot of the jobs say oh, you need three years experience in this short term industry and they very like narrow it down But what I found in some of these job job requirements is they're looking for what we call the unicorn they're trying to find the perfect candidate and If they can't find them then they will look at you know a much wider range of people So if you've got three years of experience in life insurance and you're applying for a financial job that requires three years in finance They might still consider it because there is some similarities. There is some overlap So yes to answer your question. You can definitely move across from life insurance to finance at at a later stage um In fact, it's easier to move from life insurance to finance And I would actually say that the other way around it's harder to move from finance to life insurance because life insurance Has got so much more regulations that are catered around actuarial science Whereas finance you don't have to be an actuary to play around in finance But you need to be an actuary to sign off on the reserves of a life insurer um Let's look guys. I'm getting a lot of messages and I am missing a lot of them So please copy and paste your message again if I if I have missed it Because I do want to answer all of them Do you reckon starting your career in the credit risk model automation space inside a bank is beneficial towards the Actuarial career. I think it's a good career move. It's it's definitely I mean credits Credits is one of the oldest things. I mean you read about it in the bible people You know lending money to to each other and and this kind of thing so And I think lending is one of the great financial innovations of humanity the ability to to borrow from the future in order to get things done today, so I'm very excited by credit risk. I love credit risk It is an amazing place to be in and fortunately the things I study in the natural science Did give me some exposure to to some of the credit risk models and and those type of things. So it's a beautiful space Whether it's good for an actuarial career um Like I say it depends on what you define as as actuarial if we're talking traditional actuarial like life insurance Um That like I say they tend to want to find people with experience in those spaces if they can't find it They will then look to to the rest But if you want to have a traditional actuarial role maybe look at getting a traditional role to start up with But it's so difficult to say because you know your taste change as you get older. You want to try different things um Interestingly enough about the credit insurance is and this is uh, what's his name? Was it the robert? Robert yarrow the robert yarrow model. I think I think that's that's the name of the model Was the the yarrow turnbull model and what they basically do Is they use the idea of life insurance with credit risk? So they say just how a person has a lifespan and then they die They say well credit risk. It's a loan and there's a possibility that the loan dies if somebody doesn't repay it And they were able to use mortality calculations and a mortality model To measure credit risk. So there's definitely some nice overlap um So yeah, it's like I said, so I'm not giving the best answer to this question but I think it's They will definitely appreciate that experience. So you can go from credit risk to life insurance I don't think it'll be the biggest biggest issue, but um If you want to have the traditional role, of course try looking for traditional Jobs first, but you can do that that a little bit of that overlap um Let me see. I've got some more messages AXI versus general become are there any similarities in the course? I'm not sure I'm being an act tree but want to go into commerce Which degree is more beneficial and what are the major differences? so, I mean It's it's difficult to to say because you'll become it's more on Well, this is the thing when it comes to the financial service What are we all trying to do? We're all trying to manage financial uncertainties Okay, so manage financial uncertainties or you can think of it as ordering financial chaos Actuarial science specifically at the undergraduate level Focuses on the chaos focuses on the uncertainty Focuses on the statistics and mathematical models Whereas your become focuses more on the management the ordering and and those kind of things When you study actuarial science specifically in your honours year or when you write your exams later on You definitely have to expose yourself to the managing side of it But and this is just my my opinion the managing side I found is a lot easier to understand than trying to understand the chaos and the uncertainty So I would say study actuarial science at university because this is when you're dedicating time to studying This is when you're putting in your your best foot forward Study the hard stuff first And then hopefully you haven't you know haven't become just Disheartened or discouraged from because it is going to be heavy And then once you have that understanding you'll understand the management side of finance a lot better Whereas say let's say someone like my brother who's a b-com chartered accountant Absolutely amazing at managing the managing side. I mean he is he is a brilliant auditor He does amazing works and he does it around the financial funds and stuff like that Absolutely legend at a guy at that But when it comes to the mathematics and the uncertainty and all of that he's like, mm-hmm I'm just he's like I leave that to the act trees. He says I get my act trees to come in They work for him. They sort that stuff stuff out. He doesn't want to handle them Um And that might be you so if you want to focus more on the management side of business on oral finance b-com if you're happy to explore the chaos and the uncertainty then actuarial science But in general you do need to have exposure to both And that's why if you want to be the best businessman out there I would say actuarial science Focus your energy on the crazy chaos And then when you're writing your fellowship exams or a little bit later on in life when you married you got kids running around in a job Um, then you can do the easiest side of management. Of course, that's me I found management easier than understanding the uncertainty other people might find it a little bit other way around um Oh, yeah, what made you want to start youtube channel and udemy courses? How did you get popular? How does it help you with within your job or clients? So I wouldn't necessarily say i'm I'm popular. I mean, you know the this is the thing. It's it's the youtube numbers are definitely deceiving I mean you see something like oh, you've got 20 000 subscribers I'm all aware that probably half of those subscribers are like Deactivated accounts and the other five thousand probably like clicked on it by mistake So I think the the subscriber number is very much a vanity or uh, you know, it's it's puffed up It's puffed up. So yeah, so that's that's with regards to the popularity things Although there have been like weird instances where people like hey, aren't you mj the fellow actually and then i'm like, yay Um, so there have been instances like that Uh, with regards to clients, it's been brilliant absolutely brilliant because it's so nice to show a client You know, it's one thing saying on your profile your LinkedIn profile. I can do capital modeling It's another thing to point them to a video where you've gone through the various steps of capital modeling You've shown how you handle, you know, the diversification benefit and how you got it to the 99.5 percent You know, so it's it's a lot easier to win clients by demonstrating what you know rather than just saying I know this so From a client acquisition point of view, it's been it's been beautiful Like I say, I'm applying now for this uct job And I do quite a bit of educational work outside of youtube So to point and say hey guys, I've done all of these videos in the past. They can look at it. They can be like, okay You know, he doesn't have the best video editing skills, but um, he seems he seems enthusiastic enough so It definitely has helped win win clients But as for what caused me to to start it to start youtube It was actually because I was struggling I was really really suffering with the workload of ca1 which was actuarial risk management because there was just so much work so I actually made a whole bunch of videos On ca1 And it was kind of like let me put them on the internet so that I can watch them while I eat So I would be eating and watching myself studying. I know that's that's like a weird thing. I know I'm crazy But this is what I would do. I would eat and watch myself study or revise, you know going through This is what a professional is or you know, I think they were saying about I sort of remember the one acronym It was like caterpillar when investing in foreign countries You got to go through this acronym of caterpillar like C is the different currencies a is the I have forgotten it by now, but I remember the caterpillar thing so I use youtube as very much a study tool for myself And then of course, I think I woke up the one day It was a week after having it and I had like 60 subscribers and a comment and I was like, oh, wow You know, this is this is quite cool. And then I started creating more content for the subscribers I was still back in those mj the students actually because I was still writing in these exams. So I still had videos to make Um, and that's kind of what what got me into it although I was very Like this is one thing I read about some youtubers how they get very much That their schedule of can can sometimes own them and because this is the thing they say with youtube You should post regularly. I don't post regularly Um, they say you should you know stick to a certain topic I I talk about bitcoin this week and then we're talking about arts another week You know, so I am a little bit all over the place and for me. I wanted my youtube not to be necessarily a business I wanted it to be Just something fun and that's where you to me comes in because you to me I want you to me to be more of a business. So there will be a lot more serious there It's you know, the content is a lot more tailored. It's a lot more up to date It's a lot cleaner and and stuff like that So I want youtube to be for fun and then you to me is more of a more of the business The business side of the of the educational space um Let me just see I'm getting some more messages in here Hi, I've just graduated with my bachelor's in applied stats and analytics and also finishing up my material exams side by side Would an MBA in finance be an added advantage after two years of of work experience? My personal opinion is that the MBA I mean, what what is an MBA? It's it's All that information that you learn in an MBA you can get in a textbook I mean, there's even a book I record. Well, didn't read it. I got looked at the first page It looked quite interesting It was called MBA for dummies and it had like all the different stuff that you would learn in it um So my opinion when it comes to an MBA Unless if you're doing it at Harvard or Yale or you know at some really big name university Then it's worth getting not because of the knowledge that you're getting from it But from the the networking and the people you meet. I mean if you do an MBA at Harvard Your classmates, I mean those are business connections that are going to repay for that MBA tenfold So if you can get into that course By all means but getting an MBA at any other institution or like a Yeah, it's kind of like a rather rather save yourself the money and And you're by a book Look, that is just my my opinion. I know people have worked very hard to get their MBAs And outside of actuarial science it can help them, you know to get different jobs You can say have got an MBA and all these kind of things But when it comes to actuarial science Like I say unless you're getting your MBA from Harvard I wouldn't I wouldn't bother with it Unless if you're going to be doing other things then the MBA maybe has place But let me maybe just put a little disclaimer. I don't know that much about MBA So take what I say with a with a large pinch of salt a large pinch of salt Have you found any bias towards a specific university when applying for jobs? Um Like I mean in general like like I guess that comes back to the whole what we were saying about the MBA in Harvard If you say you went to Harvard You'll probably get favored in the job Interview then people who went to other universities And it's not that the Harvard education is necessarily better than the others It's because the requirement to get into Harvard is so much harder So just to say I got into Harvard what you're basically telling the employer Is that this huge well-known institution has already validated my skills and myself as a human and therefore Hiring me is a much lower risk than hiring somebody from another university. So in that instance University is it's it's the the brand is quite powerful But you are still kind of going to be learning very much the same thing. I mean, we have the internet You can get all the Harvard lectures for free on iTunes university. So Knowledge today is becoming a lot more accessible Of course, there still is this brand attachment to certain universities. So, of course in South Africa, there are some top universities I mean the ones that come to mind are like uct that's still ambush And then, you know, there's still a whole bunch of other ones that are also very very well known so Yeah, if you can afford it Go to the best university that you possibly can Um Just it'll make your life a little bit easier in getting a getting a job. I do see a question here Hi, I'll obtain a bsc in applied stats and ecos and I'll also have exemptions for ct2 and ecos Would I be better off studying axiom from start or do applied stats honors than writing exams while while working? um I would go Listen listen like just a very general piece of advice and that's the thing I mean normally when when it comes to giving proper career advice or proper education advice The best thing to do is to sit down with you guys one by one and say hey What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What do you want out of life? What are you afraid of? What do you want to achieve? Go through this whole process and there's there's actually a company that i'm i'm working with to to do Just that they call Protagion and i'll put a link in the description below where you can actually like Rent me out or schedule a call with me. That's just one on one for one whole hour Where we just sit down and we discuss your career and you know, give proper proper advice When it comes to these youtube comments, of course, I have to give something very Generic and very much across the board because I don't know your your whole story But the general rule is go for the course or go for the path that will get you into the fellowship designation As quickly as possible. So with regards to your question I would rather go and study the actuarial science exams and write those and get your path to fellowship Getting your honors and applied statistics if it's not contributing to an exemption Why are you doing it? Yes, it's useful. Yes, it's beneficial But it's not the fastest route to getting to where you want to go if your goal is to become an actuary So in your situation if you want to become an actuary and you want to achieve it in the shortest Route possible, then that's what I would recommend is don't worry about doing honors and anything else Focus on things that give you exemptions and writing the exam papers Have you done any internships during your studies at uni or wits? I didn't do any Internships, I know it's it seems like quite a big thing Like I remember when I was working in my first year we had you know We got all like the interns coming in and I felt so bad because I kind of took my holiday I needed my holiday after After wits, I mean those little pairs that they give you I needed that holiday to sleep to catch up on fifa and and just to chill But yes, I am aware that people do do internships. It does look good on your CV It probably is worth doing I I just didn't have the energy for it. So I I didn't do any your any internships because Actuarial science took it out of me like it's there was a thing I came from school where I was like, yeah I'm the smartest and then I realized I'm not not the smartest. I have to work very very hard um And this comes up with your sam's asking your typical day as an AXI student So there was no social life. It was study hours and and classes I mean what I was trying to do and of course, I don't think I ever I think the best I once did was like 10 hours of studying in a day And that that was bad because it really ties you up for the for the next day But I would try and get eight hours of studying done um And that's quite a difficult thing to do now. This is eight hours of pure studying So it's not saying okay. I'm gonna spend, you know from one to five to study and then every five minutes I'll check my phone. No, I used to like we we had Well, we had mix it. I think what you are mix it at in matric and I would delete that for like when it came to exams I took my exams quite seriously. So I would delete social media when it came to exam period Um, so what's up? Did we have what no? We had a thing called bbm. Gosh. Look how old I am You're this blackberry thing. I would delete that like when when the exams came up you put you put social media away and That's the thing is actuarial science. Look, it's different for different people for for your average person like me You you want to this is the thing you go to university to get a degree You don't go to university to to have fun and I think that's something that Movies and our culture has kind of shown to be the other way You know people are like, oh university best years of my life. That's where I make all my best friends That's where I meet my wife or my husband No, not if you're an actuarial science student You're going there to work. You're either in the library. You're in class or you're making your own revision notes um social life yeah, I mean Every maybe once a month you can go out and see some friends and maybe once a week you can watch a movie But generally you do want to be disciplined and make sure that you're on top of your work It's a hard message to hear But trust me I always believe in this philosophy of short-term pain is followed by a long-term gain And that's that's what your university time has to be it has to be that short-term pain And now once you're outside of university like I look at my life is So much better So much less stress than it was at university and I am reaping a lot of the benefits of that So take it from me work very very hard while you're at university And then after you've done university after you've done the fellowship then life gets a lot more a lot more enjoyable um Let's check some more messages Would you recommend prospective students to study axi or to go into another field? I mean, I'm I'm completely biased. So of course, I'm going to say actuarial science. I love I love this thing Um, but I must say I do ask myself like if I had to go back in time, would I study it again? And knowing the the crucible, you know the fire of actuarial science it is It's it's a difficult journey So you've got to really get ready for it and it's hard because you make a lot of friends In first year they start dropping out and they keep telling you our life so much better now that they've dropped out And it's it's hard. It really really is hard. So if you've got the willpower and you've got the passion Um, of course go for actuarial science. It's an absolutely amazing degree But if you do want to go to university for fun, then look for yeah look for another degree Um, okay. Oh, there are quite quite a lot of messages coming in. Let me check this one. Hi. I'm Jay I am a third year student at vits and I'm finding the r component of the statistic course quite challenging And I spent countless hours trying to understand the code. What would you recommend? um look, I mean Coding has always been like a it's always been like a passion of mine It was my highest subject at at matric. I did I did very well at it like it It just I don't know if there's there's a lot of fun in programming. I really really enjoy it But then I came to r and r is not not to my use of friendly software um environment. It's It's it's weird. It's I mean, there's there's a lot. I mean javascript is a lot nicer and and stuff like that And even python is is better than than r um But if you challenge if you're struggling with r maybe try I know they recommend r studio Maybe try a different one. So there's the jupiter notebooks. I think there's also something called spider something Try one of those different environments to see if that will help you a little bit better And then the other thing that really helped me with programming was give yourself a project So it's something that you actually want to do and then say, okay, I want to do this Now I need to figure out how to do that and now you've got this motivation to learn rather than just saying, okay R let's learn data frames. Yay, you know give yourself A task or or a project and that's gonna help you with with programming But like I say for for me, it is a passion. It is something I love Whereas I do know other people like let's say my brother who's who's an accountant I don't think he's he's programmed anything. No, he does program in excel. He's he's a beast in excel But I don't think I've seen him try to program anything else And it is something that can be a little bit challenging I remember I did struggle a little bit with our at university because it's it's just a different different format But I guess practice give yourself projects and there's a lot of good I haven't put that many tutorials on my channel because there's just so many others out there So search for them and you'll find them and job But definitely focused on r because it is going to be a big component Going forward and in the future, you know, you know, there's that saying in the future There's going to be those of us who tell machines what to do and those of us who get told by machines on what to do So if you're on r, then you're controlling the machines If you don't know programming language, then the machine is going to kind of control you Um, that's a quote. I heard in some computer science lecture somewhere um Let's check it out UCT verse verse verse delies does it really matter where you study? I mean I okay I say that's very tongue-in-cheek very very tongue-in-cheek But if you if you want to study actuarial science You go to vits, okay? And the reason why you go to vits is because k-town has too many distractions. We've got table mountain. We've got the beaches We've got the you know, newlands forest. It's it's just it's such a beautiful place It's not a place you come to study. It's a it's a place you come to enjoy and to live Whereas vits vits we call it the concrete jungle. It's like in the middle of the city It's there's there's nothing but libraries at vits um Look like I say I'm saying this very tongue-in-cheek, but Vits is is definitely what what I would recommend But having said that I'm like applying for a job at UCT to maybe do a little bit of work there next year And I did send an email to still embosh Last month saying hey, if you guys need any help with virtual education Let me know So I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by saying that But by putting vits above the other two but very much choose. I would actually say Try study in a place that's more comfortable to you. So if your family and your support group is in capetown study in capetown um, or if your family is crazy and chaotic and There's a lot going on there and you need to get out then yeah So I would base it more on your location and other factors But the quality of education at vits uct and sale embosh, they're they're all brilliant They're all up there. They're all world-class when it comes to actual science. So it very much depends on those those other factors um Hi mj. I want to start my research work in the insurance sector. Please guide me from where should I start? I mean the hard part about research with the insurance sector is Data is very valuable with insurance companies. In fact, it's almost like guarded It's like it's you know data is a very very powerful commodity And if you're doing a research project, I mean the good research projects are around data So what you need to do and some of my friends were able to do this is you have to go to an insurer and ask them very nicely Can I borrow your data or can I use some of your data for this project? So you need to establish a little bit of a working relationship with an insurer and you want to maybe Yeah, try and get data from them It's very rarely that you're going to be able to go into the internet and just Find some insurance data that that you can use so I would actually maybe approach some of the big reinsurers and see If you yeah, if you're researching they might have a policy that allows for it So that could be quite a nice place to start So look yeah, look at the reinsurance and you'll know it's a reinsurer because it's literally in the name Swiss re Munich re Hanover re basically anything that ends with re is is a reinsurer. So yeah, go check them out um Hi MJ. I have started preparing for the st9 exam urm and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of material to get through How did you approach preparing for the exam? So I was a little bit naughty for For st9 probably shouldn't be saying this Oh, yeah, I was a little bit naughty because I was standing for That subject and the fellowship in finance at the exact same time Don't recommend doing that do one exam at a time So when it came to to urm or subject st9 I spotted which is you don't you mustn't do that. Don't this is this is bad advice Um, I spotted so I said to myself, you know what? What's What are the the main what's the core of this subject? And I kind of found that by reading that James Lum enterprise risk management textbook That gave me a really really good understanding and then I just went through the flash flash cards of of urm And fortunately for me because I had done also the financial specialist exam And there was quite a lot of overlap and in my exam There was a huge question on market risk and I was just like thank you I was able to pass urm first time um Having said that I've just finished now. How many videos did I create? I created 41 exam videos. So that's 500 marks of past paper exams And 26 chapter videos that are around half an hour each I've just made a lot of content for for urm. It's in fact, it's been my my day job for 2020 has been creating this content Content for the actuarial society of South Africa's academy So if you're part of assa, I highly recommend signing up for that. You'll also get seven Weeks of zoom calls with me. So anyone in assa and you're doing urm you've got to sign up for the content for this course because I don't want to say you guarantee to pass you're very likely to to pass if you get that but job that subject It's difficult because there's the hard side and there's the soft side and I call the soft side the Operational risk and you know the policies and procedures you put in place and you know the risk appetite your risk profile The risk culture, you know those fun things and then you've got the hard side, which is like the The gawk models and you've got extreme value theory and you've got copulas. I remember the first time I looked at copulas I was like, what what is this? And they they really really are hectic But I do have some courses on you to me around copulas, which I hope explains it well I don't have any on extreme risk So extreme value theory, but the trick to understanding extreme value theory is to go back to the central limit theory Redo the central limit theory understand the philosophy behind it then come to extreme risk theory And you'll see that it's the same philosophy Except they're focusing on a different Statistic and it's it's actually quite beautiful how those two things come together but yes It's a lot ERM it's it's a big exam. It really really is a big exam So you want to make sure that you prep well in advance for it um Let's just check Some more questions. Gosh, have I been doing this for almost an hour now? um How are actuaries different from from data scientists? I mean This was this is something that pops up quite a bit in the comments section And one person actually said it better than me. They said, you know what I started studying data science This is what they said and they said it felt like I was I was in the middle of a jungle Just hacking at weeds because the thing about data science is like, okay, you study data science Now what you're gonna do Whereas actuarial science, it's a lot more focused. It's on finance. It's on, you know, this is what we want to do So don't see data science as a profession It's not a profession It's it's a toolkit a very very powerful toolkit that can do amazing things And actuaries can use data science to do their job better So it's not about you don't just become a data scientist and then it's kind of like, okay Basically, you're a you're a statistician then who knows how to use a computer But what does a statistician do? They need to be hired for a project other psychology, you know biology There's there's all these other fields that you can go into So actuarial science has got a lot more of a dedicated path It's a profession whereas like I say data science is is a toolkit Having said that you will find some data scientists will get paid more than than actuaries if they are very very good at what they do um But if you had to say look at the bottom half the bottom half of actuaries are doing way better than the bottom half of of data scientists So, yeah, I definitely put actuarial science above data science from a career point of view because I do see data science It's a toolkit What are your thoughts on majoring in computer science and actuarial science and stats? I mean computer science It's powerful. It really really is powerful and like we were talking about earlier about people telling the Computers what to do or the machines what to do rather than being told by them what to do Computer science It is powerful and it's something that I would encourage the actuaries out there to also get exposure to but If you're doing computer science Then you're more going in towards developing software and infrastructure and and those kind of things So I don't think you need to formally study computer science and actuarial science Although having said that having said that there is this new and emerging position Which I think is going to be very valuable If not now definitely in the future is a systems act tree Someone who who understands computer science? And how machines work as well as actuarial science and they can build insurance platforms better modeling platforms Build better, you know apps when it comes to submitting claims and doing the underwriting process and all these other things So yes, there definitely is value in joining those two things together But you need to be smart there because that is that's a lot of workload. It's a lot of different things coming together so If you can do it great But much better from an actuarial point of view get your fellowship become an act tree And then maybe look at starting that stuff On the side rather than trying to do both of those things at university Like I say the workload might be might be a little bit too much But guys having said that we are coming up to to an hour of doing at this Um, I definitely want to say thank you so much to the person right in the beginning who sent me a dollar on super chat So thank you so much for for that. Thank you for the 28 likes and I see in one stage We even hit 80 people there were 80 people watching live at one stage But we've kind of been averaging between 60 and and 70 So yeah, thank you so much everyone for for being part of this What I definitely want to do maybe a little bit better next time is maybe do it on the computer Rather than my phone just so I can see all the questions because there were a lot of questions that I didn't Actually get to so I'm either going to try to reply to you guys separately or I'll make another video Maybe not live And try and answer those as as well But let me sign off guys because it's now 10 o'clock here in South Africa So it's my bedtime in 30 minutes and I always like to listen to a little bit of an audiobook Just helps me under wine. So I'm gonna say good night and as always. Thanks so much for watching. Cheers everyone