 Hi everyone, it's MJ, the fellow actuary and I got a message on LinkedIn from a school student who was interested in the actuarial profession and he asked if he could send a bunch of questions and I was like like sure why not and he has sent 23 questions so what we're gonna be doing in this video is answering the 23 questions that he's sent through and you can maybe forward this video to somebody else that you know who's also maybe still at school and is interested in Pursuing the actuarial career path. Although just a quick disclaimer. I'm not your traditional actuary I have taken a slightly Different view or different journey So I'm not definitely gonna give like model answers that represent the whole of the actual profession but I'll give them my personal answers and Joe hopefully there are enough for his project I think it's a school project Joe he has to interview a professional from a career that he would like to pursue and He says he's been watching my YouTube channel and he's got some some questions for you And he's from Benoni, which is quite cool very close to my hometown of Bedford view So first off the question is what is your your job title? And this is something that he spoke about in the preamble saying you know he's looking forward to becoming an actuarial scientist and we don't technically use Scientist in our in our job title even though we studying actuarial science We just consider ourselves as as actuaries and then when you get to my stage You can consider yourself as a fellow actuary because this is something that it's always a fun game to play when you go to parties You'll meet someone. They'll be like, yeah, I'm an actuary and you're like, oh cool What did you do your your fellowship in and then they tend to get a little bit shy or embarrassed? Oh, no, I haven't written that exam yet and essentially there's different levels of of actuary You've got your student actuary and this is somebody who's just joined the actuarial society as a student member And they're writing their exams then when you finish the first half of the exams you can become something known as an associate actuary and Once you've done that you can then choose which exams you want to specialize in and once you've specialized in a few subjects You choose one of those to do your fellowship in and once you complete that and a whole bunch of other requirements You can then say that you are a fellow of an actuarial society There's even one up on the fellow and that is something known as a statutory actuary And that is someone who has the regulatory powers to sign orphan reserves on Insurance companies and stuff like that. So there's quite a bit of a hierarchy But yeah, we refer to ourselves as as actuaries rather than actuarial scientists So that is question one question two Can you take me through your career path and how you have worked your way to where you are now? So my career I mean it's been fairly short. I mean I kind of finished university at the end of 2013 2014 I spent as basically just being my own consultants doing little bits of jobs here and there 20 at the end of 2014 to the beginning of 2016 I did kind of work at a company. It wasn't very formal like I mean the It wasn't like a contract until like quite later on so it was a little bit informal but The work that I was doing was around building administrative systems around insurance companies so very much on the tech side and We were known as actuarial engineers. That was kind of the the title that they gave us I didn't like working in an office I didn't like the fact that you know, this is the time that you work I'm very much someone who sometimes I like working in the morning sometimes like working in the evening Sometimes I want to take a nap in the afternoon. So beginning of 2016. I returned to doing Consultancy work where I basically get to get to work for myself and have various clients and job I've been doing that now what's coming up towards the end of of 2020 so that has been the the career path in a nutshell and Yeah, the nice thing about being a consultant for yourself is that you get to work on a whole bunch of different projects and Everything's always new. It's not kind of like going into the office doing the same things in the same people There's a little bit more more excitement out there Question three what year did you qualify and how old were you? So I'm always I always kind of forget my my age, which is a very weird thing to do So I'll give you the dates and then you can kind of work out everything. So I was born in December 1991 graduated from vits with my honours in 2013 wrote the final actuarial exam in May 2017 But only got the fellowship designation a year later in 2018 because like I said after you do the exams It's not the end of the story. You still have to do like professionalism courses and you have to Build up some work-based skills and all these other kind of things. So, yeah, those were the key key dates born in 1991 Got the fellowship in 2018 You can do do the math on how how old I was there I don't know for some reason I think because in natural science we when we talk about age We sometimes referred to age last birthday age nearest birthday age next birthday And it just it just confuses me. So whenever somebody's like how old are you? I'm just like I was born in 1991. I know I'm under 30, but but that is that gap is slowly slowly closing down What you how many years did it take you take for you to be fully qualified so you are from 2013 I finished and then 2018. I got the fellowship. So, yeah, that was it was a few some people take a little bit longer And there's nothing wrong with that. I was being a consultant I was able to give myself a little bit more study time just so I could focus on getting these these exams done So it was a little bit sooner than their most other people But like I said was one of the other the privileges of being able to work for yourself Is that you could have more more study time at companies? You do get study leave But the work still has to be done and can become a very stressful situation So some people do take a little bit longer to to write all the exams Was it difficult finding your first job? So I kind of had I mean, yeah I had quite a few jobs lined up as soon as I left university I mean, especially if you if you go to vits, that's the university in Johannesburg The lecturers basically take your CV and they find you jobs for you I mean, I remember when we were in our honest class We would have companies would come and like try seduce us to come work for them I remember one company was platinum life. They gave us like perfumes and beauty products Then we would have even like non-actuarial companies like the tele Communication companies like Vodacom they came and they presented they said oh, this is why it's so exciting So finding your first job was was quite easy if you get into the honest program If you don't get into the honest program It gets a little bit difficult. So that's why when you're in the undergrad It's so so important that you work hard you get those exemptions that you qualify for the honest program Because then getting your first job is is a bit of a breeze And I went to the soul consultants because I already had people who knew us studying actuarial science. They said hey Can you do some work for me here? I had one of the the ex school guest lectures That was running a hedge fund and wanted me to help out on some banking Analysis thing so finding your first job if you get into honors Very easy very easy if you don't get into honors It's it can be a little bit tricky. I've heard some people have struggled to find there found their first job But no job-wise it's it has been quite quite straightforward The next question is I plan to study a BSc actuarial science degree at VITS What is your opinion on this choice of course and university in the industry? So that's exactly what I did So this is going to be like a very heavily biased answer But in my view this university is the best university in the world for actuarial science Now the reason why I say that is because when you factor in everything into consideration It's it's affordable and you're getting a very very good Education I mean yes, you can go to Harvard you can go to Stanford You can go to these you know other universities outside there in the world And you're gonna pay an arm and a leg for a qualification like that And you're gonna be getting if not a slightly better education at at VITS I remember when we were at VITS one of our stats lectures Now I could be wrong in this but if I remember correctly our stats lecture was was this genius guy and his students Were heading up the stats department at Stanford University So you can imagine where would you want to be who do you want to be taught by the by the students or the master himself? Unfortunately, I do think he's retired now I think my year was like he's his final year, but very very smart guy and then From yacht on the actuarial side as well. We had some of the best lecturers. I think in the world like they were really really good They knew their stuff I mean the one lecture that I had is now going to become president of the entire international actuarial association So it's like we really really had some amazing lecturers at VITS They still are some amazing lecturers at VITS and then a quick comparison between because people always say of VITS or UCT When you get into the honors Thing like the honors of of VITS in my opinion It's better than UCT and Stellenbosch in the sense that at VITS You can choose whichever subject that you want to specialize in and it will be given to you at VITS If you go to UCT or Stellenbosch I think Stellenbosch specializes in two subjects UCT specializes in the other two subjects So if you want to do one that's in Stellenbosch, you have to drive quiet a long time although like I say That was back in my day and that's like seven years ago So things have changed now with COVID the the lectures might be online So you might not have to do all that driving But VITS does give you more exemptions gives you more choices and actually Streamlines your process to becoming an actuary quicker as well as finding your job So it is like I say probably the best university in in South Africa if not the world But like I say I went there so take that with a bit of a bit of bias Also, Joburg is a great place to study because there's nothing else to do in Joburg Where is I'm living here in Cape Town? There's the beach. There's the mountain. There's the wine lands That I mean the Cape Town City is a lot more beautiful and you can actually go there and like Joburg Which is incredibly dangerous So there's less distractions in Joburg, which is great because it means you'll focus on on your studying So, yeah, so that's question six hundred percent Yeah, great choice Question seven, what further studies would you advise for once I have qualified as an actuary? So definitely want to expose yourself to more programming So when we were at VITS, yes, we did have a little bit of a programming Element to it and it is something that's now being embedded in the actual exams But I would highly recommend taking your programming studying to to the next level It'll just make you a lot more useful and efficient as as an actuary Question eight, what made you choose this career? Look, I was I was a little bit arrogant off the school. I had done very well I was the top student at my school. I'd come top 50 in the country I thought I was the smartest person in the world So when they said actuarial science is the hardest I was like, you know what? I'm gonna take that challenge on and Yeah, it humbled me very quickly because it was incredibly difficult first year was was a big struggle for me, but Yeah, I basically chose the career because they said it was the hardest I didn't actually know what it was about. I Wait, you don't want to make big career decisions without knowing what it's gonna entail But I'm really glad I did actuarial science. It kind of changes the way you think about the world It allows you to understand uncertainty and probability a lot better than I think any other degree out there So I'm glad I did it But why I did it it was because of its reputation of of being difficult and I thought, you know what? Let me let me have a bit of a challenge in life Question nine, what are your main roles and responsibilities? What does a typical day involve like I said? This is where I'm very different to your traditional act trees because I'm working by myself It fluctuates. It really does change So these past months I've been working with the actuarial society on helping students get ready for the online exams I've been on the online committee to try and say, you know how should these online exams be designed and how should they you know, how should students go through the whole process and So the the responsibilities that I've been having is been prepping students to get ready for for these exams But like I say that was just because it was actual exam season now. There was a two-month project that I did Now what I'm looking at is I'm playing around with blockchain and just making like fun games on the blockchain because I think Decentralized finance is like the biggest buzzword and the biggest con out there But blockchain is still quite cool when it comes to to games So it's like I say I'm on a little bit of a break now because I've just had two intense months And before that there were other projects that were also really really intense. It's been a crazier 2020 has been a crazier So currently I'm on holiday. I've got no clients And like I said, I'm playing around with a few projects here or there So you're at the moment. I have no no role and responsibility But that might change next week or or next month depending on when I get decide to you know Wake up from my break and get back back into the swing of things Um What do you like most and least about your job? I'll start with the least What I what I like the least about the job is is it it can get difficult, especially like oh, I was like I said we're teaching What gosh they keep changing the subject nails, but it was financial engineering Sometimes known as financial economics. There are some sections in that course that are really difficult And oh, I really really have to think and then I've been doing these zoom lessons And then students will ask these like really good questions and and sometimes you if you're not on your a game It you can look like a real idiot Trying to answer some of them. So probably what I like least about the job is that it it can get difficult But what I like most is I like the way it's it's changed the way I think so I really enjoyed reading up on philosophy and history and economics and all these kind of things and Having that actuarial background just gives you a slightly different perspective on reality Which makes you read things and say hmm They actually weren't considering this this and that and it actually allows you to engage with these other subjects and maybe even Contribute to it. So I've written an article on on ethics I spoke about how our morality Changes when we become aware of uncertainty and something that I published in the philosophy now magazine and it's something That's really really cool because like I said, you can read up on other subjects And you can see that because they're assuming a deterministic world view They're not seeing the whole picture and if they allow for uncertainty Some things change and as an actuary you can kind of yeah, you can have a little bit of a go at adding to those other What would you consider the boring part of your profession I Mean there's a bit of admin that you got to do just to kind of keep keep things up to date It's like you yeah, but I'd say admin, but I think that's that's something to all professions What are the most stressful aspects of your job? Sometimes and this is this is something as being a consultant is you can have a lot of work at the same time So one client will be I want you to do this and then another client is like hey I want you to do that and You think to yourself, you know, there's more projects I can do the two at the same time and and that can get stressful So if you don't have good time management as a consultant The work can get stressful and you can end up working quite a lot per day But if you manage to yeah, just schedule things properly. It shouldn't be too much of a of a stressful job Do you feel that your salary is comparable or better than those of your peers in other lines of work? So one thing about actuaries is our salaries are quite high And it's it is I guess one of the big perks of the jobs is that the amount of money that you make is Considerable, it's a lot better. I mean, I've got a brother who is a chartered accountant He's working at one of the big four audit firms. He's working on some really big clients he's got a lot more responsibility he puts in a lot more effort a lot more hours than me and There are some months where I can earn double what he makes and I think that's because as a consultant You will earn more than if you're an employee Just in the sense that you don't have that security of making that money every single month And also because remember when you work at another company, they're making profit off of you So if you work for yourself, you get to enjoy a little bit more of that profit So as a consultant, you do get to have a very very nice salary compared to to the other professions But salary in the actual world it it's a very interesting one Our salaries are quite high But they're not like like I say if you if you're in it for the money The best thing to do is become an entrepreneur an entrepreneur salary a successful entrepreneur salary will far outstrip An Actory salary if you're an asset manager and a successful asset manager Your salary will far outstrip an Actory but from the professions like Actory accountants lawyer doctor and all these Kind of ones Actory is is probably at the top of the professions But like I say there are other jobs that can make more than an Actory Especially ones where you share in the risk and you share in the profit then your salaries can go. Yeah through through the roof In your opinion what personality would be well suited to the screer So you definitely want to be conscientious that is like a must So conscientious means you're prepared to study you're prepared to be dedicated You're prepared to follow rules and you know if there's an exam coming up You can say no to to all the parties and everything like that. So Consciousness is probably the top one then you want to be quite open You want to be open to new ideas because sometimes when you come across ideas You might say this doesn't feel right or and and some people they go away from Actory or sounds because We're not naturally designed to think in a very empirical probabilistic way And if you're not open or flexible in your thinking It's gonna be a little bit of a shut door to you. So conscientious and open are important Extravert is probably also a good thing to have I know the stereotype is that Actories are introverted But you want to be able to communicate well and be able to share your ideas with other people in business Also, if you're a consultant and you want to try to find clients It's difficult to find clients if you're very shy and withdrawn So yeah, you kind of want to have have that element as as well and Then agreeableness you want to kind of be midway with that and then I think the loss of the big five personality traits is like neuroticism and I guess that's irrelevant to To work if you have it if you don't I guess you know if you're neurotic Then you get a little bit more stressed easily, but I don't know I don't know too much about about personalities But you're of those big five traits conscientiousness is definitely the key one to to have so Google conscientious personality trait If you have that you'll be a great actor and Internationally is South Africa a very good place for Actories to work or would be more beneficial for me to go and work overseas So actuarial science in South Africa is is at the top of its game I mean South Africa we don't realize as a sufficient people who live here We don't realize how advanced and developed our financial services are. I mean we've got one of the best Auditing systems in the world. We've got one of the best financial management systems in the world We were one of the first to develop regulations for hedge funds So we really are at the top of the game in in finance and for that reason A lot of companies say ooh South Africa come work for our bank in Hong Kong or our bank in London Or, you know, some of the various other financial hubs So Actories in South Africa are very well sought after Internationally because we are brought up in an environment that has a world-class financial Standards and because of that a lot of the companies here hire lots of Actories. So South Africa is a very good place to work for an Actory although South Africa is a very dangerous place I mean anyone who lives here knows that crime is on the rise. There is extreme inequality And it is dangerous. So having a family in South Africa That's that's a conversation for for another time Question 17. Do you feel that AI is a rising problem regarding your work? I would say that it is it's not a problem if anything. It's it's the opposite It's a big opportunity AI is gonna help Actories to work a lot more efficiently It's gonna allow us to get a lot more done and that's why it's very important that you couple actual science with Programming so that you're one of the people who are able to use the artificial intelligence tools to be more productive in your work And you don't want to be someone who's scared of computers or scared at looking at code Because it is gonna become it's almost like someone who doesn't want to work on a calculator That's what I see AI is AI is just the next it's the upgraded calculator So you still need to put in the input and it's the AI is gonna do all the heavy maths heavy calculations But you're still gonna have to need to interpret the the output and apply that actuarial judgment But no AI is a huge huge opportunity We sometimes joke that AI is gonna take over all of our jobs and and all that kind of stuff And I think this is why it's maybe important to get into the fellowship of the actuarial society Because I think the technical act trees or people who just they have the associate level or who just like I said They have the technical background They're more at risk of being replaced by the AI whereas if you go all the way to the fellowship level You should be fine I can say if anything it will make you work a lot more efficiently because I can imagine if I had AI I could take on a lot more clients and do a lot more work So I'm really really hoping that that this thing continues to develop further Is the work very demanding and does it require you to work after hours on other words? Does your job allow for a good amount of personal and family time? This this is depends on where you work for if you're going in working for a consultancy firm So I do consultancy on my own and there I'm in control of my own time balance So that is beautiful But if you go and work for one of the big consultancy firms like EYPWC Deloitte's KPMG Get prepared to work over time if you're working an investment bank Get prepared to work over time because you can imagine they entice you with a nice salary But then in order for them to make money off of you They need to send you out and bill you and get you doing as much work as possible So if you cannot put in boundaries if you cannot tell your employer listen here I stopped working at six o'clock and they're gonna take advantage of you You're gonna work long hours You're gonna be working on Saturdays and Sundays unless you can have good boundaries in place That said if you go work for an insurer Or like a pension fund or pension fund group Though the working hours I've heard are a lot a lot more reasonable Remember there's there's this famous quote by by Nietzsche and he says if you do not own more than two-thirds of your time you are a slave and That is something that especially I think coming from Joe Boog in Ha Teng There is a very very strong work ethic there and people are prepared to sacrifice a lot of their life to working hard and as an actually You got to be careful and think of the long term and say hey Do I want to really like waste my 30s and 40s on my career? And then I'm absolutely burnt out and don't have a family and all the other beautiful things that life has to offer So yeah, that it's a tricky question because some actuallys are working over time Other actuallys are managing it well It depends more on the company culture that you get employed at rather than the profession as a whole Question 19. What skills and experiences are most important for being an actuary? How can I start to develop these skills? What skills and experience are the most important? I would say programming is is a good one, but at in grade 10 What's that that's like 16 that age group I would start going into probability start learning about probability start learning about The chances of getting different hands in poker different gambling games or gambling You know you're under 18, so don't don't actually do the gambling but study the mathematics around it So I would say start strengthening your your probability at this age And then when you get into university because that's kind of one of the things that hits a lot of people out You think should be good also math math is kind of like the the fitness for an actuary So just like how a soccer player needs to be fit in order to play a good game of soccer So an actuary needs to be good at maths in order to just get on the field before they can start playing So maths and probability are probably the best ones to just start honing in in now Could you possibly explain the Sarah qualification to me the Sarah qualification? It's essentially sense for chartered enterprise risk Actuary and it is something that is synonymous with say FRM, which is the financial risk managers That's another profession out there. It's the actuarial take on it and essentially actuarial science think of actuarial science as Managing underwriting risk, which is mortality morbidity and like crashes and business risks and all of that kind of like general insurance Whereas enterprise risk management also tells us to look at both market risk, which is you know stuff investments and assets and liabilities Credit risk, which is banks loans borrowing as well as operational risk Which is the fact that something could go wrong in an admins admins System or employees might steal from you all these kind of things and Enterprises got this philosophy of being holistic and saying you have to look at all of these risks together Because they interact with each other rather than looking at risks in silos But it's a it's an add-on. So not all actuaries will get the Sarah qualification I did it just because I wanted a few more letters next to my name. I thought it would be cool and I don't know I've enjoyed studies. I think whatever I studied I would have enjoyed and but I really enjoy Sarah I've created quite a nice online course For the actual society on its with it got just like 13 hours of content 500 marks of exam walkthrough. That's what I was doing at the beginning of the year. It's a beautiful course So I really really love this subject and it's something that you wouldn't necessarily do at university This is something that you'll do afterwards when you're deciding what to to specialise in If I were to study and qualify as an actor in South Africa and then further my studies for a Sarah qualification Would I be able to work overseas and in America? So there's quite a quite a packed question If you've got the actual qualifications here in South Africa You can then get into the Institute of Faculty of Actuaries in the UK And once you're in there you can then get into the American one But you can't go directly from South Africa to America for weird political reasons But you can then get into like I said the UK is probably the home of actuarial science So if you've got the South African one you can get into that one and then that basically opens all doors internationally you can get working visas living visas and it really allows you to Explore the world and you basically have have quite a fun global adventure So yes, that is one of the nice perks about studying actuarial science specifically in South Africa Is that it can help us get a visa to work overseas whereas if you're not into the profession You're gonna struggle. So yeah, you can qualify for saying known as a special talented visa or something like that Anyway, that's a long long discussion. And I think Let's maybe wrap up with these last two questions What countries board of actuaries would you recommend a qualifying from what I understand the UK exams are highly regarded internationally? UK and the South African exams, they're very very similar. In fact, some of the subjects that you do you're writing the UK exams They're just administered by the actual society of South Africa. So they're very very very similar I would do the South African one because you're in South Africa and The only little bit of a change is when it starts getting to the specialized subjects The South African ones are more tailored to South African issues And that's really beneficial when you're writing your exams because you want to be writing an exam where like I remember in the one exam We spoke about the the etol on the khaltein highway and by living in khaltein being exposed to etol You would be like, okay, cool. I know how to I know a little bit about it when you're writing the exam Compared to if you'd like let's say in England and they're asking some brexit question And yes, you should be exposed to brexit, but it's not something that you're reading up on a daily daily basis So if you want to get into the fellowship It's a lot easier to do in your local country rather than trying to do through the UK and then The last question is do you have any further advice? The last bit of advice is you want to just think I mean, especially coming from school school You get by by putting in work doing what you need to do Regurgitating the work in the exam and there's very very small higher order skills In fact, you can pass the whole of school without having any higher order skills as possible because it makes such a small part of the The syllabus actual science is almost reversed if you're not able to think And develop that critical judgment and those kind of things You are going to struggle in the exams because it's not like school where you just Read the notes and then regurgitate them in the exam or oh, this is the formula And then you just apply it and then we'll get the marks It's not as simple as that they do throw curveballs So you need to be able to think and that's one of the big problems I have with the school syllabus is because it's not teaching you to think It's just kind of spoon feeding you like like we've got these massive Curriculums where you just have to like learn so much But you're just trying to memorize things rather than actually thinking things through and seeing how concepts connect and all that kind of stuff So last bit of advice is if you're ever struggling with actual science, just stop take a deep breath And and think and then yeah, hopefully hopefully you'll get through it The job I think that is that is the 23 questions And gosh, this has been a much longer video then that I was then I was intending but hopefully that gave enough detail For your school project. So yeah, hopefully you hopefully you get an A on this project. Let me know how it goes Anyway, thanks everyone else for watching and I'll see you guys soon. Cheers