 webinar, people will be admitted as we go. I don't have to keep keep going. So first of all, hello everybody, my name is Susan and I'm going to be the host for the session tonight. The way in which this is going to work is it's going to run in three different currents. We're going to start off with the introduction from a couple of people who are going to tell us all about life from the actuarial profession, but they're going to come from multiple different perspectives. The first perspective is going to be from Sinead who is a practicing actuary and be a senior, a senior professional within her organization. She's going to tell us a little bit about the job she does, how she got there, and also some insights about maybe things that we may not necessarily assume or know about the actuarial profession. And then after that, we're going to have another couple of people who are going to share their insights with us as well along the way. And as we go along, you're also going to meet a couple of panelists who are going through the process of going through their exams. And also, sorry, I should correct myself there, just finish their exams and in a very relieved position now so you'll hear all about those as well. And in addition, you're going to hear, or in the middle, what we're also going to have is an active learning session as well in between where we're going to ask you to think like actually as we go along. So on that note, I am going to just going to start off there now and we're going to hand over to Sinead Clark, who is from Milliman and going to take us away with the first contribution for our session tonight. Sinead, over to you. Hi, everyone. Thanks, Millian, for joining the session tonight. I hope that you learned lots about the actuarial profession from this session. My name is Sinead Clark, as Susan said. I work for a company called Milliman. We're an actuarial consultancy company. So my job is to work with clients and help solve their problems. I sat the leading cert in 2002, which is over 20 years ago, which is a bit scary. I went on to study actuarial and financial studies in UCD and I started my career as an actuary in 2006. I took about four years to finish the professional exams and I qualified as an actuary in 2010. I then said, do you know what, I'm going to head off and travel around the world for a little bit. So I took six months off and traveled around the world with my boyfriend and husband and had a ball and came back and I've been working at Milliman ever since as a consultant actuary. I don't think I fully understood what it actually did when I put it down in my CAO and that's part of the reason why I was very happy to be involved in a session like this for senior cycle students, just so you can kind of have a good sense of what this profession and career is like if you are thinking of putting it down. I loved maths and maths was my favourite subject in school and I knew I wanted to work in a business context rather than a science context. So from that point of view, actuarial and financial studies seemed like a good fit and I'm delighted that I did it. I haven't looked back but I suppose I'd like to just share some maybe misconceptions about what an actuary does or what I thought maybe an actuary did. So I think when I was a student I would have thought that an actuary does lots of work with spreadsheets and charts and numbers. This guy to me is probably what I thought an actuary looked like, a man sitting behind a desk with lots of screens, lots of analytics and this is an article from The Guardian newspaper about what an actuary does. This guy is an actuary. I think I would have thought I'd spent lots of time in an office working with others and trying to calculate lots of different things and I think maybe that this would be all that my job was about and all that my life was about working on numbers and working behind a computer screen and then of course lots of people would have said to me oh actually they make lots of money so I definitely thought that that was something an actuary did but I suppose I have learned since that actuaries do lots of different things so thought it would be useful even just to look at what Google says an actuary does. So if you Google what an actuary does you come up with these are the kind of responses that you get. Actuaries use mathematical skills to measure the probability and risk of future events. Actuary is a problem solvers and strategic thinkers and they mostly work in the insurance industry be it with life insurers non-life insurers which are sometimes called property and casualty insurers or general insurers they're insurers that would ensure your car or your house or your mobile phone for example whereas life insurers provide insurance policies that would be paid out on death or maybe mortgage protection policies. Health insurers we also work with and lots of actuaries work in the pension sector as well and their day-to-day work includes working out the premium of insurance policies and so actuaries would look at the claims associated with the insurance policy the probability of claim or the value of a claim and try and work out what the premium might be. Actuaries calculate liabilities for insurance companies so if any of you study business you'll understand that there's on a balance sheet there are assets and liabilities for an insurance company when they sell a premium the cash or the payment they receive is an asset but they need to put a liability on their balance sheet that corresponds to the potential claim and that can be quite complicated to calculate because it depends on a certain event occurring and actuaries that's a core role of an actuary within the insurance industry and we also advise on investments to ensure that insurance companies have enough money to pay claims as they fall due and we draw interesting insights from historic data to make predictions about the future lots of actuaries are working in with big data and using big data to try and infer how events might occur in the future and then finally we develop mathematical models to understand risks so lots of actuaries work with different types of coding systems or python and for example to build models to help calculate some of these things to calculate premiums or to calculate liabilities so there's lots of different things that that actuaries do in this area and google provides a good example of those but i'm hoping that the people that you hear today will give you real life examples of what they do rather than just google and so then if you were to maybe dig a little deeper and look into the society of actuaries you'd come across some pictures like this of real life actuaries and the people in the top up here and these are head of actuarial functions so they have a specific role within an insurance company and they have a very protective role so their role within the company is to sign off to ensure that the insurance company has enough money to pay the claims of the policy holders and when they fall through if they when they are are due and so a lot of the time actuaries have a very policy holder centric or policy holder first role within an insurance company and these are recently qualified actuaries that's me and back in 2013 when i had qualified and i'm speaking at an event and then all these guys down here are actuaries that finish their professional exams a few years ago but just because all of these people are in suits and and they look very professional that doesn't mean that it's all no fun and it's all about the work actuaries have plenty of time to do lots of different things as well as work and so we work hard but we play hard too and so this picture here of the scuba diving actually is Yvonne and she is the CEO of the Society of Actuaries and she's going to speak after me and these are my colleagues that took part in a Grand Thornton 5k for charity last year and we have a lot of a lot of my colleagues are avid runners they run marathons and half marathons and at a different point in my life before our children I used to run half marathons as well so I work with a very energetic and sporty bunch and this is an ex-colleague of mine that's also a musician and down here we have a kind of a mix of actuaries this was at our the Society of Actuaries 50th anniversary event last year so within Ireland the Society of Actuaries just turned 50 and so we've we've been over the actuary profession is a very long profession in the UK but in Ireland the Society of Actuaries is 50 years old and so I hope that again the actuaries you'll meet today will show you a kind of a diverse range of different people coming from different backgrounds and within the profession and then kind of to finally answer to answer that question of what does an actuary do? Actuaries do lots of things and more so this gives you an idea of some of the jobs that I've done throughout my career and the people who speak after me will tell you about some of the things that they're doing in their career and it's different from mine and I'm going to talk a little bit about the jobs and then I have a little bit about the skills that I've learned just to try and demonstrate that I haven't spent the past 20 plus years sitting behind a computer screen and working for an insurance company I've done lots of things and I'm only getting started in my career I'm probably have another 20 plus years and before I get to retirement so I aim to do a lot more and so when I started working I worked as evaluations actually that's where you work on a team of actuaries and you're calculating liabilities for an insurance company like I mentioned at the start and that's where I developed my core actuarial skills some of those skills were very useful when I went to sit the exams because a lot of the exams excuse me the professional exams are based on those core actuarial skills I work in a consultancy and so I got to be involved on lots of different projects some of those included big M&A projects where an insurance company was purchasing another insurance company and we had to help advise on a price for that purchase they are generally very confidential but very interesting projects to be involved in I have worked with startups so new companies that have come and set up in Ireland and built a company from scratch and I've worked with them and developing their actuarial systems and their risk management systems and just helping advise them on what an insurance company should look like and what's expected in Ireland from the regulations and legislation point of view and I was an avid coder back in my day and would have developed lots of models to help on the actuarial valuation side primarily using actuarial software but generally using codes such as C++ and in my most recently I have spent a lot of time working with health insurers and I am a head of actuarial function for a health insurer based in Ireland that sells health insurance to other companies or other countries around the world international health insurance and as part of that role I have to sign off that the company has sufficient liabilities every year to support its policy holders and that's a very important role in Ireland and under the insurance legislation and then I have also spent a lot of time in risk management so risk management is probably a newer area for actuaries to be part of since the financial crash in 2008 there has been a lot of more focus on risk management across insurance companies and banks and the investment sector and that is an area that a lot of actuaries work in in insurance companies and it's a very interesting area and an area that continues to develop and even within that risk management space climate change and the risks posed by climate change or is a new and emerging area there and finally I've learned lots of skills in my career as well so obviously maths and technical ability are core to an actuarial skill set but you need lots of other skills as well and problem solving is important and I think we learn how to do that based on our technical mathematical ability but it is a different skill set because you're applying that technical mathematical knowledge to kind of real day problems where you might actually use equations to solve them you use kind of strategic thinking and storytelling is really important and being able to bring other people along and to explain complex mathematical or technical detail to key stakeholders in companies so I work regularly with executive management and the board of directors and I need to be able to explain complex and actuarial output to them so that they can use that information to make key decisions within the company so within insurance companies actually ahead of actuarial function our core to the senior management team and and with that comes leadership and influencing skills so I need to be able to you know use my leadership skills to lead in the senior executive team but also within my role within Milliman and I had a team of eight people reporting to me last year and I needed to use my leadership skills to kind of work with them and help develop their careers and so that kind of people management aspect comes into it as you build out in your career many actually become managers and take on that kind of people management role as well public speaking is important and in some cases for me as a consultant it tends to form an important part of my career I can't say it's a part I love and particularly if I hark back to my school days like I wasn't I'm still not very comfortable speaking in public but I do do a lot of it and it's an area that I am always trying to improve in and for some actuaries it's an area that they spend a lot of time in and even whether it's public speaking to a group of this of 50 people or you know speak presenting to 10 people in a senior management team those kind of public speaking skills are important and project management is important because a lot of the work that actuaries do have either quite tight deadlines and we prepare numbers for year-end accounts and for example or we work on projects within insurance companies or with our clients that may have deadlines because they're driven by regulatory needs and regulatory timelines for example and then innovation marketing and research development are all important and lots of actuaries within insurance companies might move into these areas and insurance companies will need to update their product structure from from time to time and actuaries can be very much involved in that and for me working in a consultancy I always need to be up to date on industry knowledge and to try and understand what new issues the insurance industry is going to face so that I'm very capable to talk to my clients about them so innovation marketing and R&D are also important so that skill set is probably very different to what I would have thought and when I think back to leaving cert I would have thought that it was a huge focus on maths and technical ability and that the majority of my career would be spent calculating numbers and a lot of my career involves numbers but the calculation aspect of it isn't something that I necessarily do anymore I use a lot more of these other skills now within a management and leadership role within the organization and some of my more junior staff are really in the depths of the numbers and the calculation and the model development so I hope that that has given you a kind of an overview of what a career might look like within the actual profession and hopefully the speakers later on today are also I'm going to tell you a little bit more about their careers and what they do on a day-to-day basis that'll help provide more information so I'd like to say thank you as well to our sponsors before I hand over to Susan who have provided a lot of support to help us develop our transition year program and then also this event today. Thank you very much indeed for that Janid and I'm always intrigued by the scuba diving picture we never expect to see that one for a start but also I hope that graphic that you have again where you've got the green colors there representing the more mathematical skills etc and then the skills as you say that you've developed in a more senior capacity as well and following the path what I did know about you before and I'm grateful everyone I'm grateful to say that I've worked with Janid now for a while I never knew you were an avid coder in your day as you as you say so you learn something new every single time so Janid thank you very much indeed for first of all for sharing that with us and also for sharing your contact detail too and that's very kind of you to share those and as we are indeed going to take questions and all of that but that's going to be held on panel session later on we're also going to give you another way of submitting questions in a little while too when we're doing the active learning session so if there are anything please do feel free to pop them into the Q&A section and I will either pass them on to Shanae pass them on to the panel or else we will answer them a little bit later. Shanae thank you again for being with us. Okay so the next person that I'm going to ask to join us now is Yvonne so Yvonne if I could ask you to turn on your camera please so Yvonne is the CEO of the Society of Actiors in Ireland and she is also as she mentioned there while ago she is the scuba diver in in Shanae's picture and she's going to tell us some really really interesting statistics all around the Society of Actiors in Ireland it is this year 50 years old and of course that marks a really important milestone for the actuary for the actuarial profession and she's going to talk about the plethora of different ways that people can engage with actuarial skills but outside of the traditional roles of an actuary even outside of the ones that Shanae mentioned and the other thing as well that one of my favorite statistics is that Ireland has the most amount of actuaries per head of the population in the world so all of those types of things is what you're going to hear is what you're going to hear Yvonne talk about. You're probably wondering am I here at all and I am but I'm getting a message Susan saying you can't start your video because the host has stopped it. Okay well then I will take a look at that now and I will see why that might be. Okay there we go Yvonne started. I am perfect perfect indeed I'm going to hand it over to you and I knew very well that you were there all right there's no doubt no doubt about that indeed and because I'm again very grateful that I've heard Yvonne speak before some of your statistics well I'm sorry not some of all of your statistics are always really interesting to hear Yvonne and the floor is now yours. Okay thanks Susan hello everybody and thanks so much for coming along this evening here at the Society of Actuaries we're delighted to bring you this webinar and delighted to have Susan helping us with this as well and very grateful also to our sponsors who were mentioned by Sinead there and also I must say a huge thank you to the actuaries who have come along this evening to share their experiences with you and to answer your questions. I think you're in for a very insightful and informative session so as Susan said there I'm Chief Executive of Society of Actuaries I am an actuary myself Sinead was talking about it being 20 years I think she said so and she left school I left school long before that I must confess but I can still remember at the time telling people that I was going to become an actuary and being met with blank stares and confused looks and questions like why do you want to be an actor or is that something to do with archery and I think nowadays there is more awareness of the actuary profession but there is still quite a lot of mystique about what do actuaries do on a day-to-day basis so hopefully during the course of this webinar we'll manage to dispel some of that mystique for you. Well as Sinead said most actuaries do work in insurance or pensions or in firms that provide services into those businesses and indeed that's reflected in our range of sponsors this evening so Irish Life, New Ireland and Zurich are all insurance companies providing life insurance savings plans and in the case of Zurich non-life insurance or general insurance so covering your covering cars homes mobile phones and the like and then Aeon and Milliman also leaders in their field Aeon is a professional services firm that provides services to insurers as well as to a wide range of other businesses and Milliman Sinead's firm is an actuary consultancy specializing in the insurance space so that will give you a flavour that there are lots of actuaries working in these types of companies. Now insurance and pensions I don't think any of us wake up in the morning thinking I must take out an insurance policy today or I must start my pension plan today we all I suppose like to spend today and enjoy ourselves and put off saving for the rainy day but insurance and pensions are areas of work where we can make a real difference to people's lives because when mishaps happen and unfortunately they do they happen to all of us we have enough to be worrying about we have enough stress to deal with besides worrying about financial consequences and that's where insurance really comes in to play it provides protection against financial loss at times when people need it most actually it's not just about protection anymore increasingly insurers are getting involved in incentivizing people and supporting people and leading healthy lifestyles so that there's less risk of these bad events occurring and hopefully that means more of us will reach old age in good shape and that's where a good pension plan or a savings plan really comes into its own allowing us to lead a very comfortable lifestyle in our quite a few years and now again Sinead talked about how actuaries use mathematical tools mathematical techniques to assess risks and insurance we look to see how we can best pull the risks of large groups of people to provide protection and financial support to individuals when they need it most and we also work to ensure that insurance companies and pension funds are run well so that when the claims come to be paid or when the pensions come to be paid the money is indeed there for people and that may be many years from when people first started paying premiums or putting their savings aside but actually where your work isn't just about insurance and pension sent increasingly actuaries are moving into more diverse fields actuaries are essentially problem solvers so we use our mathematical skills to solve practical business problems particularly in relation to managing finances and in relation to assessing and managing risk. So the the actuarial skill set includes being able to analyse and interpret large volumes of data and use it to gain rights and to make predictions about all sorts of things from economic conditions through to customer behaviours in different scenarios and that's a set of skills that can be used to add value to lots of different types of businesses. So even within our own membership we have people working in let's see we have people working in the aviation industry in a variety of roles from from managing the leasing of aircraft to doing flight safety analysis we've got people working in government departments in telecommunications in the tech legal healthcare sectors also in financial regulation. Petty Power the bookmakers have hired actuaries do modelling of of sports outcomes and predictions so that they can set their odds properly or set their odds in their favour probably. Elon Musk the creator of the Tesla car and the SpaceX rockets and satellite technology has looked for what did he say revolutionary actuaries for his Tesla insurance business. To give you a few examples of actuaries in somewhat unusual roles there's an actuary who is set up a company that's developing an app that will allow people to track their diet simply by taking a photo of their meal from their smartphone. There's an actuarial consultancy that specialises in developing programmes to reward customer loyalty in all sorts of businesses and in the UK there's an actuarial who has set up a company that aims to transform the pet insurance market through innovative use of technology combined with excellent customer service. This guy is Steven Mendel in 2019 he was included in the London Business School review of 30 people who are changing the world which I think is quite an achievement and his company ranked in the Sunday Times TechTrack 100 for three consecutive years as one of the UK's fastest growing tech businesses so that's an example of an actuarial who's quite an entrepreneurial leaning and using his actuarial skills to apply to a new business model. Here at the Society we try to support actuaries in having the skills and knowledge that they need for the current roles that they're doing but also for the opportunities that might emerge in the future. Susan mentioned we're 50 years old now when the Society was established there were just 17 actuaries in Ireland and I started in the exams back in 1981 there were about 50 and when I finished the exams in 1987 along with a number of people but in particular along with Evelyn Burke who went on to become Group Chief Executive of Bupa the International Health Care Company Evelyn and I were the first two females in Ireland to complete the actuarial exams and now today we have about 2000 members in the Society about 600 of them are trainee actuaries and about a third are females. We would like to have lots more females in the actuary profession and there's no reason not to have the females in the profession are just as skilled just as capable just as talented just as effective as the male. So if you have ideas on how we can attract more females into the profession we certainly would be interested to hear them. So at about 2000 members that is a relatively small profession but it is a small profession in a small country and as Susan said we have in Ireland more actuaries per head of population than anywhere else in the world and sometimes people say oh are there too many actuaries then will there be jobs for me if I go into this profession but in fact the demand for actuaries remains high it's high in the traditional areas it's growing in the the other fields of business that actuaries are gradually expanding into and the the financial rewards aren't too shabby either so for example when you finish the actual exam so you might be about early to mid 20s at this stage you could expect salary levels of about 75 to 80 thousand by the time you get to say early to mid 30s that would have gone up to about 125 to 150 thousand beyond that the opportunities for progression are certainly many and really how how you progress how quickly and how far you progress depends on the seniority of the roles that you take up. Sinead mentioned that a lot of actuaries move into management roles and some move into very senior positions and afford some very comfortable lifestyles shall we say so so as well as being a financially rewarding career it is a career that offers a lot of opportunities and opportunities to to shape your career and take it in the direction that best suits your particular interests and your particular talents. Within the society we try to provide lifelong learning opportunities for members so that as I said earlier they can keep the skills sharp and relevant completing the actuarial exams is just the first step on a successful career and I think as with any career it's important to remain curious and to keep your knowledge and your skills fresh and up to date. We also set standards that apply to actuarial work to make sure that the work is done to the highest professional standards because that is really important for the reputation of the profession and reputations are hard won but sadly they can be easily lost so that is very important to us. We also engage with government and we contribute to public discussions on matters where an actuarial perspective can add value so for example a particular topical area will be climate change and we've recently signed up to an international profession body's climate action charter and that will give us a strong foundation for collaborating with other professionals to tackle this this global challenge. Our work is we have a small secretariat in the society we have a staff of nine but at any one time ooh maybe 300 of our members are actively involved in that work and they bring their energy their enthusiasm their knowledge their wisdom their curiosity and their willingness to give back not just to the profession but to the public interest and I think that that's one of the fantastic characteristics of this profession is the the strong sense of community and the that spirit of wanting to contribute. I hope that one day some of you will become actress too and come and join us in our work but you have time I suppose to make decisions like about that. For the moment I hope you really enjoy this evening's webinar I hope that you get a lot out of it if you go way afterwards and you still have questions or you're reflecting something and you you want to know some more do get in touch with us email us at info at actress.ie and we'd be very happy to to to to clear up any any any questions any confusion that that you might have I wish all of you every luck in making your choices in the next couple of years I suppose about what careers you might follow and I wish you every success whatever path you might choose to take okay. Thank you so much indeed for that and both you and Sinead are saying the questions are flying in here. Yes anybody can see see them there as they are flying in which is wonderful please do keep them coming and there's lots and lots of scope for for that to be answered and there is one area that I would just like to ask you about and go on and that is it has been asked but it's always asked whenever we're working with with people interested in the actual profession you mentioned that the financial awards are not too shabby could you elaborate a what does that mean but b and more importantly really how does progression happen is it as you pass your exams is it when you start in a job as a fully fledged actually that that happens could you just talk us through how does the market use yeah it's a mixture of those things Susan so so most people enter the actuary profession by first taking a new university degree and there are specialist actuary degrees that people can take and through those they can get exemptions from a lot of the professional exams and they would still have a few professional exams do while also working now there are different routes and people don't have to take an actuary degree it could be a different type of degree indeed you don't absolutely have to go to college at all you could start from school and work your way up in a company but say taking the typical route where people um do an actuary degree and they get a number of exemptions and they they join a company then I think salaries at that level are on so so just at a university are probably around the 40 to 50 grand mark and then over the next two to three years when people people will be working um building a work experience acquiring on the job skills and doing their exams as well by the time they finish their exams and over that period um their probably salaries are likely to reach about 75 80 thousand then um then people continue to learn on the job completing exams doesn't mean that you know everything but but you will find once you qualify that you are quickly given more responsibility you know you you do come out of the exams with a huge wealth of knowledge and very broad knowledge about the business and about how businesses run and it's not just about technical actuarial stuff but it is just border business knowledge and so you will quickly find a lot of people in other parts of business looking to you and so so you really do have opportunities to shine and um people progress then by performing well on the job and by taking on new roles it's always good to seek opportunities to to um try out new areas that may be within your own company or maybe by moving company I always recommend to people as well that they look for opportunities to collaborate with people from others other disciplines because you learn a lot by working with people who drink bring different perspectives to things um so so um just through through developing on the job people will progress they'll get more senior positions in their company people will then take different tracks people might go into very technical roles some people love that and and shine in very technical roles other people prefer to go into maybe more general management roles where they're bringing their actuarial knowledge to bear on decisions that might affect things like the design of a product or how to how to sell a product the marketing of products how to um how to serve customers in the most well customer friendly way and um and basically just different aspects of running the business whichever route people take the opportunities for actuaries are enormous because actuaries have such a broad skills that that they tend to shine in whatever area they are so there really are opportunities to play to your own particular interests and skills and progression beyond that really does it's it's not at that stage it's not really a function of how many years post qualification experience have it's what did you do on the job in that period how did you develop your skills and what what how much responsibility were you prepared to accept in the roles that you took on and how well did you do in restarting that responsibility just thank you very much for first of all putting a number on it and also pointing out the different pivot points that can happen and also the fact that there is a great progression with b that there's also progression that can happen in multiple different directions yes thank you very very much that's always again intrigued with how we can go from ilan musk all the way out to flights and how you can make safety and all that sort of data as well as the applicability in many other directions so yvonne thank you very much indeed for being very welcome thank you and now our next person that i'm going to ask to turn on the camera is allison now allison is at a different stage of her career allison you have just finished one or two of your exams so i just said one this time just one one this time so as you can tell allison is going through the process of studying so your your past college allison and then now you're in in the throes of the exams of course you're also working as well at the same time so managing the two together often when people are interested in this area they want to know and like we can probably see some of the questions coming through how long does it take what's the process like but often people want to know allison what's it like to work and study at the same time what's our to support to their on the part of the company is it possible to do it can you come out the other side et cetera so now that you're in the heart of it could you please tell us your story and tell us all about your past away with yes of course and so i'll just share my screen for you guys no so and so yeah as susan said my name is allison i also work with millerman with jennate and so i'm an associate consultant so i've only been with millerman for two years so i'm kind of at that stage in my career where i'm doing a lot of the technical work still and so calculating liabilities and i've worked on m&a's and but also through work i'm on different committees and where i get the chance to kind of work on my soft skills so i'm on the innovation committee and the marketing committee which i really enjoy and today i'm going to be talking a lot about the route to becoming an actuary and so what that entails from college right through to the professional exams and so first things first there are some minimum requirements and that you must achieve before you can become a registered student with the ifa way and that's the examining body for the actuarial exams and so just to note you don't need all three of those requirements just kind of once vices and so firstly you could get a h1 or h2 in leaving higher level mats that's obviously easier said than done but there is like a lot of complex mats involved in the road to becoming an actuary and so you would kind of want to have a strong aptitude for mats and also enjoy it but there's a lot of people maybe it doesn't go like your way on the day and that doesn't mean you can't become an actuary and there are other options and so you can do an undergraduate course and you'd need to get a third class honours or higher in any mathematical degree and or alternatively you can get a second class honours or higher and as well as a c in your leaving search in a mathematical subject now i know it's not done and i think a c would be a h3 or h4 now and i think they haven't updated their website and but that being said there are a few different routes to becoming an actuary which Yvonne kind of touched on and so the first bullet point there is probably the most common that would be from your leaving search to go and do a degree in actuarial and financial studies and that's what i would have done and then from there go and get a job and do your professional exams and i think common misconception can be that when you graduate from college studying an actuary degree that you are a qualified actuary i'd definitely in transition year would have thought that and that's not the case though and so yeah there are exams to do afterwards which is why yeah the professional exams is down there as well and alternatively then it maybe you didn't get your h1 or your h2 you could go and do an undergraduate course in some other subject and then optionally you could do a masters in actuarial and financial studies to get some exemptions there and but if that's not required you could just go straight to working and doing your professional exams from your undergrad and then finally it's worth mentioning it is technically possible from your leaving search to just go straight into a job in the insurance industry and do all of the exams that way through work it's really not the done thing anymore i think it would have been quite common in the past and but it is technically an option so worth mentioning and so moving on this slide is kind of looking at all of the different college courses that Ireland has to offer for actuarial actuarial and financial studies and so there are six colleges to choose from and each of them has a different points requirement i'm not going to quote the different points requirements because they change quite a bit year on year and a lot of the courses include a placement and so that's where students do work experience in an insurance company or some other company in the industry for a number of months so i did mine in a global reinsurance company um and it's like a really good experience it really kind of shows you if you will like it after college because you could always go and work in some other area if you didn't um which i did really like it um even though mine was over covid so a lot of it was working from home um in 2020 when people hadn't really figured that out yet so i maybe didn't get the full placement experience but a lot of people do say it is kind of the highlight of their college experience um and you can go abroad for your placement as well um one of my best friends went to new york and worked there which was really cool and i know people that went to Glasgow and london as well um so lots of options there and the last column on this slide is referring to exemptions and i know a few of us have kind of touched on those now but i just kind of want to explain it properly because again i don't think i would have understood that in transition year so basically to become an actuary there are 12 exams you have to sit so in if you do an actuarial degree in college you can get exemptions from some of those exams so that's where some of the modules you sit are basically equivalent and like cover the same material as the exams you would have been doing through the ifoa um so they cover the same content they're examined in a similar way and that means if you get a high enough grade in those exams you essentially you don't have to do them after college so you you've already kind of bagged them through your degree and usually that means getting a quite a high grade like maybe an a or b but it's brilliant because obviously it kind of makes the road to qualifying a lot faster um and yeah all of the different colleges in ireland that have actuarial courses offer some number of exemptions which is great um so finally i'm just going to talk a bit about the professional exams which we have all referred to so much and so as i mentioned there's 12 in total um and you do those exams while you're working so the way that works is companies provide paid study leave in the months coming up to the exam so it's usually a day a week or you might take two half days every week to go and study and so that's really helpful and and then there's two exam sittings every year one in april and one in september and you can do as many exams as you want each sitting but they are quite difficult so people would tend to usually do maybe one or two to properly focus on it and get the pass so we had exams there last week some people are still sitting them this week as well and so exam season is in full swing um and then looking at the different exams that you have to pass there's kind of four different categories the first one core principles is like the more technical or mathematical examinations look in our areas like economics or accountancy and then obviously statistics and maths as well and then these are usually the exams that colleges would offer exemptions in and one college i think ucd offers an exemption in one of the core practices as well but otherwise any of the exemptions would be in these core principles and so then yeah the core practices exams they're more practical so two of the exams are fully kind of practical one of them is a modelling exam where you kind of make a model and another one is a communication skills exam kind of writing a letter or something and then the third one there that's kind of that's a risk management exam quite a big exam and then the last two categories the specialist principles and specialist advance here students select two for the specialist specialist principles and two out of about seven different areas and usually you choose like areas that relate to your line of work and so because millerman deals a lot with life insurance and health insurance and there are the exams that i chose but friends of mine did general insurance which is more like car insurance and things like that or pensions exam risk exam and so there is a lot to choose there and you kind of get to hone in on what you enjoy as well which is nice and then for the specialist advance it's just basically a deeper dive into one of the areas that you chose for your specialist principles and then to kind of answer what susan was asking about life working and studying it's honestly not as bad as it may seem and having the study day a week it makes it very bearable people kind of talk about giving up your life and during exam season that's not really the case maybe the month of april can be tough and the month of september but in general it's not too bad and yeah if you kind of just taken away at the study over the few months before the exam it makes it very bearable and yeah it's definitely not too bad so yeah hopefully i've been kind of helpful and i think that's everything i wanted to say well alice and thank you very much indeed for that and also for giving us the real deal the reason as well as regards what happens by the way i'm just interested there that somebody did ask back here how do you know what to study for the exams and the lane is answering that there in the in the background so again i'm glad that you ballooned it to that and just to give that real sense of what it's like when when it happens how it happens and to support the support that that should get along the way so we really appreciate your time tonight alice and thank you very much indeed for being with us thanks everyone and so we're now going to move into the next part of the session which is where i'm going to ask you to think like and like an actuary so i have a range of questions here and i am going to uh first of all it's going to put a link into the chat and in here what i'm going to do is i am going to ask you and i'm just going to make sure here that all is good i am yeah going to ask you to click on this now if you are on a separate device i am also going to give you a q or a quote okay so here we go there's a bunch of everyone okay so can i ask you all to click on that please and if not if you're not there then instead i'm going to give you a q or a quote now i'm going to that i'm going to share my screen here there we go let me share my screen here and now you should be able to hold up your if you're for example if you're watching this on a laptop and you're usually you want to use your phone pull up your camera okay i can see there we've already two people here who are who are liking that yep so please do like it please do indeed like it so that then i know that you're there and i will take it from there okay i can see loads and lots of people brilliant all right so if at any stage you get stopped out we need to join again you can you can use the code up there at the top go to menti.com and use the code top but for now i'm going to assume that we're all good now let me just test out the second element of this tech not just that you can join but also that you can answer so there are three questions in the background here so when you have now moved on because i have made this to be presenter paced which means that you're following me so if i can ask you now to fill out three questions that are now appearing on your screen this is just going to reassure me that our tech is all good if you're using this on a mobile device you'll need to scroll down past the picture of the woman here tapping the microphone okay i can see the first one is in there so i'm going to give people a couple of moments and then from there i'm going to ask you to think like and actually i have a range of data okay i can see five so i'm going to stop sharing there for a moment and give you a chance to do that and we are now at 22 okay we're nearly there well there's a lot more than that here now where i'm just going to give this okay 27 it's now 1952 i'm going to give this until 1953 or 33 so like i say after this i'm going to give you a range of questions for you to think about i have the answers i'm going to be showing you the answers but i'm going to give you a range of things to think about okay we're right right 1953 first question is this rank these experiences in terms of risk because of course as you've heard everybody says so far you've heard Alice and you've heard Yvonne and you've heard you've heard Sinead they all talk about risk it's pricing and risk it's considering risk etc so my question to you is this rank these experiences again if you're on a mobile device you need to go down past the picture of the person you're walking the title so so far i'm saying nothing now because i know the answer to this until you're done okay we've 18 people and rank them all okay rank them all so so far we have we're we're on about next okay fling sport has now gone ahead crossing the road a second to going to school is next i'm going to let this run for another 20 seconds 14 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 okay the answer is correct in the way that it appears that actually the in terms of the three things that i put forward to you there a risky thing to do is play sport my brother's a hurler i have been on the pitch plenty of times when i have seen that that play out playing sport and of course that can there's various different sports that have different levels of risk associated with them so if you are applying for example for travel insurance then the travel insurer might restrict maybe seeing or certain activities like bungee jumping or various other ones that have elevated levels of risk as the thing to other sports but there is an understanding and an analysis what risk happens according to which sports in which environments the safest thing to do here often three that i gave you is to be in school least accidents actually happen in school most accidents happen in the home so crossing the road is actually in between the two okay next one is this so as soon as i move this forward i'll be asking the next question so there's a new housing development that has been built in a town close to you if you were thinking like a house insurer so think like a house insurer what factors might affect the premium that an insurer were charged to you as a whole buyer so you're think like an insurer now what factors what questions would you ask people who are buying this new house in the town close to you what factors so let's think about what factors what questions would you be asking but what factors might affect the premium and insurer charges don't work okay and this is related to house insurance okay so far i find answers think remember what what is insurance for insurance is for ensuring risk so what risks what questions you need to ask to assess the risks and also remember the principle of insurance is asking a range of people a lot of people for a little bit so that you can help out people at the time that they need it most 17 answers so far now you're now you're really getting going now the the more often something appears then they the bigger the text becomes i am at 37 answers okay i'm going to start going to start responding to some of these so the source of finance interesting so would you would you look at a house differently if it was financed by mortgage versus cash for example geography so where is it the crime in the area natural disasters the builder that made the house structure and foundation security system yes indeed you're correct that there is a difference between the price of insurance that you will pay if you have an alarm versus if you don't and the value of the house is there a fireplace the land size previous weather flooding burglary alarm and security of the job interesting okay so you're also saying that the that the insurer would also determine how much the house would be would be or the factors that would contribute to the insurance of the house based on salary of the people who own it okay or perhaps rented perhaps and you've type of roof theft danger square foot area is it a first time buyer the price of house robbery history of health defensible space and yeah so the bigger ones here are the value of the home you're right there value of the home crime location security near water etc okay you're really thinking right now these are exactly the type of things where ultimately the question that I really asked you is what determines the risk and how high or low those risk levels are okay i'm very happy with that right next one now what is the average life expectancy of a person in the world an average the first person i'm going to show you the statistics on this i'm going to give you the statistics on this so i'm going and they're all in between 1500 i intentionally chose them in between 1500 there is a difference between the life expectancy of a man and a woman but the first answer is a person in the world on average the whole world now developing and developed work and then a woman in Ireland and a man in Ireland want to see what you think a person in Hong Kong so an average between a man and a woman a man in the UK and a woman in Dubai i'm grateful to say i've actually been in all of those places including the words like all of you have so where do you think it is i'm just going to stop and think going to give you a chance here to think and this time i'm going to show you where i would find the data so lots of you saying 82 points actually i won't comment now till till you have a chance 21 answers and this is precisely of course what you would do is an actually because what you need to consider is how long is the person expected to live and then how can you price an insurance policy let's say on the basis of life insurance or their pension so that you can give them enough money to have so so that they can live comfortably for the rest of their lives but also making sure that the money that is put into that pension or put into that investment to take care of that person is also sufficient okay part of seven answers now here is on this occasion what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring you for the first time i'm going to show you the data the next time i'm going to give you a calculation to help you figure this out yourself but for now i'm going to show you that okay what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring this over here and this is the world amateur this is the world amateur when it looks to the life expectancy of the world population so on average a person in the world is 73.2 years higher a lot higher in fact a lot higher than what the average is here now i can see that there's a lot of people here have chosen all sorts of other numbers but it is higher than you think so a woman in Ireland let's look at that one a woman in Ireland let me go i'm going to control that is a great one so a woman in Ireland is female life expectancy is 84.32 82 two years two years more than what you're expecting a man in Ireland you're saying 77 a man in Ireland is expected to live until he's 82 wow you're really underestimating life expectancy here so far okay now let's go for a person in Hong Kong the reason i picked Hong Kong by the way is apart from it being a wonderful place to go is it is at the top of the table so in Hong Kong a person in Hong Kong can expect to live to 85.29 years highest of the table next and you said 79.3 much i think the year is higher than that a man in the UK you said 77 okay interestingly here so what i'm seeing is that you expect a man a man in the UK and a man in Ireland at the same life expectancy is that the case well i know the answer but if i jump across here so a man in Ireland would is expected to live until 84.32 sorry no a man in Ireland is 81.29 sorry 81.29 and the UK is actually significantly lower it's 80.22 now in general you've underestimated both of them but it just shows you that the life expectancy of a man in Ireland today is actually higher than the life expectancy of a man in the UK and then i chose to go for a woman in Dubai and the reason that i picked Dubai is that uh first of all i was there quite recently i was actually there i was running with uh running a financial retreat with another business that's based out there so i spent a bit of time out there and it has an amazing lifestyle of course as i'm sure a lot of you know however lifestyle and life expectancy are two very different things so then if i look over here at the worldometer and i scroll down to the United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates here we are is that the life expectancy of a woman 79.8 years 79.8 years which again you've underestimated but it is high it is it is lower than any of anything else that i showed you uh anything else that that i showed you indeed it is actually below average for across the world so that was that those are the types of data that somebody like Sinead takes into consideration so she looks at life expectancy says okay we need to make sure that when we're structuring a pension for a woman in Ireland we need to take into consideration that her life expectancy is what i mentioned too how do we make sure that we can invest the money that she's put into the pension for long enough to make sure that she's paid out at the right times as she goes through her lifetime that is the key question that somebody like Sinead is thinking to answer similarly if we are if you're going to be charging let's say a man in the UK for life insurance life insurance is where a man let's say in the UK pays into an insurance policy and when he dies then that money is paid to the beneficiary of that insurance policy well then you might say well if that life is insured let's say for 100 000 or 100 000 pounds starting in the UK how much does a company need to charge him every single month along the way so that then there is enough money to pay out to that beneficiary when the time comes that's that's the way it works okay so so far what i'm learning about this audience very clearly is that you're underestimating life expectancy um interestingly quite significantly and also what i can clearly tell is that you knew though that there the life expectancy of a woman is higher than that of a man and i was particularly struck by the fact that you think a man in the UK and a man in Ireland just the same life expectancy okay let's keep going so now let's look at the next question how much in your role is the full state pension in Ireland today so if i was to retire my dad retired quite recently how much money does he get from the government every year now i will say in order to get the state pension you do need to have contributed 520 per side contributions that works out at 10 years so you need 10 years of contributions to the government and then there's other things as well it has to be on average that you make 48 contributions a year so without getting into that technical stuff it means that PRSI pay-related social insurance that is the money that goes into the government to take care of things like disability allowance or social welfare allowance or different things like that but money part of your income tax goes into the government so that then they invest it on your behalf so that then when it comes to retirement age then it can be paid out what if you were like my dad is now if you were to retire this year and we received the full state pension how much would it be okay of only 33 answers so far uh 35 i'm going to give this another 10 seconds okay 10 nine eight seven six five four three two one the answer is well it's actually 13796 but when i was using this it wouldn't let me round down that small of a number so i just rounded it up by four euro to 13800 so i can see there a range of different numbers again you underestimated it hmm so on average i can see here that a lot of the numbers tended to be more so towards the left hand side so yeah now that's the full and i i do stress that's the full state pension one thing that i do want to make a point though is that from a government point of view what they also want to do is to make sure that people who are working from home and when i say working from home i mean who are acting in a caring capacity so anyone who is in procedure care is allowance or children's allowance their PRSI contributions or their income tax contributions are frozen so that then when they may not be in employment the government still looks at that as though they are working but doing a different sort of work and then they would also be in receipt of full state pension if they need those other rules that i mentioned okay next one where do you think is the best pension system in the world so i've now told you a couple of different elements of the state pension system in ireland because the the government is a massive pension provider and a massive it it's a it's a place or the government has a role of taking money off us at various different stages investing it now we have and giving it back to us at a later stage so i'm currently paying income tax and then my dad is now in receipt of pension of a pension so that's the way in which they have to manage the money a lot of you are voting for Australia new zealand okay yeah nordics okay so i again i'm going to show you an answer now this is also partly of what a of what a an actually does well particularly one of the actuarial firms that i'm going to show you produced a report on this for 2022 i've heard seven answers okay here is what i can see so far is that we're saying eight for europe two for we'll say ireland and uk i know to be fair 14 of you 14 out of 39 so far that is round about a third about a third of you have said the nordics okay four of you saying australia and then there's other people have picked japan some of their picks the us etc okay please do keep your answers coming but what i'm going to say is just change back to your screen so i can show you the answer and the answer that i'm picking is coming from the mercer cba global institute pension index and the top three the a grade is indeed Iceland Denmark and the Netherlands so a mixture of the nordics and and europe after that then with israel finland australia the four of you there were right and norway they're the b grade be sorry b plus grade after that we have sweden singapore uk switzerland uruguay south america ireland that this is where we are new zealand chili belgium germany and after that then we go further down down the list so the answer is the nordics but as i don't know if you're aware i'm my background by the way is that i studied financial maths and economics in in any way go away with the view to going on to becoming an actuary instead of going down the road of actuary i instead went to set up my own business and as you can see um i now work with a range of different elements but one of them that i picked up on really and really backed after i did what i did was doing in college is the economics side of things so i just want to make the point that the nordics would be very high tax countries but as you can also see then there's a lot of welfare as well okay this is the last set of and this time it's a set of questions that i'm going to ask you right first of all i'm going to ask you for the answer to this one this question imagine you're 25 you're earning 30 000 euros per year you want to have 25 000 per year when you retire at the age 60 67 how much should go into your pension right now monthly so monthly think of this on a monthly basis mm 5000 okay right there's a really big difference between these two numbers 450 5100 okay four answers so far nine answers no there's okay a world of a difference here we're going from 8 000 down to 100 euro 101 get you right back on anyway we've got 20 21 answers okay now i'm going to put a link into the chat so what i'm going to ask you is all to work without waiting okay here's the way this here's the way this goes this is the pensions calculator from the pensions authority website now let me walk through the answer here to this imagine that you're 25 won't change the age you're 25 i'm earning 30 000 euros a year 30 123 i want to have 25 000 a year when i retire and i want to retire at 67 67 and i want to have 25 000 euros per year okay also i'm not the current pension scheme let's just say so the answer is you want to calculate that right now the the answer is because of course remember i am going to get the state pension as well that's that's assumed the answer is down here is that net contributions per month net being the amount of after tax pay would be 498 now whoever said 500 over here which i thought i saw 500 hmm it didn't i saw 5 000 i remember that so i think here 450 euro whoever said 450 euro was actually closest that is how much of my take okay i would need to put into a pension however in reality more than that would win because there is what's called tax relief this is where the government incentivizes you to put money into your pension it says okay if you're going to take money out at a later stage out of your pension which of course that's the intent is that you live until then then you take money out well then of course you're less at risk of the government needing to help you out more whether it might be with healthcare or other things and the more you can spend when you're retired so the government wants you to do this so it gives you tax relief and tax relief means that if you earn 498 euro you would have paid 75 euros in tax on that they instead allow you to put a whole lot into your pension pot so 573 euros in total all goes in there so as you can see here this is the way it works now that you have the pension calculator i'm going to ask you this question can you now answer the next one accurately based on the link that i put in there okay so now that you have got the pension calculator you should be able to get this all right and after that we are going straight in to our panel discussion then when i have lots of questions to push to our panel so you're 35 this time you're earning 30 000 euros per year you want to 25 000 euros per year when you're retired age 67 how much should go into your pension now eight of you have answered the answers are much much much tighter now much much much tighter now you see when you actually have a tool and that's the model that you need to talk about earlier when you actually have a tool in order to actually make this happen then you can look at this very differently because then you're not guessing there is a model that you can actually go and follow see answers are much much much tighter okay i'm going to run through this so imagine that you're 35 okay so i was going to so this time 35 that's that's the variable that i'm changing 35 earning 30 000 euros a year you want to 25 000 euros a year with the retire and now let's see let's calculate this there we go this time the next contribution of your take home is 643 euros a month and the gross amount per month that you would go in would be 743 euros less actually would be 100 euros now of course i could ask you all sorts of other questions like what would happen if you started instead at age at age 40 or age 45 or age 50 what would you do then what if you were to retire that with if you wanted a higher amount what if you want to retire earlier what if you wanted to take more risk all of those bodies is ultimately an actuarial job is to consider how you would consider that okay so i'm going to stop sharing now and we're going to pop back to the mentee at the very very end but before i do that i am now going to ask each of our three panelists to please switch on your camera so i'm going to give you a moment of that hello ale you are very welcome indeed thank you for being here with us hi guys perfect we can see you there now and i'm also going to ask you there Connor would you mind renaming as you're appearing there as Alison waltz so if you could rename their piece and clean up also you're you're very welcome indeed now just again to set the scene here uh currently now both of you of course were doing your exams over the past couple of weeks so again well done to you both for getting through there and i hope that you had a little bit of time there to get some relaxation aleen you haven't been doing that you're uh you you're through it all so i'm going to start off first question and of course please do keep the questions coming in there guys please do in the q&a session we can all see them anyway but please do keep them coming in aleen let's start to start off with you it's a question that's coming a lot of times can you tell us about the what goes on in the daily life of an actuary yeah sure um and not to give a fluffy answer but every day is different and i think it's different for every actuary as well um so maybe if i took kind of a typical week instead of a typical day because um it's probably a bit different um so i work as um an investment consultant um it's a pension plan so i'm glad pensions came up as a topic um and i suppose i have a role within our kind of market development as well so kind of building our proposition and how we bring it to clients um and then i have another role kind of within our risk governance um offering as well so i kind of have a few different roles within the one company um i suppose if i was looking at a typical week um you generally have client meetings you have obviously the work for those client meetings um that that work generally looks like things like investment strategy reviews so you know we work with pension plans and they obviously have the liabilities um that need to be met um like you just saw in in um susan's example um and really it's up to us to kind of try and come up with investment strategies that make sure that we have enough cash at retirement to pay those pensions when they fall due um so that's that's kind of a big piece of the work um that that we work on um with our clients um outside of that then there's a lot of working with um kind of different stakeholders within the company so you know you work with your clients um but there's also a lot of work internally as well so you know you work with maybe more junior actuaries on the team um who probably do a lot of the harder work and do all the nuts and bolts and the numbers bit um you know you work with more senior actuaries to get a peer review so before you would issue advice to consult to the client um you generally get um another actually to peer review it um to challenge your advice to make sure that the advice you're giving is the best possible advice um and then there's I suppose kind of beyond your team a bit of work as well so you know I work in the investment team we would generally give kind of investment updates investment insights to the wider AON team um and then as well I have that role around kind of proposition development so developing our solutions um so there's a bit of work there with people from different practices you know so um I'm on the investment side there's an actual area side to it there's an administration side to it and really trying to bring all those people together to put together a solution that we can bring to clients um and then there's probably a bit of work with kind of maybe more senior management justifying the propositions that we've built um so it's really a very dynamic role and it really depends kind of on a day-to-day basis which one you're kind of focusing on um and what's demanding your time what a super answer Elaine that is a really interesting actuarial week thank you thank you very much indeed for that I'm going to ask a smaller question to you Tina and I'm going to ask you to take a subset of what Elaine said could you tell us about an actuarial skill that you have and that you use on a daily basis so once again uh yeah there is a few I suppose but um to name one I guess is um like problem solving analytical skills like we work a lot with data and we model the data and look at like trends within the data so we look at like our frequency of claims and the severity of claims and we use this data to make projections um so I work in capital modelling and the basis of this is we have to set up like the money that we hold for the company in case of like a massive risk cap uh like a like a massive risk um where the money we have set aside and our premiums don't cover um this claim so definitely a lot of modelling work um so your problem solving or analytical skills come in to play there okay and the problem solving and the analytical it sounds like one leads to the other is that when you identify the problem then you use your analysis to definitely figure that out it's a question Connor that comes up a lot does come up in the Q in the Q&A is what subject should somebody focus on to become a successful actually could you look at this maybe from a couple of different perspectives if you're interested in it in leaving cert or on the way up towards 80 cert if you are looking at this from the point of view of college and is there anything else one can do yeah I suppose the obvious answer is always um Matt is the big one it's the foundation of the whole um profession I suppose but there definitely is other subjects which tie into it um personally myself in my own role at the minute I'm doing a lot of reporting to uh different committees and boards so communication and English skills are actually something which uh really uh really helped me out at the minute which I did not expect at all uh from this profession and there's also a few exams like that and they actually can be quite scary but they definitely I worked at in the long run um and then yeah I like you could argue business subjects like economics and that but I actually didn't do them in um leaving cert I was always more kind of um I was doing the sciencey subjects and I suppose they helped out with my maths but yeah there's like everything ties into it I suppose there's it's definitely not um it's it's not just black and white like and it's interesting all right a lot of people wouldn't connotate the English and the communication you and particularly because a lot of people deal with very complex issues and conveying those to people may or may not be technical and then something that Allison brought up there a lot is what it's like what it's like to study for the exams and I as I mentioned Conor and Tina uh just come come through that basis you come out the other side what are the challenges and the rewards of pursuing an actuarial career and how does it impact work life balance and that's a that's a tough one um so I suppose I would say the challenges um probably depend on the industry you're in um so I suppose there is huge advance in tech and you know is there fear that that takes away our jobs um but obviously somebody has to be writing the models and designing the tech and I'd like to think that you know in a consulting role there's always a there's always a value in a person standing in front of you and so I think there is value in that um I suppose in terms of what actuaries can do um I think you know all the advancements that we have only helps us to solve the problems quicker um in a lot of ways you know um you know we have these like where years ago it might have taken you you know weeks to run investment strategies you know we can do it in a couple of hours at this point you know we have these powerful tools so we get answers quicker and ultimately I think clients make decisions quicker which in an investment market is obviously really really important you know that if you're kind of replacing a trade it's in you know um at the most efficient time um so I'm not sure if that answers its Susan or yeah well I think you've given us a really important angle on us Elaine which is that as you're going through the process it can feel different to looking back on it as well but also one needs to figure out what work life balance also means them and work around us since Connor and Nina since you've just come through like studying for an exam at the same time as working etc could I ask you both for your thoughts on that as well how does that work out for you? Nina do you want to go first then Connor? Yeah like it definitely has its challenges coming up to exam time and stuff you like you you are studying and stuff after working on weekends but I think once you find the balance and like kind of make plans and schedules and to like have your time offered to meet your friends or kind of make plans the weekends like it is really manageable um and like it is a great job but like great opportunity so like it is worth it in the long run especially once you get through them so it's it's about having the long term versus the short term in mind okay okay thank you Nina what Connor what's your thoughts? Yeah it's definitely something different towards most people would be used to in terms of study having to do work having to work while studying I suppose and it's sometimes it can be difficult to switch off from one to focus on the other but most employers are very good to provide good leave and at the end of the day like you probably have a bad couple of weeks leading up to the exam but it's it definitely is mine as well and some people will have horror stories but I wouldn't read into them too much now good to hear you don't Connor okay. If anybody feel any better you completely forget about it and you can just block out that part of your life once it's done. Yeah it's going back to what Nina said again short term versus long term and Elaine one of the things that I've noticed come through there and the question is quite a bit is I like maths but I may not like algebra that was one question there that we've seen come in for example and other people saying like how do I know if it's suitable for me and how does somebody decide if the actuarial profession is the best suited for the path further and I would say if if you're a logical thinker you know removing subjects anything else if you're a logical person and you kind of like problem solving then that's it's a good review obviously you have to have a good mathematical basis but ultimately you know you're taking real world problems that actually have a real impact on people you know you're investing people's money that determines their retirement outcomes that sort of stuff I think like I find that really exciting maybe other people don't but I think it's really you know enjoyable and rewarding and so I would think that that's it you know if you like solving problems that have a real impact I think that's what I would say that's such a beautiful way of putting it you like solving problems that have a real impact there you go talk about an inspiring way to describe the profession and we've had a question that has come in which is what leading search subjects and courses did Conor and Nina do so I'm going to ask you that but I'm actually going to ask you if you didn't do that could you still or sorry not could you still we know you could how could you still be in the position that you're in today so how do we go with you first this time so what leading search subjects did you do what course did you do and then how could you have gotten here a different way yeah so I suppose I went to traditional and off route now um well first of all my leading search subjects uh as I alluded earlier I did chemistry physics uh and applied maths on top of the normal subjects uh and then I got me into the actuarial course in UCD um so that's obviously highly focused on uh it's the course itself actually um it's a bit broader than the name suggests the name is actuarial and financial studies but like I'd say more than half my course a lot of people in my course haven't actually done an actuary but yeah the majority do and if I didn't do that course how could I be where I am today well I look at people that are in my exact job at the minute in like Irish life where I'm working and they didn't do uh actuarial jobs and actuarial course there's for example there's one person who was a qualified doctor decided it wasn't for them and just started up in the actuarial exams and uh so there's definitely um there's definitely many routes to it uh so I wouldn't let the course define um what you do in the end uh and Kina um yeah so I studied biology physics and accounting for my leaving sir and that led me into uh financial maths in UL so I studied maths but it wasn't as traditional so I didn't do an actuarial science degree um so by doing that I didn't get the exemptions that people usually get during the actual science degree so I kind of started my exams from scratch um and before I started I'm in AXA now for a year but before that I was in a different role in banking and so it kind of just shows that you you can like you don't have to have the background to start into it and stuff like people do come from all sorts of backgrounds um and like the exams are all there so if you start from scratch you can you still get into it and just to touch back on the point that Yvonne mentioned as well earlier is that you can actually go straight from school into a company and start studying for the exams as well it would be a different road obviously because they need to to self-train and and work in a in a different way but it can't be done and then the other thing to mention is if you have a different degree an entirely different degree like mine was similar to probably more yours Connor mine was financial maths and economics in Galway similar story to Connor half of half of our crew went on to actually half of them didn't I'm obviously part of the half that that didn't but if if I had done a degree in psychology or if I'd done a degree in veterinary I could have gone down that road again the course doesn't define your accessibility into it okay from getting into it to getting out of it are there opportunities for branching out of the actuary profession or if I could slightly maybe amend that question we heard from Yvonne there are plenty of ways to report practically our how does one do that yeah so I suppose that the getting out of it is a huge like I mean I would say you know being an actuary is a really really good basis I mean you know you have a really good background to do an awful lot of things kind of in the financial sector and so for example you know our CEO is a is an actuary and her predecessor was an actuary as well and so you know you can kind of go into that kind of wider business management and you know you can go into proposition development all that sort of stuff and I suppose I would say as well you know while I'm an actuary working in my role you don't necessarily necessarily have to be an actuary either and so I work with an awful lot of chartered financial analysts so there's lots of different ways in which you can do these jobs and both getting into them and getting out of them and I just think you know the actuarial background is it just gives you a really good basis to approach problems in general no matter what they are so yeah. Conor and Kleeney do you agree is it the basis I'm guessing your action show me that you do but do you feel that it is indeed a great basis to build your career on and and if so why Elaine has shown her reason why but maybe Kleeney I'll go to you first. Yeah it definitely is a good basis like it gives you exposure to a lot of different things and like people do branch out like people can go into like data science or the likes instead and there's there's always like different types of insurance and stuff that people can go into so you're kind of not stuck in the one as well. And Conor how do you look at it as as somebody relatively early in your career? Yeah the primary reason I went in and decided the city exams was because of how well respected it is or how well respected the skill set is and that's exactly what it is it is a skill set it's not just a job title like you'd be foolish to think that an action in 50 years time is going to be the same as an action today so it's it's constantly evolving and I think the professionals in general is very like aware of that that we do need to evolve and I suppose yeah I don't see our skill set being any less valued moving forward. Okay and on that note if you're to talk about the skill set being valued let's just also think about another recent development which is of course the more working from home we've had this this question in here from somebody who says would you say there are opportunities for working from home or are you working in the actuarial profession? Now Elena can tell about your background but it looks like Conor and Leena that's where you are right now I'm in my office at the moment so based on on that like where we know where the company is your workbook where do you spend your time working any one of you like to say that? I'm pretty split and so I kind of go into the office maybe a day or two a week but you know I don't know if anybody's guessed my accent I'm from Cork so I also travel to our Dublin office quite a bit and I suppose as well you know we're getting back to a point where you know it is really easy to have meetings online and some clients really do like it because they can just dip in and out but you know you do have a lot of pension trustees some who are member trustees and they actually still really like to meet the people and so there is a lot of going out and meeting clients and that's kind of happening more and more so there is kind of a bit more travel involved in that and but I guess on the back of that you know I think that's kind of when you build a relationship with a client you know most of the relationship building is on the way in and out of meetings not actually in the meeting so I think that's actually a valuable thing to kind of get back to. So you can but it's also a good idea to spend some time in the office or in out on site. Kleena what's your take on this? Yeah I'm about 50-50 as well I go in about two days a week and then the rest from home I don't like I don't work with clients or anything so I don't have that client facing aspect but like generally it is good to go in and you get to meet people and working I suppose when you're working in person with people it's a lot easier to learn especially as a trainee actually I'm learning from the more senior people. And there's a big difference there between what you're both saying one of course in your case Elaine your customer or client facing and Kleena you're in out but as you say you get to learn from other people and there's the learning on the job there particularly of what Yvonne was talking about earlier. Connor there is another element to the workplace though and that's the social life and the question also has come here to say are the working hours good? Can you maintain a good social life as an actuary? So what's the verdict? Yeah that's another reason why I actually looked to get into the profession is I had heard that it was possible to have a work-life balance compared to other professions maybe like I had no interest working 12 or 14-hour days it's something some stories you'd hear about other professions but yeah personally myself which as I touched on earlier there's good balance between the work and the study but then when I am looking at the more senior people in my team and I'm looking at where I could potentially be in a few years time they have a very good balance as well like there's very good culture in my organization and there's yeah long story short very good work-life balance in my situation. Elaine Connor there spoke about where he could be in a couple years time looking at a senior people however Elaine there's another thing we can look at in a couple years time and that is the advancement of technology now in in my own team we work with AI now every day and this is a very recent development I would say AI has become mainstream since chat GPT came out which is really since last Christmas. How do you see the future of the profession evolving particularly in the context of technology and automation? Yeah so I think I kind of touched on some of this earlier you know I think you make your decisions faster and better and all that good stuff and I think you know there is a piece around the AI and the chat GPT and you know that it you know it probably puts thing they probably phrase things better than I'd phrase it myself so there probably is a role for it you know this is what I want to say but this is can I say it better and so there probably is a role for it and I think you know it's it's like everything it will progress it will develop and do I think it'll I still think you will need that human override you know even if it produces something it's like anything it still needs to be proofread you still need to agree with it you know if you're putting your company stamp on it it needs to be right and so I think there is still a huge role for actuaries but maybe it's maybe there's less of the hard core number crunching less of the hardcore you know writing things but you know I think you still need to have those the tool set to kind of give your well-rounded advice you know get the message across and to clients and but yeah I think it can only be a good thing perfect okay so on that note and that sounds really positive on on that note I do want to kind of bring together the last question that wraps it all up before I ask everybody to do one last thing on Mentimeter loads of people here ask about the hours loads of people I'm and I'm getting it in all sorts of directions like isn't nine to five what are the hours like etc so we've talked about the money earlier on Yvonne spoke about that we spoke about the progression earlier on Yvonne and Sinead spoke about that Alison Kleena and Connor have all spoken about the the interaction between the exams etc the one thing that we have not touched on yet is flexibility so can I ask you your take on the hours but now and where they might be in the future so what I mean by that is air they fixed beer they love and see can they be flexible around whatever is important to you so I might start with Connor your your final word and any last piece of advice that you want to share with the audience as well yeah regards to the hours it's very flexible and especially with study most people are very reasonable about it and a lot of it just comes down to you have to plan let's say like long term plan of when you want your time off or when you want your study and then you can work your work around it if you had me but yeah I know it's I've been pleasantly surprised by the flexibility I don't mark nine five I can work eight to four I can work 10 to six I can take two hours for long someday if I need it you know my hours just cancel off I'm judged basically after work to quality my work rather than hours change change to a desk which is the way I like it and yeah I suppose that's flexibility thing right but yeah I don't have any I don't have any other real words of wisdom but I wouldn't be put off by any any stories about flexibility or anything like that I think the world has a violence in school but anyway so I do think that's less of an issue good point and well made clean yeah yeah I'd have to agree with Connor I have a lot of flexibility in mine as well where like it's not strict nine to five it's the same we could do eight four um like take long lunch or a few appointments and stuff and like my team as well are they're very easy going with your study days for your holiday um like we usually plan our study days like in like three months or so in advance of um of the exams and stuff or if you have any holidays it's grand so um it definitely is very flexible job okay so I'm particularly and I'm glad you've added in the elements of holidays as well because that also is a form of flexibility Eileen final word to you yeah I'd absolutely echo everything that Connor and Kino said you know it is very very flexible um I think we're coming off a time as well where you know we've all been locked in our houses everybody has had a dog or a child appear in the background everybody's kind of realized that everybody has a life um and you know kind of taking that time for yourself you know where before you'd be stepping out of an office and you know you might have thought oh where are they going that's kind that kind of stigma has gone it's like everybody has a life you get your job done and that's it um and they get just the time off piece um you know I think if it's planned fair enough in advance it can be very flexible like you know in the last years I've taken a full month off I've gone to Australia New Zealand I got married last year I took six weeks off you know you can you can do it um it just needs to be budgeted for um so it is yeah really something I'd recommend well if there was ever a profession that could long-term plan it's actually so on that note thank you all all three of you sincerely uh for your time for your wisdom for your insights for your honesty and also indeed for the preparation and the delivery of everything that that you've said here tonight so thank you very very much indeed to all three of you so now on that note I am going to ask for one last thing and that is where I'm now going to ask everyone to pop back on to the link pop back onto my meter I've just put the link there back into the chest and we are going to now briefly ask you for your feedback so we simply want to ask you as you can see there now we simply want to ask you how was your experience so a couple of questions in there that will very much help us but also help you and the reason we do this is it's something that I'm a great believer in and I know that the people and the teams that I work with were great believers in is that if you just take a moment to think about what did I learn from this what can I take away from this what can I implement from this that afternoon can really lock in the learnings and I'm very fortunate I've gotten to work with the Society of Actresses now for some time in various different capacities and just to be able to take a moment to think about what did you learn what was your experience of it like I say it'll be both valuable to you and to us so I'm just going to give you a couple of moments to do that now again you'll also see the numbers here that are coming in and right now we are I'm seeing five so far I'm going to pop on over here and take a quick look at the questions that have come in again there's been a range of them and I know Elaine is still typing answers there you have been an amazingly interactive audience you really really really have all there's so much questions that you've sent into us so many answers as well all of the data points as we recall them or data points that have come in as well through the Mentimeter through using the calculator and tightening up your answers through your expectations as well for the life expectancies to comparing the pension system in Ireland and others to looking at the full state pension that we really have wanted to design an experience for you all here this evening where you could truly truly truly think like Actress and I'm just struck by how many of you are asking questions that have a very real and practical nature like what you might want to study or like the practicality of what it's like to work in that specific job etc all of those things really matter and they help people make decisions when it's about choosing your leaving certain subjects or choosing your course or choosing an apprenticeship or choosing a pathway that that you might plot either in general or for now so so that yeah as you as you might look forward now I'm going to leave leave that that sheet open there on on that form so we're going to be hearing hearing your thoughts in there over the next while to bring tonight to a close I want to first of all point out that we have been recording the session it is going to be shared with you we will be following up with an email with you also as well so you will be able to go back and take a look at all of those please do reach out to the Society of Actress register for the mailing list if any of you ticked that you wanted to be part of the mailing list when you registered for tonight's webinar your your details will automatically go into the newsletter there and as a result you will be in receipt of the elements that happen in the Society of Actress in Ireland also of course you can follow them on Twitter follow them in LinkedIn follow them wherever you are participating on social media we can always of course make sure that that and sorry not that we make sure they make sure as well that there's lots and lots of updates there it is a very lively society there's loads of ways of getting involved as you go on and you progress through the profession and also of course as some of you may know I'm very grateful to say that I work with the Society of Actress to lead their transition your work experience program so that's in plan our TY program for this year has already happened both of them but we're planning lots more again to happen in the academic year of 23-24 now I can see that the feedback is still coming in here which is brilliant and we're delighted to have that but on that note I'm going to bring tonight's proceedings to a close thank you so much indeed to every single one of you who've been here thank you to Yvonne thank you to Shanae thank you to Allison thank you to Connor thank you to Lena thank you to Elaine and I also want to give a shout out as well to Caroline Chloe and Eva who are in the background taking care of everything as well as a wide variety of other people who have made tonight happen so on that note thank you all for being here every best wish from me Susan Hayes Colleton I wish you all the very best please do keep in touch we'll see you again soon bye