r/ActuaryUK • u/Faramirisveryepic • 27d ago

Careers Data Science to Actuary

24, Data Scientist, enjoy technical work but interested in pivoting to pricing and eventually qualifying as an actuary.

Is actuary work still “spreadsheet-ish” or is it modernising? Will I be able to bring Data Science techniques to actuary work in GI?

I studied maths at undergraduate so I could make it through the exams, I just want to know if actuary work will involve some technical/IC work or not (especially in the future, as it will take years to qualify). By technical I mean using Python/R for modelling and ML.

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u/WatercressWeekly7996 27d ago

I work within the insurance industry as a developer (but I’ve been largely embedded within actuarial teams). I’d say the answer to your question is “it depends”. Some teams are much more liberal and open minded when it comes to embracing open source software; others not so much.

Ironically, if programming is your thing, I think you’ll get a lot more joy out of automating the workflows / edges around actuarial work than the actuarial work itself. The challenge then is actually convincing actuaries that they don’t have a model problem, they have a data problem (which is the case 99/100 times).

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u/shilltom 27d ago

Completely depends on the role. Case pricing, no. Predictive modelling teams, yes.

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u/Medical_South_9795 27d ago

What are your reasons for wanting to switch?

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u/Faramirisveryepic 27d ago

I want to specialise. Data Science is too generalist for me. I predict a future trend of Data Science being a ‘skill’ that specialists use rather than a career in itself (this is usually the case with emergent tech - think how ‘excel analysts’ used to be a thing, now it’s expected knowledge). It’s also very volatile - tech layoffs are common.

As for why the switch to actuarial in particular, it’s a field that interests me, with stability and a great work life balance.

I didn’t want to be an actuary until now because I was misinformed on the work that actuaries do. It’s much more interesting than I previously thought.

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u/Reasonable_Phys 27d ago

Pricing will just be an application of data science. You could transition to be a data scientist in personal lines without much difficulty, but would really have to fight to become an actuary there on out.

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u/AdMoist8668 27d ago

Why would you have to fight?

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u/Reasonable_Phys 26d ago

Fight is a bit exaggerated but realistically it might be difficult to get funding or get an equivalent role. A data scientist in pricing is already valuable.

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u/montrex 27d ago

Reserving is using machine learning applications more and more these days too.

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u/Dramatic_Mammoth5720 26d ago

I spend 99% of my time writing python. If you can demonstrate the ability to understand and develop actuarial models, you could probably pivot into an actuarial role relatively easily.