Building Relationships With Actuarial Science Programs

When there is a strong relationship between the universities educating future actuaries and the companies looking to hire actuarial talent, it is a win-win-win situation—the universities, companies and, ultimately, the students all benefit. These strong relationships with actuarial science programs create a beneficial and sustainable cycle. University students who are well informed about and well prepared for an actuarial career provide a consistent talent pool for companies, which can lead to corporate recognition of the university’s academic program. This, in turn, generates strong interest from prospective students by way of demonstrated positive student outcomes.

In our experience, all universities that are educating actuarial students can benefit from building relationships with companies to help ensure they continue to properly prepare students for the ultimate goal: landing an actuarial job.

Actuarial Science Program Objectives

In our experience, one goal for an actuarial science program is to prepare students for an entry-level actuarial job. Having relationships with the companies that hire entry-level actuarial talent is beneficial to ensuring that the university program continues to properly prepare students. Ensuring that the curriculum provides content that builds the knowledge needed to pass the early professional actuarial exams generally is a core element. But beyond the foundational actuarial knowledge, there are other elements of college education that are equally, if not more, important: communication skills, business acumen and presence, ability to process information and manage ambiguity, programming skills and more.

However, as we’ve seen, there is a limit to the number of credits that a university can require in any program, and there is also a limit to a student’s capacity to participate in activities. By engaging with companies, universities identify key elements to incorporate into their curriculum as well as provide guidance to students regarding what types of extracurricular activities and elective coursework will be beneficial for the student’s development.

Taking the actuarial program at Penn State as an example, faculty members meet annually with corporate contacts in conjunction with an annual career fair. During this meeting, updates on the current activities of the program are given, and the faculty actively solicits feedback from corporate partners regarding what trends they are seeing to learn how to better promote the skills and knowledge needed to address new challenges and technology innovations.

In addition to educating students to have the necessary technical skills, we believe it’s critical to provide students with a good background about the actuarial career in general to help each student determine whether the career is a good fit. Companies invest both time and money in new hires through job training and actuarial exam support, so there is a benefit to also investing in educating students about the profession to increase the likelihood that they are selecting a career that they will likely stick with, providing the hiring company with a good return on investment.

Opportunities Outside the Classroom

We believe providing students with opportunities beyond the classroom to engage with companies early in their college education is a great way for students to learn more about the profession. This allows them to get a sense of what day-to-day actuarial work entails, including the variety of opportunities available. The ability to interact with actuaries, hear about their work and get tips for navigating the career path are all invaluable for students to determine if the career is right for them.

At Penn State, as an example, we collaborate with companies to provide a variety of events:

• Information sessions in advance of the career fair allow students to be better informed about a particular company and its actuarial opportunities.
• Insurance or actuarial case competitions expose students to the types of business problems actuaries address and allow them to apply their critical-thinking skills.
• Field trips give students the opportunity to be on-site and observe a day in the life of an actuary.

We think one of the best ways for a student to preview the actuarial career is via an actuarial internship. This is also a great way for companies to test out whether a particular student is a good fit for them. Students get a chance to experience actuarial work, and it’s an excellent opportunity to start building their professional network by interacting with actuaries at different experience levels. One efficient way to connect students to internships is through a university–company relationship. Companies, we’ve witnessed, usually get a robust targeted application pool through this avenue.

Building Partnerships for the Future

How do we go about building stronger, broader and more sustainable relationships between universities and companies? Universities can do this by keeping in contact with their actuarial students after graduation. The network of actuarial alumni is a great way to foster mentorships with current actuarial students in the university’s program. Establishing relationships with actuarial recruiters who come to the university career fairs is also a good way to build connections.

At Penn State, we are fortunate to have a strong network of actuarial alumni. Each September, we host our actuarial career fair on campus. It’s common for the companies that attend to send their Penn State actuarial alumni to help recruit the next cohort of actuarial talent for both internships and full-time positions. This is a great opportunity for our actuarial students as they are exposed to a variety of actuarial job opportunities across life, health, property and casualty, and reinsurance fields, as well as consulting opportunities.

For smaller actuarial programs that do not have the scale or capacity to support a dedicated career fair, it still may be possible to organize information sessions with specific companies to expose students to career opportunities and potentially provide a direct channel for them to apply for internship and full-time opportunities.

A Role for Individual Actuaries

You may be wondering if there is a role for you in fostering relationships from the corporate side. If you are not already connected with your alma mater, you could reach out to see if there are mentorship programs to join; or consider hosting a career information session with a math, statistics or actuarial science club on campus.

Not sure how to go about connecting? Try Googling {your university} {math/stat/actuarial science} {club/major}. More likely than not, your university has some type of club for math or statistics—even if it doesn’t have a dedicated actuarial program—and this search will help you obtain contact information for the club’s officers.

If your university has an actuarial science program—or some actuarial coursework within a math or statistics degree program—your Google search likely will turn up information regarding the program, and you likely will be able to find contact information for the person at the university who oversees that program. We can say, personally, that we are always happy to hear from our alumni and even happier to hear from those who are interested in engaging with students.

Another alternative to reaching out to your alma mater is to contact your company’s HR department to find out (if you don’t already know) which universities your company recruits most heavily from. Strengthening the engagement relationship with schools where your company is recruiting already is a great way to invest in your company by enhancing the knowledge of prospective recruits.

Working together, we can all play a part in ensuring a continued pipeline of actuarial talent.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries or the respective authors’ employers.

Copyright © 2024 by the Society of Actuaries, Chicago, Illinois.