What's your job about?
I am currently an Actuarial Graduate rotating through the actuarial functions at TAL, one of the largest life insurers in Australia.
My first rotation in the graduate program is in Group Pricing, in a team for one of our cornerstone clients. The particular project that I have been working on over the last six months is our Annual Pricing Review, whereby – broadly speaking – we review the contract’s past year’s experience, and put forward the next year’s rate changes after accounting for future adjustments. My role in the team has spanned verifying data, setting new discount rate assumptions, evaluating our membership profile, deriving Covid-19 adjustments, and more. Throughout the process, we communicate closely with our client, our reinsurer, and our internal governance teams. On top of this, we also receive various requests from other teams to help with ongoing initiatives.
What's your background?
I was born overseas and moved to Brisbane when I was eight.
After high school, I moved to Melbourne to do a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Melbourne. During my time at university, I worked part-time at a U.S.-based general consulting firm in my second year, and then I interned at AIA Australia in Retail Pricing in my final year.
I enjoyed life insurance when I was interning at AIA, so naturally, I applied to the TAL graduate program. I started at TAL in February 2022, and have loved it since.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes and no. It is fairly easy to transition if you’ve come from a background similar to actuarial (e.g. data analytics), else it might be a while until everything’s clear.
As an analyst, technical knowledge will be important, but not more important than your ability to pick things up quickly and your attention to detail. It is also important to be able to communicate efficiently and confidently.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
In general, I enjoy actuarial for its value in technical excellence and its blend with the business context.
From my first rotation, I’ve found that I love the last stretch of a project – when I’ve gained an understanding of all of our assumptions and outputs, and where the focus would be on finalising and communicating the results. You see the value of what you’ve completed then.
What are the limitations of your job?
I bared a lot of responsibility during my first rotation; as a result of this responsibility, I’ve gained a much broader and more in-depth understanding of pricing than I could have ever expected. Nevertheless, I’ve never had to work on a weekend, and my team is always available to help if I’m too busy.
The biggest limitation of any entry-level actuarial position would be your limited technical understanding. There’s only so much that can be learned from university, and the application in the real world is often quite different. Nonetheless, everyone’s always happy to help here at TAL if you have a question, so rest assured!
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