My Actuary Salary - YouTube

if you've started looking into the actuarial profession you might not know

what an actuary is you might not understand what an actuary really does but

you've definitely read at least one article that says that being an actuary

is a high-paying career now unfortunately I'm not a consulting

company and I do not administer actuarial salary surveys although those

do exist you can just easily Google that by searching actuary salary survey but I

am a working actuary and I do know how much I get paid so today I thought that

we could talk about what goes into determining an actuary salary how I got

to my current salary and other compensation slash benefits that I

received as part of my work as an actuary but first a quickie recap of

where I am in my actuarial journey as it relates to how much I'm getting paid I'm

a fellow of the casualty actuarial Society I have three years of work

experience a bachelor's degree in actuarial mathematics I work for a large

property and casualty insurer in Toronto Canada one of the biggest things that

will determine your actuary salary is not actuary specific and that is the

market conditions in your city how competitive is the market what are other

people getting paid in that city are there a lot of jobs are there a few jobs

are there are a lot of people looking or there are a few people looking what's

cost of living like in that city personally I started my career in the

Montreal office of the company that I work for then I switched to a different

team while maintaining the same job position in the Toronto office and my

salary did go up significantly just because of the difference in cost of

living between Montreal and Toronto another big thing that's gonna impact

your salary is how well you negotiate it I've heard anecdotally that your biggest

salary negotiation power comes when you're starting a new job so either

starting entry-level or switching jobs I say anecdotally

because I have not switched jobs I have only entered the job market as an

entry-level employee and I'm still at my entry-level job title and basically when

they made me my job offer I tried to negotiate by essentially being like

maybe you should offer me more money no we shouldn't aight cool okay

that didn't work a salary determining factor that is very actuary-specific is

the number of exams that you have passed / the titles that you hold someone who

has passed four actuarial exams should in theory be making more

than someone at the same company who has passed two actuarial exams

someone who has their FSA or FCAS should be making more money than someone

who is in an ASA or ACAS all else being equal different companies do this in

different ways some companies will give you a bonus if you pass your exam some

companies will give you a salary increase in the form of a fixed dollar

amount maybe a thousand dollar increase maybe a five thousand dollar increase

depends on the exam some companies will give you a percent increase two percent

five percent something like that personally I would get a combination of

a bonus and a percent increase with every exam that I passed another reason

that your salary might go up is because your a job title like I mentioned I am

at my entry-level job position my job title is "actuarial analyst" but when the

time comes to media promote is up that will come with both more

responsibilities more ownership of my projects and also a little bit more

money not there yet don't know how much I get annual salary increases that are

semi to reflect performance and semi to just adjust you to the cost of inflation

another big actuarial determining factor is the type of actuary that you are if you've

watched my videos you know that there are insurance actuaries and consulting

actuaries there are property and casualty actuaries life actuaries pension

actuaries investing actuaries different types of actuaries will earn different

types of salaries now again I do not run actuary salary surveys so I can only

speak anecdotally but a consulting actuary will generally be earning a

higher salary than an insurance actuary however a consulting actuary will also

probably be working way more hours to the point where an insurance actuary is

earning a lot more per hour worked anecdotally in a way that is biased

towards me given that I'm a property and casualty insurance actuary I've heard it

said that property and casualty actuaries earn more than life actuaries

but again anecdotal I wouldn't put my like actuarial certification signing on

that not that I can actually sign because I'm not you know I can't do that

but you know if I could I wouldn't it's anecdotal in the other compensation

category I earn an annual bonus this bonus is based half on

my own personal performance and half on the company's performance so the company

does well and I do well I got a very big bonus if the company does not do well

and I do not do well I get a very sad bonus but thankfully that's not happened

yet in my tiny little actuarial career span scope thing I also get your regular

benefits like health dental pension plan guys having a pension plan it's the most

grown-up thing about me like that I'm planning for retirement that is grown-up

my company also offers some weird benefits like they will give me a

certain amount of money every year to pay for a gym membership to try to you

know encourage employees to work out which is a benefit that I've never

actually used but I probably should because I need to get in shape I also

get actuary specific other compensation when I was studying for my actuarial exams

I would get other compensation in the form of paying for my study manuals

paying my exam fees and giving me study days these are huge perks because

the manuals the exam fees are not cheap and having time to study it's just such

a luxury I know people in other professions who work for companies who

just don't give them the time off to study and so they have to sort of work

around their work schedule to try to find time to study if you can find a

company that will pay you to study this like really helpful now that I'm done

with my exams my company will pay my CAS membership dues my company also

will pay for me to go to CAS conferences these are conferences put on by the

Casualty Actuarial Society to help you get your continuing education credits to

help you mingle with other actuaries just to have a good actuarial jolly old

time I don't know what their goals are but that's my get out of it the

continuing education and the mingling and the fun

leave your actuary questions in the comments down below and if you like this

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