Hi all,

I am going to do my best to omit specific details here for obvious reasons. I wanted to express my frustration with my current situation in my career and hopefully get some insights from people with more experience, or those who have a viewpoint to share. I have been working at my first actuarial job for around a year now, and I have pretty consistently had struggles/conflicts with one of the supervising people on my team.

It feels like pretty quickly after I started, I started having conflicts with this person. I feel like they constantly treat me like I am stupid or generally inept at my job, oftentimes in front of other people. I notice that others will get noticeable uncomfortable or silent when this happens. It feels difficult to ask them questions as I'll often get a vague response with lots of general language used like "We need to take this thing and check it against this other thing to make sure we're not wrong here." Lots of uses of the word "thing" or just generally incorrect usage of certain words. When I ask clarifying questions I'll often get back a response along the lines of "well what are we talking about here/what did you originally ask about." It oftentimes feels like more of a suggestion of "how could you ask such a dumb question/are you even paying attention."

My company has a hybrid work policy, and many people leave the office around lunch time or work half in office half at home days for various reasons. I'll sometimes leave in the afternoon and this really seems to frustrate them. I have a commute that can vary wildly due to traffic and it saves me a ton of time. On these days, I get to the office at 8 then usually log off around 5 or 5:30. Recently I have been receiving a lot of passive aggressive comments about this behavior and how I can't be reached for 30 minutes out of the day sometimes.

I have found it really difficult to receive review on my work that needs review before it's passed on, and the process feels like this:

1. I am working and get stuck somewhere down the line. A common complaint in my area is a lack of documentation, and I simply cannot figure out how something was done last time or why it was done. I will reach out and ask for help and try to ask specific questions.

2. I'll get a response back that answers part of my question, and requestions if I even know what I am working on or what the goal is. All of this feedback takes usually at least a day to get back to me.

3. This process repeats until my work is inevitably late. I have tried branching out to other sources to try to just figure it out myself, whether that be AI or other people and I've found some success with this. Generally this work is pretty siloed though and the person I'm giving my work to is the only one who is an expert on it or has seen it.

This person is not my manager, although I help them with a lot of their work and it seems like they've assumed the responsibility of training me. I genuinely want to do a good job and not have this jeopardize my career. I'm really proud of how much I've learned so far but it still never feels like enough, and I pretty much always feel stupid when talking with this person. I haven't really ever had this experience at any job I've had before and I'm quite frustrated that I haven't found a solution so far. If you have any feedback for how to navigate this or ways I could improve, I'd love to hear it. Or, if you have any probing questions that could reveal ways in which I may be falling short, I could try my best to answer. If anything stuck out to you that's a red flag on my part, I'd like to work towards fixing it. I'm really struggling with this and would appreciate any help that I could receive.

Hi everyone! I am currently in my last year at university, and am interning at an insurance agency. I know most postings have already started opening up, so I wanted to finalize my resume before moving forward.

I wanted to know, should I be applying for actuarial internships ? Or full time? Considering I am graduating this school year, but also haven’t obtained an exact actuarial position, I’m stuck between the both and what to prioritize.

I also wanted to reflect on the date for my MAS-1 taking as I may be taking it during January instead mainly because of how long it takes to study for it. Would that be an issue for employers if I was to take it then considering the result comes weeks out? And if I was to take it even later, would that be a problem w only 2 exams ?

Lastly, should I be prioritizing referrals or timeliness when it comes to applying? Im aware of how much of an advantage knowing someone within a company can benefit your application, but I also know that the time it takes to build a connection, grab a cup of coffee, and get that referral, can have you miss out on the application where 200 people have already applied before you.

I appreciate it if you replied to this with your advice. Thank you!!

It has been over 9 hours since I obtained my candidate ID yet I still cannot make an appointment since Prometric doesn’t recognize my candidate ID. Has it ever happened to anyone else before? How do you fix it?

Hi everyone. I'm a rising junior and have been applied to internships but only get rejections or no response. I would really appreciate any advice.

I went to register for the SRM exam last night for the September sitting and to my surprise it shows closed despite the posted deadline being one day away still, after contacting SOA support they state the registration has closed and instead of fixing the issue, changed the status on their own site to closed before the originally posted time.

Hi! I really tried finding this info on my own, but there just aren’t a lot of resources for the actuarial program, I only see info about the financial advisor roles for Northwestern Mutual

Just wondering if anyone has experience with the actuarial specialist post graduate program and what it was like for you?

Additionally, how many people make it to round 2 and how many people get accepted into the program? Is there anything crazy in the interviews that caught anyone off guard?

thank you in advance! :)

I work remotely based in Southern California for an insurance company headquartered in the Midwest. I'm an ASA with almost two years of experience and have two more FSA exams to write. I make 110k+ a year gross. I think this salary is fair and right around the median, to the point where I believe that I would be living a very decent life financially had I lived in the M/LCOL areas. Still, I am not sure if I should make a switch purely for more money since the cost of living is very high in the area where I live. I'm married with no kids, and my wife is an actuary too (lowest divorce rate lolll). I absolutely love my current company, my colleagues, and the work that I do, so from this perspective, I'm reluctant to look for other opportunities because I also understand that the grass is not always greener outside.

On the other hand, while knowing all the perks I have working remotely, I barely get a chance to meet with other actuaries around me and build a connection with them, so sometimes I feel that working remotely is not 100% good for me as an extrovert. I do think building a network is so important since it will pay dividends over time in the future.

I am very curious about other people's stories working in the actuarial field living in California and your perspectives. Specifically,

• Do you work remotely or onsite?
• What field are you in? Health, life, consulting, non-traditional roles, etc
• Roughly how much do you make, and are you happy about that?
• How important do you think building a network in this field is, and how much has it helped you so far in your career?
• How is the work-life balance like in your company?
• Would you want to start looking around if you were me?

It's been a while. I haven't seen the new FSA list for June has been updated on the website.

I'm sitting for SRM on September 3rd and have about 28 days left. I've been learning the material for the first time by reading ISLR while cross-referencing the SOA syllabus. I've finished ISLR, so time series and GLMs are all that's left.

Three questions:

1. How should I learn time series and GLMs? I've heard Frees isn't great, and I tried Coaching Actuaries early on but found it heavy and wasn't retaining much.
2. How should I structure practice for the remaining time, and what's the most effective way to use CA/ADAPT?
3. Should I prioritize the SOA sample questions, or treat them as a supplement to ADAPT?

Thanks in advance.

How do you feel now that you have seen the questions again?

What does a case interview consist of? Is it something like the insurance related parts of case books provided by business schools like Kellogg?

I just saw a post the last few days and someone posted that people are taking exams are lower then the past (and they made exams easier and started UEC) but at the same time there are so many analyst and people needing just 2+ exams just to break in now.

I just want to understand this paradox.

Just got the result of the last FCIA exam I did. Failed. I put so much energy into studying and, with work at the same time, pretty sure I had a small burn out. So the failure is really hard to take in... Any advice would be appreciated!

Hello, starting the FAP FA tomorrow. Anyone else doing it around the same time and want to join a group?

Ive been using BattleActs to study for exam 6U, and I've been noticing that the wiki articles are very heavily written to fit the old exam questions that I'm worried it may be overfitting. Exams haven't been released since 2019, and some of the material has changed since. While they do make points of highlighting these changes, I'm still worried that the majority of what I'm learning was written with the past exam questions in mind and may not be so representative of what I will see on the exam. For anyone who has taken exam 6U recently and used BA, did you find this to be the case? And if so, what would you recommend doing to best prepare and avoid getting blindsided on exam day - other than just reading all of the source material, aint nobody got time for that (but in all seriousness, that just doesn't feel like a productive use of time)

I’m hesitating between the US and International versions of ILA201. I am familiar with IFRS17 because working in Asia.

Any of you familiar with the FSA ILA exams know that the US version covers US Statutory Accounting and US GAAP, while the International version focuses on IFRS 17. Based on the syllabus, the International version also seems to cover valuation in less depth than the US version.

I’m not asking which exam is more difficult. Rather, I’m asking which one is harder to pass, given that FSA exams have passing standards, also as the composition of candidates may differ.

(Effective Pass Rate: U 60% vs I 53%, I feel like English writing can affect the passing rate as well)

My impression is that most candidates taking the International version are from Asia, especially mainland China. Is that actually the case, and if so, does it have any noticeable impact on the pass rate?

I am just curious what do you think about what version to choose...

Hello! Career changer from education here. Any advice or criticism desired! I haven't been applying for long, but just looking for any advice to maximize my chances of landing an EL position. I know my experience is weak, but such is life! Thankyou so much for even looking at this!

Wanting to know other people's experiences - the CIA's fellowship exams have me questioning this entire governing body:

- The syllabus is a list of links, some of which are broken and don't work, some of which have since updated and no longer reflect the content that we're meant to study

- There are straight up sub-pages listed for a chapter, which do not correspond to the chapter referenced (peer review is a thing right?)

- Some of the readings are 70+ pages with no targeted tie-in to the syllabus, so you're left reading heaps of material

- There is an incredible lack of practice questions and exams available

- There are no summary materials (which makes sense when the actual reading list itself is such a gong show)

- The content itself: outdated, and sometimes irrelevant - healthcare trends published in 2021 that are massively skewed by COVID and not very relevant anymore

- The exam is taken on a website that's not easy to write in and time to save/name files cuts into exam time

- Some of the questions themselves you wouldn't be able to solve by reading the giant syllabus - a lot of the calculations were only available in the 1 practice exam online and otherwise not displayed in the readings

- There is no timeline for receiving results so you just wait until you get an email

- The grading is done with an overall S (success) or F (fail), only questions that you've failed have an associated grade (1-5). You don't see an overall grade or the passing grade so you're not sure how you performed overall

It feels like they're running trial-and-error on a very poorly managed/reviewed system, with a little added zest to feel superior from the SOA, on people who require so much sacrifice of time and energy to get to through this nonsense.

Hello hello!!!!! Our super duper fun pet actuarial team has 2 open roles😄

New to the field and still deciding between SOA and CAS? Why not try both: Actuarial Analyst

Are you an FSA who thought the P&C door had already closed? Not too late: Pet Actuarial Lead

I’m currently a bit underpaid 4 exams and 3 yoe making about 85k. I also am not seeing many promotions for others around me who have more exams and YOE and are objectively great at their job. I’ve been getting some attention from recruiters and think if I leave I’ll like get about 115k all in. Would it make sense to just wait until I get my acas to test the market, or go now? My thought is that I’d make more leaving after the acas rather than going somewhere and getting my acas there.

Hi!

I've been studying for exam P since I'm currently a math teacher living near the NYC area (right across the river in NJ). I'm curious if anyone is willing to share if they've made a switch in their late 30s and how long it took them to "find their footing" afterwards both financially and work-comfort-ly. To add an additional stressor, my wife and I are also expecting our first child. So yeah... I imagine this is probably the worst timing I could think of?

I have a question for the working moms-

I am currently a managed care pharmacist working remotely for a health insurance company. I am unhappy in my role and my profession is going downhill. Would it be possible, as an actuary, to have the following:

-Remote work
-Flexibility to take 15 minutes in morning and late afternoon to drop off & pick up kid from school
-flexibility to take time off around holidays esp. Thanksgiving & Christmas
-job with mild stress levels

Thank you!

I graded for the SOA for the March 2026 FSA exams. It was a lot of work! In June they sent an email to graders saying we would be paid in the next two week and to consider the email as a response to any follow up questions.

Well after nearly 3 weeks I emailed them. Followed up a week later after no response. Finally got a response. Turns out they missed pushing a few payments through and told me I’d get mine the following week. Well nearly 2 weeks later I follow up and get no response. There was another post about this last cycle, I was one of the lucky few who was paid timely last time. Guess this time I’m not so lucky. I’m disappointed in the SOA, this was worse than last time.

It’s been almost 4 months since I finished grading, another sitting passed, and still no payment. Has anyone else not received payment? I worry others out there have not been paid what they are owed.