CFA L3, Actuary opportunity, take or not?

[daphnefrance]

Hi everybody, I am a chinese in France. I am taking the CFA L3 and wondering the career shifting. I’ve done my MSc in Finance in a top 10 europeen bussiness school and began the first job at 2010 as a financial controller, in a big europeen insurance company. I want to go into the AM, but there is just few offer at the moment in France, and CFA is not that popular in France as in US or in UK. In my company, I may have the opportunity to work as actuary cos there are some vacancies. Is that a good choice if I work 2-3 yrs as actuary and than change to AM as analyst when economic go better? Anybody could give me some advise or share your experience?

[itera]

Why do youthink being an actuary will help transition you to asset management?

[JonnyDee]

The actuarial route might help transition to AM if you want to specialize in pensions or long fixed income.

[daphnefrance]

That’s what I plan to do as well. I am looking to enter to the life product actuary. Expecting that I could go to some pension funds jobs later.

I also kwon several people have this kind of career path. Actuary->Analyst or Actuary-> Assets Liabilities Management-> PM. But they maybe just pass by the networking?

[JonnyDee]

That doesn’t seem like the most direct route to being a PM, but being an actuary is a respectable profession during the interim.

[ohai]

I don’t think an actuary job is likely to result in an asset management job later (why would it?). However, you should take the job if it’s better than what you are currently doing.

[Millview]

There are loads of actuaries in asset management. However, they are mostly qualified actuaries. Working in actuarial departments these days does not necessarily require the individuals to be qualified actuaries - most is model driven with systems like Prophet and Moses. If you intend to go down the route you are thinking of, I would definitely be thinking of doing the actuarial qualifications. As an aside, one of the growth areas in asset management in China is likely to be actuarial work. There are so few relative to the size of the insurance industry currently and expected growth of insurance penetration that actuaries are likely to be in massive demand there over the next couple of decades.

[bchad]

@JonnyDee

That doesn’t seem like the most direct route to being a PM, but being an actuary is a respectable profession during the interim.

I agree with this.

@Millview

There are loads of actuaries in asset management. However, they are mostly qualified actuaries. Working in actuarial departments these days does not necessarily require the individuals to be qualified actuaries - most is model driven with systems like Prophet and Moses. If you intend to go down the route you are thinking of, I would definitely be thinking of doing the actuarial qualifications. As an aside, one of the growth areas in asset management in China is likely to be actuarial work. There are so few relative to the size of the insurance industry currently and expected growth of insurance penetration that actuaries are likely to be in massive demand there over the next couple of decades.

And I agree with this too.