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Happy 2017 everyone!! How's everyone feeling?
KMPG 🐠 Senior Associate, NYC
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I'm curious what the average salary is for an Associate Agent. I'm licensed & do everything after the sale is made as well as refer new business. I have 14 years in the industry but have been at the current company less than a year, so I know that plays a part as well. Anyone in a like-position by chance?State Farm Allstate Travelers
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The university level courses only help with the foundational knowledge but are never intensive enough to pass the SOA exams with solely, so if you went back for a degree, you would essentially be doing both, the 4 year degree and the self-study to pass the exams. It will take you 1-2 years just to get the preliminary coursework done to challenge the first exam. For example, you’ll need calculus and statistics courses as prerequisites to the courses that correspond to exams FM and P, which would be probability 1 and 2 in a lot of universities - 2 separate courses for 1 actuarial exam. Similarly for FM, you’ll take a financial mathematics course or something along those lines - for me it was called interest theory. Then you can challenge FM.
If I were you - save yourself the trouble and just self study since you’d need to anyway. How old are you? Keep in mind there will be 6 preliminary exams until you receive your ASA and then 4 fellowship exams until you get your FSA. 10 exams and some coursework later and you can be qualified. It’s a long haul.
Thank you so much for this! I will look into these things
Definitely self study and not going back to school assuming you have enough math knowledge to get through the exams.
On other note, I would recommend getting into data science instead - it doesn't require passing exams (many actuaries work in data science), exams are not easy to get through and take a toll on work life balance for a few years.
If you can’t pass the exams without going to university then you should look for a different career.
I know actuaries deal with a lot of nuances, but how confident are you that AI isn’t going to take this work? Because it’s probabilities right? It’s risk? For people like accountants and actuaries and data scientists, AI would be right up all those alleys in my viewpoint.
It’s a lot of forecasting and judgment. Any data model can make a forecast, but you need a human to blame (and explain the results and thought process) when the forecast is wrong.
AI is potentially coming for everyone I guess, but it’s doing a shitty job in the use cases I’ve seen so far (e.g., customer service). Actuarial work will be the last thing it replaces in the white collar world.
Each exam will be 3-4 months of intensive prep, so 10 exams is 40 months of your life assuming you pass 100% of the time which very few do considering the pass rates are around 35-50%.