Finance · Role
Actuary
An actuary uses mathematics and statistics to estimate the likelihood and cost of future events such as deaths, accidents, or natural disasters. This role appears mainly at insurers and pension funds.
In this role you might model the mortality risk of a pension portfolio, calculate the premium for an insurance product, or assess whether a fund holds enough capital to cover future claims.
The goal of an actuary is to put a number on uncertainty. Insurers and pension funds make long-term financial commitments, and they need to know whether they have enough money to meet those commitments. Actuaries provide that answer.
Most of the daily work involves building and updating models that estimate future costs or liabilities. You work with large datasets on claims, deaths, or financial returns, and you use statistical methods to turn that data into projections. A significant part of the job is also communicating results to management, regulators, or auditors, and explaining the assumptions behind the numbers.
The main tools are Excel and R or Python for modelling and data analysis. Actuarial software like Prophet is used at some insurers for life insurance modelling. SQL is useful for working with large claims or policy datasets. Most actuaries also work toward a professional qualification, such as those offered by the Royal Dutch Actuarial Association (Koninklijk Actuarieel Genootschap).
The role is most common at life and non-life insurers, pension funds, and reinsurers. In the Netherlands, De Nederlandsche Bank also employs actuaries to supervise the financial health of insurers and pension funds. The work is technical and detail-oriented. It connects closely to the Risk Manager role, which covers a broader set of financial risks, and to quantitative roles in asset management where similar modelling skills apply.
Companies
Organisations where econometrics graduates typically work as Actuary.
Sprenkels is marktleider in het vormgeven van het pensioen van de toekomst.
Triple A - Risk Finance is een onafhankelijk en innovatief consultancybedrijf gespecialiseerd op het gebied van actuariaat en risicomanagement.
The Actuarial Practice at Oliver Wyman (OWA) provides high-end actuarial advisory services covering a broad range of insurance and actuarial topics including insurance M&A, reinsurance, financial risk modelling, and regulatory advice.