General Insurance (Property and Casualty)

This blog has focused strictly on the Society of Actuaries’ Fellowship track, but the SOA’s most recent FSA has started to infringe upon another credentialing agency: The Casualty Actuary Society (CAS). CAS focuses strictly on Property and Casualty, whereas SOA has historically credentialed life, health, and pension until about four years ago when it introduced the General Insurance Track. The SOA intends for the General Insurance path to compete with CAS’s FCAS in the property and casualty actuarial job market, but the track has gained the respect and accreditation of neither the companies nor the candidates it desires.

Nevertheless, the General Insurance FSA, just like the other FSAs and the FCAS, offers candidates careers in insurance and consulting primarily, with increased opportunities in reinsurance (insuring insurance companies). Exit opportunities and compensation in reinsurance mirror typical insurance, but many find the more macro-scale work more engaging. Regardless of path, property and casualty actuaries tend to have a challenging work-place due to the variable time-frame; car insurance for example: auto actuaries know the price (or price range) the company will pay given the upper price bound of the car’s value, but they do not know when, or even if, an insured will have an accident.

In both consulting and insurance, Property and Casualty actuaries follow a very normalized progression from analyst to profit sharer (either partner or vice-president, respectively). This path generally consists of varying levels of associate, manager, and director between these extremes, but every level of the path, especially with a focus on P&C, has adequate compensation.

Recently, property and casualty has experienced an increase in average salary relative to other actuarial fields, seen by the relative compensation of Liberty Mutual’s (whose pay structure mirrors many other P&C firms) senior analysts (above). Further, the effective value (NPV) of a P&C actuary’s career earnings lie over a million dollars above the average actuary, with the former’s gross earnings nearly two million dollars greater than the average actuary. Despite entry level P&C associates making $2000 less than the average actuary, the long-term salary growth and accumulation differentiates the Property and Casualty route salary-wise.

To achieve this spectacular compensation and challenging work-environment, candidates previously had to attain an FCAS, but can now pursue the SOA’s General Insurance track. Achieving this FSA requires the standard four modules and professionalism course, in addition to four exams (one more than all other tracks). Luckily, the additional exam (Introduction to general insurance) only lasts 1.5 hours and consists solely of multiple choice opposed to the other three 4-5 hour written exams. All exams in this track prepare candidates for all areas of insurance, but specifically pricing and regulation within property and casualty.