Career suicide??

I work in a multinational insurer as a nearly qualified pricing actuary. I interviewed for a position in a much smaller insurer (commercial fleet) who until now has not had a actuarial pricing function - the commercial underwriters set the premiums. The want to change this and bring someone on board to implement more sophistcated approaches to pricing. This all sounded interesting to me until they told be they are only now starting to collect data at an individual policy level. Until now, all claims data has been in bulk (it's a long story...).

For me this rules out using GLMS or other pricing techniques that relies on linking individual claims to vehicle exposure records.

Apart from that the job and company appear great and the salary is significantly higher than what i'm currently on.

Ideally, i would stay where i am and hope that my company would match.

Not sure what to do - any help would be great!

 

Looks like you will have more flexibility, ability to be hands-on and more authority in your new role + the prospect of being able to build your team from scratch and higher pay. The downside is moving from a large company to a small company with less well defined systems. I'd see this as an opportunity rather than a constraint tbh.

 

Thanks for your feedback, I agree with your comments particularly the potential to progress and build a team. I suppose I'm just concerned that I will loose out on the technical aspect I enjoy in my current role i.e. working in Emblem, SAS as I will be forced to use very simplistic methods of pricing in the absense of detailed data. I've done 4 GLIMS in the last 4 years so I'm very used to working at that level but maybe It's time to move on... It's a tough one.

 

Yes but you'll be able to bring all that to the business in time. Dealing with underwriters wont be easy but for the right person would be a fantastic opportunity to build something from the ground up.

I currently work in motor pricing and its very sophisticated and advance. We also write commercial business and the pricing is a long way from where motor is. When I have a bit more experience I would love to move to commercial and develop it, build a team etc.

 

It is a tough one. I once was offered a similar opportunity. I know of someone who took up such an opportunity.

I didn't take it up. Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing.

To carve out a niche position in a smaller company: in effect you're the Chief Actuary there! That appeals. Perhaps you can build an empire around yourself, below yourself!

However the obvious downsides are you have to invent the wheel yourself instead of jumping onto other people's buses, with little or no serious support probably. Also, who's to say they will accept your approach after a year or two, and continue funding your job if they think you're not adding true value to profit compared to a back of fag packet calc method? Sure they may call it a permanent job but in this day and age... ?

Also, other things to consider are a disconnect with the rest of the actuarial community. Having to work in an isolation on things no one else in the company really understands that well. I know of someone who took up such a role and was put on a desk next to a call centre team made up of a dozen 50+ year old ladies, where concentration was almost impossible.

I'm not at all trying to talk the opportunity down. You'll notice on this forum I regularly bash 'big company' mentality,HR functions, lack of career progression at big cos etc. so I may as well be honest about downsides here too.

But are the downsides/risks worse than at a big co? You decide

 

Cheers for the feedback. As it happens I've just been told I didn't got the job due to lack of management experience (which is fair enough) so I won't have to make that difficult decision.

 

That's bad luck man. It's a difficult decision, I totally agree. If it came around again I would have to look at it again afresh, certainly.

With age, I get more cynical, sadly. One thing I'd be thinking about is what if you work really hard for a year or two setting up some kind of spreadsheet or method that does make money for them.

In that scenario, I'd expect to get some serious rewards. However in reality, would this happen? I guess if your methods or spreadsheet is already in place, very well documented... wouldn't they just keep it and turn down your payrise requests?

Finally, one thing that got me thinking was what if their own data was a very small dataset? Then you couldn't really attach much credibility to it. But wouldn't you feel under pressure to attach credibility to it just to show you were making some difference and then pray it turns out profitable for them?