Pricing Analyst vs Actuary Jobs

[snowyowl]

Hey everyone,

I've been looking at actuarial jobs in the UK for some time now and I've seen multiple 'Pricing Analyst' roles advertised on websites. The companies that offer these roles tend to also have their own actuarial teams with pricing grouped with the underwriting teams.

Are these 'Pricing Analyst' roles an effective way of becoming an actuary? I understand that some offer actuarial study support that is completely optional. These roles appear to be technical with SAS being one of the software packages used.

Has anyone had any experience working as a pricing analyst?

I'm talking in particular about pricing analysts in the personal lines market rather than commercial or the London market.

Thanks

 

[antzlck]

Do these jobs offer actuarial study packages? Im assuming not given what youre asking. You should see that as a red flag really. Pricing is one of the 3 major actuarial disciplines within general insurance - along with reserving and capital. There's a whole ST (8) subject devoted to general insurance pricing. The thing is pricing can and is done by different companies in varying ways from quite basic and crude to very technical and sophisticated.

Even within the same company you can have different pricing subteams approaching their pricing in very different ways. It is not the case that only actuaries can do the more sophisticated pricing but for pricing roles not offering actuarial study support I'd take that as an indication that the role is not as a technical as it could be. If you haven't got a better offer then by all means take it, you can move into a more technical pricing role after a year or so.

I may be biased but I think Pricing is by far the most interesting area. Reserving actuaries are retrospective in their analysis; they can tell you what has happened whereas Pricing actuaries are prospective; they tell you what will happen and so can really steer the commercial direction of the business in a way our reserving and capital colleagues cannot.

Since Solvency II most pricing teams fall under the "pricing and underwriting" banner as part of Solvency II required the actuarial function to be independent of underwriting/pricing. You can think of pricing actuaries as been in the "front office" of the business whereas reserving/capital (collectively commonly called "actuarial" which can be confusing as pricing actuaries are actuaries too!) are middle office functions.