What Percentage of Your Work Constitutes Programming?

I work in the risk analytics domain and my work deals primarily with development of survival models and aggregate loss forecasting. I find that a bulk of the work deals with prototyping, programming and testing of ideas in MATLAB or SAS. I understand those who work in a statistical quant role will have a similar situation with C++, but what about those who work in the traditional actuarial functions? How important is programming (in any language) for your role?

 

Hi,

My Trainee scheme involves many rotations; my first (current) placement requires programming / coding a lot of the time. Mainly Prophet coding, VBA programming, DCS, with some others too.

This role along with Stochastic Modelling role is the only "real" time were these skills would be used extensively.

 

Hi everyone, this is my first post!

I have independently taken four CT exams to date, passing two during the April sitting while I expect to pass another two from the October sitting.
While doing applications I have also started to revise for the next set of exams due in April 2012.

At present I have been unable to find an entry level position, so my question is:
Will learning a programming language help my cause? If so, which one?

I'm very computer literate and have started to brush up on my VB skills, and I'm confident I can learn another language while studying for the CT exams.

Thank you all in advance for any replies.

 

To be honest, I would suspect that if you have been independently passing exams and already know VBA, another language is not going to be what makes the difference.

Employers can teach specific skills quite quickly, and they expect that you can pick them up. What they are more worried about is your "soft skills", your ability to work and communicate in a team, all this side of things.

All that said, R is probably a good one to have some exposure to.

 

Thank you very much for your reply Calum.

Due to necessity I've been in employment since the age of sixteen (mixture of corporate and non-corporate backgrounds), and I'm confident that I've built up the kind of skills required to work in an actuarial team. However because I had to work so much, I studied my full time degree in part time hours and ended up achieving a 2.2 (well below my ability).

So to show I had the ability to pass the exams, I took them independently, and I've been confident about each one of them.

The problem is each role I apply to I'm being told I need experience for entry level positions?!

So I just thought adding something else to my CV would help...

If I'm honest I'm not too familiar with "R" programming language, do you happen to have any more information on it?

Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it.

 

I've found a good website for R!

http://www.programmingr.com/

Would this skill be quite useful for an actuarial employer?

 

I see where you're coming from.

Probably your first issue is that you're getting filtered out before your application is seen by an actuary due to the 2:2 - I am afraid this is normal behavious from HR departments. There is no easy way to deal with this, but essentially you have to find ways to contact actuarial managers directly. Try the back pages of The Actuary - sending a CV to all the email addresses listed there can be surprisingly fruitful.

Do you have any experience in financial services in particular? I know from my experience the first thing employers asked me about was time spent at insurance companies, even though the work I did had nothing to do with actuarial work. If not, you can generally find low level work in most large companies in client servicing (ie, answering phones and letters and related processing). This can be pretty useful.

As far as R goes, I would say it is as good a choice as any - others you could consider are C++, Matlab (or Octave, the free equivalent) or a .NET language (C#, etc). Knowledge of SQL is also useful (and unusual!). Employers tend to have a pretty restricted choice of toolset, in general, so don't expect that any one of these will actually be used, but the more programming you've done, the better you become at thinking about solving technical problems. And R does seem to be popping up more and more often these days.

 

I'm certain if I was given an opportunity to prove myself I would be one of the best graduates they employ! Unfortunately I think the 2.2 is holding me back at the moment and only work experience will remedy that I suppose.

I've previously worked in finance related positions, where I've had to utilise my Excel and VBA skills. Unfortunately I've only had a two week temporary position in an insurance company and that was while at university.

With companies I apply to for lower positions, I think, I'm being regarded as high risk to leave (which is not the case!).

I feel I'm very much in a catch 22 position.

 

Once you get past the HR rubbish you should find it relatively easy to find a job at the moment.

I'm note sure if the below is a good idea or not, but it is a method of circumventing the HR BS.

If you go to:
http://www.abi.org.uk/MemberSearchResults.aspx?searchQuery=

and click
"Download csv file of your search results"

you can download a list of all ABI members.

This at least gives you a starting point of names of organisations to contact. This list may not be complete so there may be some benefit in doing your own research.

You can then go on to the FSA website

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/firmSearchForm.do

Search for the name of the firm.

You will then get a list of approved persons for that firm (click on individuals).

Look for people with designation "CF12 Actuarial". This is the actuarial function holder (google for info on what this means).

This may take sometime as you will have to find the right legal entity. Only the actual insurance entity will have a CF 12. Each group/brand may have multiple different CF12s if they have a lot of different companies.

You now have a name and address to send your covering letter and CV. Put the name and address in pen.

I'd be interested to know if this approach goes well for you, if you decide to take it!

Elroy

 

Elroy thank you for your advice.

I will certainly try this method out and let you know if it works!

 

Unfortunately I'm still having no luck

The people I have been in touch with say that they do not deal with recruitment and send my CV to HR or say they have no vacancies!

Is it just a difficult time to find work at my level?

I will continue applying and sitting exams, I certainly wont give up... in the meantime any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

can someone recommend some good sources online for VBA?
maybe books?

how do you or did you learn?

 

Hi Viki.

I learnt VBA when I was at school, however I've been using various Walkebach books to brush up on my knowledge. He has a few books suitable for different levels, and they are quite easy to understand.

Some people use the internet to learn specific things too, it just depends what you'd like to learn really.

Hope this helps.

 

I've always found http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/ very useful.

 

Thank you very much! I'm going to learn VBA