Can you stand out from the crowd?
Are you:
- Highly talented and numerate?
- Confident, and an excellent communicator?
- A quick learner, able to adapt to, and thrive in, new situations?
- Eager to take early responsibility, both on client projects and within a progressive, growing business?
- Interested in developing strong IT / coding skills and experiencing a wider range of work than offered in traditional actuarial roles (eg data analytics and modelling)?
These are the characteristics we look for in our graduate recruits; we have a strong track record of taking on the very highest-quality numerate graduates and supporting them as they develop into successful actuaries, able to provide great value to our clients.
What does an APR graduate role involve?
APR provides high-quality technical, data-driven and modelling solutions to clients mainly in the financial sector. These solutions often take the form of short-term actuarial support to supplement client teams, working on a broad selection of different projects; we also provide consulting solutions, using our expertise to address a variety of client needs in areas like data analysis, modelling and technical training services.
This means that the majority of your APR career will be spent on direct client work, typically on site at clients’ offices, contributing across all types of actuarial projects and helping our clients to meet the challenges they face – all of which will quickly serve to develop your own actuarial skills. Projects can be based all around the UK (sometimes beyond), and last for anywhere from a few weeks to many months.
We pride ourselves on the high quality of our training, both in the core technical areas we know are in demand, but also in the wider skills needed to make our associates into well-rounded professionals, able to stand out and make a difference on such projects.
When not working on client projects there will be plenty of opportunities for you to get involved in all manner of internal activities, aimed at developing our expanding business, alongside a focus on training and continued development of your technical and softer skills.
We also provide full study support, with a much higher than average pass rate in the actuarial exams, helping you to qualify quickly and opening up even more opportunities for interesting and diverse client projects.
The result, we believe, is that our graduate scheme provides the opportunity for a more varied, exciting and financially rewarding career than offered by traditional actuarial employers.
So is APR for you?
A career with APR will provide you with some of the best training any actuarial employer offers, with extensive education in the skills our clients need – for example Excel / VBA, coding, data analysis and actuarial software – along with full study support. You will quickly become part of a small but renowned group of graduate employees, working closely with the partners of the business within a culture that is friendly, inclusive and supportive.
APR’s graduate associate scheme will give you the opportunity to enjoy unrivalled variety in your work and gain experience across a wide range of actuarial, modelling and data analysis projects. Within weeks of starting you will be making a difference on stimulating assignments and be financially rewarded for doing so.
If this appeals to you, we invite you to apply now to make the first step to building your career at APR.
About our application process
The key qualities we look for in applicants are talent and confidence. We believe that most other characteristics we require, including excellent communication skills, flow automatically from these two qualities.
Successful candidates will be likely to have the following academic qualifications (or their equivalents):
- A 2:1 degree (in any discipline).
- 136 UCAS points (340 under the old tariff) across your three best A-level subjects.
- Grade A in A-level Mathematics and GCSE English Language.
We consider all applications based on their own merit, and note that previous candidates have been successful without meeting all of the above requirements. Please provide details of any factors you would like to be taken into consideration in your cover letter.
Demonstrable evidence of interest in, and proactive investigation into, some of the areas we have mentioned above would be an advantage.
Feedback from both successful and unsuccessful applicants is that while our selection process is challenging, it is also refreshingly straightforward and engaging, with all stages aimed at assessing a combination of your numerical ability, along with your potential for learning quickly and picking up the key attributes our clients value in APR associates.
We initially ask you to submit a CV and covering letter via the graduate pages on our website. Selected candidates will then be invited to complete our online test and, if you pass this, we will hold a telephone interview with you. The final stage is our assessment centre which lasts a couple of hours and consists of a face-to-face interview, a presentation and a written test.