Are you an actuarial student eager to broaden your experience before you qualify? Or perhaps a seasoned professional, keen to make use of your knowledge in a flexible consulting role? Maybe you’re somewhere in between – but if you’re an actuary with previous experience in the profession, we’d love to hear from you.

A role at APR will involve working on a variety of actuarial projects with our clients. We prioritise staff development, and are keen to ensure that the work you do reflects the development you want in your career.

What will the role involve

APR are a specialist actuarial employer. We provide both resourcing and consulting solutions to our clients, who are who are primarily life and non-life insurers. If you join us as an actuarial consultant, you’ll spend the majority of your time on client projects, either as part of an APR consulting team, or as a resource seconded to the client. The projects themselves span a large range of areas of actuarial work; typical projects include:

• Providing specialist skills in short supply, such as coding or model development.
• Working on major change projects, for example:
  • those driven by regulatory developments, such as IFRS 17 or other PRA/FCA-led investigations or change.
  • those stemming from strategic business decisions such as acquisitions or risk transfer mechanisms, including actuarial systems migrations, reinsurance and capital management projects.
• Backfilling of BAU work, for example financial reporting and pricing support – great for developing core actuarial skills and knowledge.

By investing in key transferable skills like modelling, coding and data, our experience is that we can make it easier for APR staff to continue to apply their skills both across actuarial sectors rather than being pushed into a particular narrow specialism early in a career.

In selecting client projects for our employees and accepting extensions, we are mindful of the individual’s development goals and preferences, and to the variety of work and technical exposures that people expect when they join us.

In-house work

When not on client project, associates work between home and one of our London, Edinburgh or Dublin offices. A key focus in such periods is on your technical development.  For those in the first couple of years of their career, that’s likely to mean significant time developing higher-order skills in areas like Excel model development, data and coding skills, and other proprietary actuarial modelling software.  For example, many of our clients expect APR actuarial staff to hold strong skills in VBA and R as default and this is honed internally through extensive training and opportunity to participate in our regular Code Clinic.  For more senior staff, there is more likely to be an emphasis on specific proficiency gaps, wider business skills or training tailored to potential next projects.

There is also an expectation that you will contribute towards the development of APR’s business and many of our more senior staff spend some working on in-house matters part-time even when engaged by clients. Our actuarial staff actively participate in all areas of the business; recruitment, training and management may be as expected but also in less typical areas for actuaries such as business development and marketing, project resourcing and proposition development.  Giving significant responsibility even to junior staff is a key principle underlying our business model.

Even with staff being assigned to many different clients and projects, there are plenty of opportunities to collaborate within APR – our close-knit team is something we are very proud of. This collaboration might take the form of getting involved with internal APR work, attendance at training days or internal CPD events, or taking part in social activities.

Training and study 

There is an emphasis on associates qualifying as an actuary quickly but at a pace chosen by the individual and to this end we provide a comprehensive package of support.

Requirements

A minimum of two years of relevant experience is required, whether that be in life, non-life, pensions, or another field. Further to this, we have listed some competencies which will make you stand out – although a successful candidate need not exhibit all, or even the majority, of these:

• Ability to adapt quickly to new areas of work
• Strong communication and client-facing skills
• Intellectual curiosity
• Technological competence
• Numerate ability
• Deep knowledge in a specific actuarial area
• Natural fit with our core values

If you can demonstrate the above, as well as any unique experience and skills you can bring to our team, we’d love to hear from you. We would also encourage people who have taken a non-standard career path to apply.