My job has become more difficult as I went past the into-phase, mostly because I have high expectations for myself. It can be very frustrating not being able to get a firm grip on something... for example, I am currently in the process of converting an acquired life insurance company's reinsurance treaties from that company's system of organization to Western & Southern's system of organization... at times I just feel as though I am not contributing to the conversion. Basically I am looking at a lot of 'random' output from the old system and trying to organize the data (as they were organized differently on several different levels) into a format that we can put into the new system. One of my managers that is heading the process specializes in reinsurance and it's difficult for him to understand what all the exported data from the old system is... It's even harder for me to make progress as I am still unfamiliar with the specifics of reinsurance.
Obviously I've never heard about reinsurance in the classroom, but even though I have quickly gained a general understanding of subject matter, at times this proves inadequate next in the scope of a treaty. Imagine how many nooks and crannies are in a financial contract: there are a lot of specifics and small details that change with changes in the policies. Even though I picked up a strong preliminary understanding of reinsurance, having not seen all the different terms and their meaning anywhere prevents me from realizing that a certain field in the output data is that nook orthat cranny. Further the software used to organize the treaties has an interface a lot like a mainframe. All in all it will just take time to wrap my head around such a large project, and I want to be amazing right away.
As far how the classroom has played a role in my work, it is much less directly involved than I ever would have imagined. The only course that has played a direct help has been App Dev Using VBA. VBA is like programming in excel. To put it simply, it allows me to make a command that will have excel automatically repeat a process instantly. I use it all the time and having an understanding the programming behind excel has greatly improved my general spreadsheet application ability as well.
Of course, I come across accounting and finance principals all the time. I can't think of an instance at work where I saw a process that I could have pulled out my textbook and said "look, I just did this paragraph here." Still I'm taking this coursework for granted. Learning an array of accounting and financial concepts has given me an understanding of basic accounting and finance in general. This general understanding contributes to how I have been able to quickly pick up concepts in insurance and healthcare, even if they are not directly correlated.
As a statistics major, I would have thought that a portion of my work would have been statistics anyways. My actuarial job always requires me to think analytically at a very high level. Even though I'm not using any direct methods right now from my stat classes, my mathematics major has no doubt greatly developed my analytic ability. In result my math major also contributes indirectly every day. Further, even though I'm not using any high level math, I know higher level math is a part of future actuarial exams I have to take. The only prior coursework I would change would be to take a C+ programming course.
Having been a SOL, Resident Adviser, and having work experience completely using a second language, this job hasn't developed my generic communication skills yet. I have learned how to make data on my spreadsheets more presentable, if that is considered a communication skill. Color code, simplicity, and stick to the concluding data (eliminates distractions). This career isn't one that requires expert communication skills. Still the chief actuary at W&S definitely highlighted that communication and writing skills have been bottlenecks to the careers of many actuaries.
All in all, I wish I was performing better. I'm meeting the expectations of my supervisors, but it's hard to feel successful, when I don't seem to have a peer group to compare to. There are two very successful young actuaries who are only 3 or 4 years ahead of me, but the other 50+ are on a completely different level. I wish there was another intern I could compete with.
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