Insurance vs Consulting. Is all insurance work excel based?

[missactsci]

Hello All,

I have had a summer internship at a P&C firm and then I worked in a pension consulting firm, then I worked in a health insurance firm. From my experience and what I've heard from friends in the industry, insurance work seems to be a lot of basic work in excel - copy/pasting, inputting numbers from last year into a spreadsheet and applying an arbitrary inflation rate. Maybe you even start integrating the excel numbers into a document.

No offense to anyone but this is is work that the admin did in the pension consulting field. I thoroughly enjoyed the work I did in consulting - it was quantitative, I learned a lot and I felt "active" whereas in the insurance jobs, I felt like I took all these advanced actuarial exams to sit there and do deadbeat work. I have a feeling that life insurance is a bit different. I'm now looking for a job. And I'm on the fence.

I want a job with decent hours and I don't want to go running after clients demands (consulting). But I don't want a deadbeat, boring, excel inputting number job (insurance).

Question:
Do other people have this experience with insurance jobs? Did you work on programming/testing models? What industry and/or company did you work for?

Also, does it look bad at an interview or to recruiters to ask about this? how quantitative is the job? How do I say "I don't want to be inputting number into excel all day" in a polite and professional way?

Thanks for any input

[DW Simpson]

Why are you "studying for ASA and then I'm done"?

[Darkness Falls]

So far in P&C insurance I've used SAS almost as much as I've used Excel.

[Vorian Atreides]

Rule No 1 about actuarial work . . . your analysis and recommendations are only as good as your data. Without a thorough understanding of the data (including coding errors and how to efficiently identify them and adjust accordingly), any analysis you perform will be questionable.

Regardless of the tool being used, you need to know what data is going into the analysis . . . including what sort of filters are being used . . . so that you can properly disclose relevant and material information (note that the two are not synonomous) to users of your analysis--both internally as well as externally.

If you're evaluating your productivity based on the "excitement" factor--or the "I feel like I'm doing something important here"--you're missing out on some important key skills that are desired by employers . . . namely the ability to learn useful things in the whatever position you hold with the whatever task list you're assigned.

[GuineaPig]

Originally Posted by Vorian Atreides

Rule No 1 about actuarial work . . . your analysis and recommendations are only as good as your data. Without a thorough understanding of the data (including coding errors and how to efficiently identify them and adjust accordingly), any analysis you perform will be questionable.

Regardless of the tool being used, you need to know what data is going into the analysis . . . including what sort of filters are being used . . . so that you can properly disclose relevant and material information (note that the two are not synonomous) to users of your analysis--both internally as well as externally.

If you're evaluating your productivity based on the "excitement" factor--or the "I feel like I'm doing something important here"--you're missing out on some important key skills that are desired by employers . . . namely the ability to learn useful things in the whatever position you hold with the whatever task list you're assigned.

[WWSituation]

Originally Posted by missactsci

insurance work seems to be a lot of basic work in excel - copy/pasting, inputting numbers from last year into a spreadsheet and applying an arbitrary inflation rate. Maybe you even start integrating the excel numbers into a document.

This describes the 6 years I spent in consulting - except in consulting you get to debug your spreadsheet at 11:30pm and look for the mistake in time to get the reports out before the Fed Ex guy comes and goes at midnight.

[FormLetter]

If you think your job is deadbeat cutting/pasting, try to find smarter ways to get the end goal accomplished.

I've never been in a spot where cutting/pasting formulas and entering numbers was needed for more than a very short time. Sometimes you are in crunch time right before submitting a filing or an RFP, and the fastest method to "done" is cutting/pasting. That should be the exception. Figure out a way to make the tool produce what you need without the cutting/pasting. Automate it. Generalize it. Flexibilizationalize it.

[missactsci]

Correct me if I'm wrong but actuarial work is

1. some program in place to calculate liabilities
2. get data
3. organize data, check for errors, etc.
4. use data with program to calculate liabilities
5. check liabilities for reasonability
6. make numbers look pretty

From what I've seen, both consulting and insurance go through this, but the actuaries don't take care of part 1 in insurance. I'm not sure how you can do part 5 if you don't know what's going on in part 1.

I was asking around to see if there was anyone in the insurance industry that participates in part 1. If so, are you an actuarial analyst or do you have some other actuarial software development job?

[missactsci]

Originally Posted by FormLetter

If you think your job is deadbeat cutting/pasting, try to find smarter ways to get the end goal accomplished.

I've never been in a spot where cutting/pasting formulas and entering numbers was needed for more than a very short time. Sometimes you are in crunch time right before submitting a filing or an RFP, and the fastest method to "done" is cutting/pasting. That should be the exception. Figure out a way to make the tool produce what you need without the cutting/pasting. Automate it. Generalize it. Flexibilizationalize it.

are you in the insurance industry? what company do you work for?

[Locrian]

I work for an insurance company. There are a few things I have to do that sound like what you're describing - take these numbers, put them here, update this section, proofread and print.

Hate those jobs.

At least 75% of my work is more interesting than that. That's partly because I make it so by improving the process where I can.