Actuaries in Energy/Oil

[tmmosley1]

Are there any actuaries that have found work outside traditional insurance within the energy sector? Any comments or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

[Maine-iac]

There probably are a very few, but the trouble with enquiring about relatively uncommon non-traditonal roles on a board like this, is that you are unlikely to luck upon a poster with that specialty, though it's possible.

You might try searching the SOA directory using an employment type of "miscellaneous" and see what comes up.

[Sub_Zero]

http://www.linkedin.com/in/gailtverberg
http://www.theoildrum.com/user/Gail%20the%20Actuary

[Zakarin]

Originally Posted by tmmosley1

Are there any actuaries that have found work outside traditional insurance within the energy sector? Any comments or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

There are a very few Actuaries in the Oil and Gas Sector - and normally they would be in chanrge of the Pension plan area of the company, often a single ASA or FSA. There are probbaly other people in the company who have taken exams or have reached a designation, but they wouldn't consider themselves actuaries nor would they likley be overly impressed with someone with the credential but having no Oil and Gas experience.

From my experience in the Oil and Gas Sector (2 yrs employed - 6 yrs ago FWIW) the risk managment types are ordinarily Geophysicsts who are bored with exploration, or an MBA type with previous O&G work.

Z

[Chalengr]

I work in the Middle East where obviously oil is huge. There is a lot of insurance here regarding the oil and gas industry. Although, I personally don't work in that area i know a few people who do. What do you want to know about this kind of work?

It's gaining quite a bit of attention and some big names have opened up shop to target this area. Most are based out of Bahrain, Saudi, and of course Dubai

[energy123]

To original poster:

I worked for several years as a Life/Annuity/Health actuary, and did obtain my FSA. For different reasons, I decided about 9 years ago the time was ripe to try deploying the numerous skills I had developed as an Actuary outside of the normal employment channels...insurance, employee benefits consulting, government organizations.

I pursued a wide array of opportunities spanning banking, energy, and several manfacturing sectors. As I'm sure you can imagine, the search took some time and I met with a lot of headwinds. There's no great epiphany in this statement, but industries and employers where quantitatively focused individuals can find employment (outside of the the above-mentioned) are not at all impressed by Actuarial credentials without relevant experience...as I believe has been mentioned on this site numerous times, they are looking for MBAs, PHds in Mathematics or Statistics, Masters in Financial Engineering, and a few other degrees. FSA or FCAS is seldom near the top or even on their list.

But, as with any challenge in life, I kept after it, and eventually raw determination and doggedness paid off. I obtained a position in the electric utility industry as a Risk Manager, and I haven't looked back since. It was a huge risk, and I took a sizeable pay cut. But it's paid off tremendously. As it has become a huge practice area in Actuarial circles over the last 5 years, Risk Management has even bigger potential outside of insurance. I'm tremendously bullish on my career prospects over the next 10 - 15 years.

If you're interested in making such a move, I strongly encourage you to give it a shot. Be prepared for a challenge, but don't give up...well worth the effort. As the responders on this post have noted, Actuaries in non-traditional roles outside insurance are rare, and rarer still in the energy business. You should take comfort in there being an element of "barrier to entry" in this type of move. Happy to have a further discussion if you like.

[SpaceActuary]

I heard once about a company attempting to sell oil-well "life" insurance--when the well was depleted, the policy would pay out the cost of capping and sealing the well. Trouble is, no one wanted to buy a policy--they'd rather just sell the well to some other schmuck.

[Salzmann]

An FCAS was working for Enron back before it imploded. He's now working in a more traditional job.