Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a chief actuary and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A Chief Actuary is responsible for supervising the department that analyzes financial expenditures on a high government or corporate level with the aim of reducing losses. This position predicts the viability of various regional government investments using mathematical methods to evaluate all the possible outcomes of a financial system.

Their primary tasks include overseeing other actuaries while distributing and directing assignments, preparing reports and reviews of business functions like budgets, mergers and other standard records, designing and implementing policies and guidelines relating to actuary risk analysis, performing analytical and research duties of an organization, performing statistical demographic research and studying various financial options for an expenditure especially the insurance related expenditures.

Core Skills Required to be a Chief Actuary

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A chief actuary should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Problem Solving:

Problem Solving is the skill of defining a problem to determine its cause, identify it, prioritize and select alternative solutions to implement in solving the problems and reviving relationships.

A Chief Actuary has a fundamental role in finding ways to address all types of problems through having a good method to use when approaching a problem without being ineffective, favoring or causing painful consequences.

Knowledge of Company Processes:

Knowledge of Company Processes is the in-depth understanding of a collection of related, structured activities that serve a particular goal for a group of customers or clients who are valuable to the enterprise.

A Chief Actuary ought to maintain consistency across the daily processed while keeping a keen eye on the overall plan of the organization by ensuring the company processes are performed and followed.

Motivating others:

Motivating is using persuasion, incentives and mental or physical stimulants to influence the way people think or behave individually or in groups.

A Chief Actuary ought to learn how to tap into the employee's enthusiasm as well as motivate the staff not just with money but with a motivation that comes through the daily relationship with each employee and creating an environment that fosters employee engagement and motivation.

Decision Making:

Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.

A Chief Actuary cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.

Management Control:

Management Control is a system that collects and uses the information to evaluate the performance of different organizational resources like the financial, physical and the organization performance as a whole.

A Chief Actuary should use this system to document the organization's objectives, document their strategies and policies, assess the performance of the internal corporate processes and show performance improvement about the declared goals and plans.

Management Skills:

Management Skills are also known as leadership skills and involve planning, decision making, delegation, time management and time management to ensure optimum organization in focus and the technical of how and why of accomplishing tasks.

A Chief Actuary must understand the business organization, finance, and communication as well as the market and the relevant technologies used to help manage everyone as they work together in a group.

Flexibility:

Flexibility is an important skill that allows employers and employees to make an arrangement about working on maintaining a work/life balance to help organizations improve the productivity and efficiency of their balance.

A Chief Actuary needs creative ideas on how to plan flexible schedules for all his employees by incorporating flexible working arrangements and individual flexibility agreements that allow negotiation to change how certain agreements apply to them and how they can be adjusted.

Self Confidence:

Self Confidence is the ability to know who you are and what you are capable of doing which shows in your behavior, your body language, how you speak, etc.

A Chief Actuary must be confident enough to inspire confidence in others while encouraging them to handle daily tasks and their personal lives with self-confidence that will, in turn, produce a well-rounded individual.

Seeing Potential Problems:

Seeing Potential Problems is the ability to structure the current situations and identify developments that could cause problems in the future.

A Chief Actuary needs to see potential problems before they occur and work to stop them early enough, he also has to stay ahead of the flow not to be caught you by upcoming issues that could be easily prevented if they were noted soon enough.

Knowledge Management:

Knowledge Management is the ability to manage knowledge and information that is presented to the company from different sources without overlooking any of them.

A Chief Actuary ought to creatively channel all the new information, tools, input, and methodology mean by actively practicing the art of knowledge management within the business by harnessing the organization's inherent wisdom's platform in one place.

Hard Skills Required to be a Chief Actuary

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A chief actuary should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Chief Actuary: Hard skills list

Account Payable
Accounting Principles and Terminology
Actuarial Consulting
Actuarial Modeling
Actuarial Science
Annuities
Analytical
Communication
Consultant
Controller
Cost-benefit Analysis
Data Analysis
Databases
Economics
Economic Capital
Economic Data
Financial
Financial Analysis
Financial Modeling
Financial Risk
Insurance
Life Insurance
Linear Algebra
Mathematical Simulation Models
Microsoft Access
Pensions
Presentations
Pricing Strategy
Problem Solving
Project Management
Programmer
Quantitative Research Methods
Reinsurance
Research
Revenue Forecasts Specialist
Social Data
Social Statistics
Social Trend Awareness
Solvency II
Statistical Analysis
Statistical Data
Statistical Methods
Statistical Modeling
Statistical Surveys
Technical/Technology
Time Management
Verbal Communication
Written Communication

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