Kara Raiguel is an assistant actuary in the Special Programs department of CIGNA Property and Casualty in Philadelphia, PA. "Special Programs is one of the several business units inside CIGNA P&C," explains Kara. "Our goals as an organization are to find classes of business or agencies that bring to the table profitable books of business. Our main departments inside Special Programs are Warranty Products, Mobilehomes, Sports and Leisure, Professional Liability and Commercial Insurance. These will expand as Special Programs gains new opportunities. My role is to help my business unit monitor our current programs, making sure our rates are adequate and we are comfortable with the risks we are taking. I also help evaluate new program submissions to determine if CIGNA should write certain types of business."
"I am considered to be a 'business actuary,' which means most of the people I support are business people in a non-technical environment. I must be able to communicate technical or quantitative analysis to other employees or external customers in an appropriate way so they can understand the issues at hand"
"Most of my work involves simple mathematics. It is knowing how to use it that is the key. Once in a while we will run regressions or do modeling. Different actuaries get involved at different levels of technical abilities. We have a research department that supports the business actuaries in fitting curves and loss distributions to data. I find people come to me for all types of math questions, because they see actuaries as the experts."
"I sometimes price insurance policies that insure lotteries, which get into the probability functions (hyper-geometric, etc.-- I had to look that up in a book to figure it out.) Pricing a lottery is a unique insurance situation. Most of the time, companies don't know their losses until after they have sold their policies. Actuaries spend a lot of time looking at patterns in the data and analyzing characteristics that have changed to better estimate the future. With a lottery, you know the inherent loss distribution: it is just math. We did the '5 choose 3' type of work and came up with the expected value of the insurance policy. It was nice to know the probability of loss -- the risk is essentially quantifiable."
Kara has a B.S. in mathematics from Ursinus College and is currently an Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society, with one exam left to get her Fellowship. She started at CIGNA in 1993 as a summer intern and started full time in 1994 with the International Division in the reserving unit. After two years, she rotated to her current department, Special Programs. In June 1998 she will rotate to the division that handles large asbestosis and environmental claims. "Each claim can involve millions of dollars," Kara explains. "I will be supporting the claims unit, who are mostly lawyers, in quantifying our expected payments or various court rulings that may set precedent in how insurance companies are liable for old pollution problems. This is considered a 'non-actuarial' rotation in that I am not doing the traditional rate making or reserving roles that actuaries are known for."
The exams Kara has been taking are a big part of her career. Studying is an integral part of at least the first 5 years of an actuaries career. The Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries are two organizations that provide more information about the exams and being an actuary
Kara suggest that outside the calculus and probability and statistics courses, students look for courses that provide a problem solving environment and encourage thinking from new perspectives "outside the box." If possible, some economics and finance, and insurance classes or risk management courses are helpful. She also recommends writing and speaking courses.
"Communication is very important," she adds. "I always enjoyed math and problem solving. One of my high school teachers told me I might enjoy being an actuary and he was right! I was looking for a field that I could apply my math skills and my communication skills."
She sees her internship as an important part of her decision to work for CIGNA. "I certainly learned a lot about what actuaries do, how they relate to the company as a whole, and just about a business environment in general. You can start as early as your sophomore year to look for an internship with some companies. More companies are starting to recruit in the fall, so by October and November of your junior year you can look seriously for an internship. There are lots of companies that will be very interested in you when you are ready to graduate if you have had an internship."
Balancing career and family is a concern for many women entering the business world. Kara suggests that women "look to see if other women in the company are succeeding and doing well. I would also recommend looking at their part-time policies - are other women working 4 day weeks to spend the fifth day at home - is telecommuting feasible? - what kind of facilities do the companies have available as for support. This advice would go for men or women."
