Regina Berens is a consulting actuary with Muetterties, Bennett and Associates (MBA), a five- person consulting firm out in the woods in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. A look at her homepage, reveals that since joining the firm in 1995, her work has included analysis of results and reserve recommendations for self-insured entities, reserve analysis for a major reinsurer, pricing for workers' compusation, occupational disease coverage and litigation support.
Since MBA is a small firm, many tasks are shared. "Of the other four people, three are Fellows of the Casualty Actuarial Society and one is a database consultant with some actuarial background," Regina explains. "Generally one person will have primary responsibility for a project and another will review it, but sometimes we brainstorm together. Because this is a small firm, we all have some 'non-actuarial' tasks such as taxes, bookkeeping and maintaining the Company Web site. All of us share the marketing, which is the vital task of finding new clients."
"We use mathematics in most of our work -- generally not the high-level material we had to master for the actuarial exams, but it has to be combined with problem-solving skills, people skills and common sense. This is what makes the work challenging. Recently, we had to evaluate the impact of a new law in Pennsylvania which co-ordinated miners' Black Lung benefits with Social Security payments. It required a spreadsheet model which took multiple probabilities (miner and spouse mortality, Federal award percentages) into account."
Regina has an B.A. in mathematics from the University of Cincinnati and is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries. She began her career at Great American Insurance Company in Cincinnati working on private passanger auto and homeowners insurance ratemaking. She later joined AFIA where she analyzed insurance written outside of North America. Her work there included a study of exposure to Caribbean hurricanes and evaluation of contracts in AFIA's London offices. From 1985 until she joined MBA, Regina worked with Prudential Reinsurance, now known as Everest Reinsurance, where she worked on international reinsurance, including business originating from the company's offices in London, Brussels, and Hong Kong.
Regina has been with MBA since 1995, and in the insurance industry for 20 years. "I have great respect for teachers, but I never pictured myself in front of a classroom. I've always been attracted by practical applications of knowledge with all its attendant complications. I obtained the job at MBA through networking. They contacted me after another actuary told one of the partners here that I was looking for a job."
Her advice to people starting out is to "network, network, network. Talk to people in the field and keep in contact with them. Do your homework before you go into an interview; know something about the field and the company. Don't answer questions with monosyllables. Don't feel insulted if you take on tasks which aren't high-level math in the beginning; you'll get there. Someone has to do the entry-level work."
Concerning her mathematics background, she finds probability and statistics most valuable. Other areas she mentions are compound interest, finance, and accounting. She adds that "the most successful actuaries have presentation skills, and a wide range of interests outside the field."
She has the following advice for women entering the field: "Don't discount the skills traditionally part of women's 'socialization' -- including being gracious, writing thank-you notes, settling differences by reaching a consensus rather than by fistfights. They're valuable skills in business."
"If you enter the actuarial field and plan to have children, finish all the exams you can first. (Easier said than done.) Don't look around the corner for discrimination every 5 minutes. It's a waste of your energy because it's not that prevalent. Concentrate on doing your job well and having a large network of allies inside and outside the company."
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