Definition of a Retirement Actuary
Actuaries are the people who assess risk for large organizations such as insurance companies and finance companies. Retirement actuaries specialize in companies' retirement and pension plans--how much each employee needs to put it, how much the company can match, and what payouts these will earn.
Other People Are Reading
-
Methods
-
Retirement actuaries use statistical analysis to determine what kind of retirement plans meet their company's needs and how these plans will be paid for. Their goal is to keep the retirement program solvent--balancing the incoming payments with the outgoing payments while also keeping it attractive for new employees.
Responsibilities
-
Since traditional pension plans have started to fade away, the actuarial duties of retirement actuaries have also started to fade away. However, the jobs themselves have not gone anywhere--rather, they have just changed. Instead of being masters of risk, retirement actuaries have now branched out into general consultant roles, advising companies on all varieties of retirement planning, which includes but is not limited to the inherent risk in them.
-
Skills
-
Since retirement actuaries are jacks-of-all trades, they need a similarly wide range of skills. Finance, math, and probability are actuaries' key strengths but so are interpersonal skills and an ability to analyze. This is because they need to interact with and assess the needs of a wide variety of people, from human resources managers to executives to lower-level employees.
-
