Laura’s Profile

Actuarial Consulting - Pensions

My current role at Aon is split into two main areas; so the first is dealing with pension scheme clients and that’s either advising the companies who sponsor a pension scheme or advising the trustees who run the pension scheme on a day-to-day basis; and the other side of my role at the moment is I’m a line manager to two or three people in my team at the Bristol office, and I also have a role in the learning and development of all of the trainee Pensions Actuaries.

In the pensions industry, there are a lot of different skills you need to be successful as an Actuary. The key skill you’ll need is communication and, in particular, explaining quite complicated concepts to a layperson, for example. The trustee of a pension scheme may have no technical expertise at all, and you need to explain quite a complicated actuarial concept to help them make decisions about what to do with their pension scheme. Also you need to be highly organised because you’ll be running lots of clients’ pension schemes all at the same time and they’ll be at different phases throughout the pension scheme cycle so you have to be able to know how to manage all of those different things all at once. And you have to also be very interested in the job as well because you need to do a lot of background reading, you need to know what’s going on in the industry so if a client asks you a question you don’t say “Oh I haven’t heard about it. I don’t know.”

When I first joined Aon the first impressions I had were it struck me what a paternal company it is, so that’s in terms of the benefits packages that were provided and also the really good training and development it provides too, especially actuaries for example where you need to have support when you’re studying and training and learning all the skills you need to be an Actuary and then once you’re qualified you need a lot after you’re qualified as well to keep up to date with market developments and things like that so it’s a really good support package. Also it struck me what pride it takes in the corporate social responsibility. It’s such a big part of Aon and they take it really, really seriously so they get involved in these big charity projects and also they are really supportive of individuals who do any of their own charitable work.

The things I find most rewarding are when you’ve helped the client solve all of their problems, especially when you go to a meeting and you’re talking to them and they don’t understand something or they’ve got a particular problem and you’re using all your experience and knowledge so you can advise them the best way to solve it or to fix whatever it is they are worried about. In terms of the other side of my role, I think I find the developing of my colleagues really, really rewarding because I’m actually contributing to the future of the people I work with and the people I don’t even know, so the people who work in London for example, which is helping the business become more successful.

The biggest surprise about working for Aon is despite the size of the company which is absolutely massive you don’t get put in a box when you join so I joined initially to be a pension scheme actuary but I realised quite quickly that I enjoyed the parts of the role where you train others and help others develop.

As well as all of the ongoing pension scheme based training that you have to do to be a good Consultant and Actuary, the institute and faculty will set a certain number of exams you need to pass and Aon supports you by giving you days off work in order to study for those exams and I’ve qualified quite quickly due to the support that Aon provided. Not only that, since I’ve qualified Aon is also supporting me in my continuing my professional development which is also a requirement for the institute so that’s going to pension seminars and making sure I’m still up to date with current pensions knowledge.