Hiring actuaries who come with grounding in multiple disciplines brings a range of benefits, including:

1. 1. 1. A freer flow of ideas and solutions. Having actuaries who are willing and able to borrow and apply strategies, practices and solutions from other disciplines to address multifaceted risks like cybersecurity and climate change can open new channels for communication and cross-pollination of ideas among and across an insurer's various lines of business. The result is a smarter, more efficient and strategic way of doing business.
    2. Immediate strategic assets. Actuaries arrive not only with a deep working knowledge of general insurance/property-casualty, but with a firm grasp of other disciplines to draw from, so insurers can devote less resources to on-the-job training and more to other strategic priorities.
    3. Maximizing tech, data and analytics investments. Insurers gain access to actuaries whose multidisciplinary background gives them a keen sense of how and when to use the emerging technology, data and analytics tools in which insurers are investing so heavily.
    4. Flexibility. Actuaries with a deep working knowledge of multiple disciplines give employers more options for how they deploy their actuarial resources.

Cognitive era advancements like predictive modeling and analytics, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and blockchain may indeed give property-casualty insurers the means to transform their business. But to unlock the game-changing potential in these tools, it's up to insurers to find ways to leverage the multidisciplinary skillset that an SOA general insurance actuary brings to the table. Because as experts like EY's Hollander point out, technology means little without the "right people" to maximize it.

Special Reports /

Why P&C insurers prefer versatile actuaries

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