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ROCKWOOD REPORT: A Road Map To Careers In Insurance
A ROAD MAP TO CAREERS IN INSURANCE
by Rachel Nick
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Choosing a career path can be likened to hiking through the woods. Upon coming to a fork in the road, you must decide which path to take to complete your journey. Each turn in the path leads to new sceneries and surroundings. As you continue through the woods, you probably have an end goal in mind as to where you want to end up. Similarly, the sequence of decisions we make regarding our employment makes up our career path.
Our goal, or our “final destination”, is to advance our careers to end up with a job that we enjoy and that we do well. College students approaching graduation are tasked to figure out which career path they will take. My undergraduate studies have led me to an interest in the insurance industry. With so many career paths and opportunities ahead of me, there are many career options in insurance that I never considered until a few months ago. The many sectors of the insurance industry, such as home and auto insurance, life insurance, private health insurance, and business insurance, all provide a variety of career opportunities for students looking to begin their career path.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, many sectors of the insurance industry are predicted to grow faster than the industry averages over the next ten years. The two fastest growing jobs in the industry are actuaries and market research analysts, both with a predicted employment rate increase of 18% over the next ten years.
The role of an actuary is to assess risk and assign appropriate annual premiums to each risk level. Actuaries play a very important role in the insurance industry because they are responsible for the profitability of the company, ensuring that the company does not take on too much risk, and for analyzing market data. Market data is provided by the research analysts who compile data about the varying insurance markets. The accuracy of this data is crucial to how actuaries can interpret it.
Underwriters and insurance sales agents work together to sell appropriate policies to customers. Underwriters are responsible for looking generally at whether a customer will be worth insuring. While actuaries look at the quantitative side of risk, underwriters can see the qualitative side and assess specific risk factors, such as when a property insurance underwriter evaluates an applicant living in a flood zone or when a professional liability insurance underwriter assesses an applicant whose business has very high revenues and many clients.
See Careers In Insurance Page 59
