Actuarial jobs may involve a complicated mathematical computation and analysis, as it deals with statistics, mathematical figures, and monetary calculations. Actuaries have the ability to identify statistical probability of certain payments or other contingencies in pensions and insurances, such as insurance against losses arising from death, disabilities, illness, and even unemployment.

Likewise, they determine the proper basis and methods for valuing liabilities and maintaining permanent financial stability of insurances and pension organizations. The profession itself requires a genius mathematical ability to both compute and analyze. Actuaries set formulas that try to predict the number of policies that will incur losses and how much money the company will pay in claims. This determines the overall cost of insuring a group, company, or individual. Increase in risk increases potential cost to the company and the company increases their rates to cover this.

Actuarial careers in special fields may slightly differ as to purpose, yet the nature of the jobs are all related to each other. For instance, casualty actuaries specialize in property and liability insurance while, life actuaries focus in health and life insurance. An increasing number of actuaries deal only with pension plans. And as to actuary employment, although many actuaries are employed in insurance companies, the federal and state governments, as well as private business and industry, make up a good portion of employers for actuaries. Consulting practices are also important areas in which actuarial work may be found.

The nature of actuary jobs may have never been familiar to many, but its role is vital to the financial flow of a business organization. It can be recalled, that the term actuary was used for the first time in 1762 when the charter of the first life insurance company to use scientific data in figuring premiums, the Equitable Society of London, was written. The basis of actuarial job was laid in the eighteenth century when Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat derived an important method of calculating actuarial probabilities, resulting in what is now termed ''the science of probability.'' Moreover, the first mortality table was produced in the late seventeenth century when Edmund Halley's attention was called to the regularity of various social phenomena, including the excess of male over female births. Halley, an English astronomer, is known as the father of life insurance.

Meanwhile, the post of actuary created in 1821 by the British government for the Commissioner for the Reduction of the National Debt resulted in the first official recognition of the actuary careers. As more complex forms of insurance were developed in the nineteenth century, the need for actuaries grew. The need for actuarial employment was felt in 1889, and a small group of qualified actuaries formed the Actuarial Society of America. Two classes of members, fellows and associates, were created seven years later, and examinations were developed for use in determining eligibility for membership. Forms of these examinations are still in use today. By 1909, the American Institute of Actuaries was created, and these two groups consolidated in1949 into the present Society of Actuaries. Also, in 1911, the Casualty Actuary Society was formed as a result of the development of workers' compensation laws. The compensation laws opened many new fields of insurance, and the Casualty Actuarial Society has since moved into all the many aspects of property and liability insurance.

Jobs in actuary have been concerned primarily with statistical, mathematical, and financial calculations needed in the rapidly growing field. Today, they deal with problems of investment, selection of risk factors for insurance, agents' compensation, development of policy forms, and many other aspects of insurance. Actuaries are basically mathematicians who aim to design and maintain insurance and pension programs on a sound financial basis. They may be employed by a number of different types of insurance companies, including life, health, accident, automobile, fire, or workers' compensation organizations. They may deal in pension programs sponsored and administered by various levels of government, private business, or fraternal or benevolent associations. Whatever the nature of the employer's product, actuaries are key to the sound financial management of the various insurance plans involved.

With the actuarial analyst jobs and the application of mathematics, probability, statistics, and principles of finance and business, actuaries determine premium rates and the various benefits of insurance plans. To do this, they must first assemble and analyze statistics, data, and other pertinent information. Based on this information, they are able to develop mathematical models of rates of death, accident, sickness, disability, or retirement and construct tables regarding the probability of such things occurring as unemployment or property loss from fire, theft, accident, or natural disaster.

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