Tell us about your job responsibilities and what a typical day looks like for you.

My team is responsible for our division's Asset Liability Management of our product portfolios, which, beyond the obvious asset management and liability management, also consists of a mix of risk monitoring, reporting, and hedging. We are responsible for managing the equity risk associated with our Index Accounts, as well as the interest rate risk inherent in our products due to guarantees and various product features. We manage these risks by executing on the various hedging programs we design and monitor, but we also actively manage product credit rates and index cap levels as our portfolio yields change. 

My primary role is to lead the team: motivate, coach, plan, and organize so that the team can carry out our responsibilities.
 

What is a typical day like for you? 

Generally, the only thing that’s typical in my day is that I wake up, turn on CNBC to see where the equity and fixed income markets are at while drinking some coffee before my kids wake up. 

On any given day, I interact via email, calls, or meetings with many folks in various areas around the company and its divisions on a variety of topics such as product design, derivatives accounting, risk metrics, client services issues, assumption governance, strategy documentation, financial plan, and many others. No two days are seemingly alike.
 

When and how did you join Pacific Life? 

I moved out to California from Connecticut with some of my college friends from UCONN in May of 2008 and had hopes that Pacific Life would hire me when my prior employment contract ran out, which thankfully they did in December 2008. 
 

How did you first become interested in actuarial work and what is it like working as an actuary?

I've always been interested in business and finance growing up and working in my family's business. It wasn't a typical business: my father is a mortician and owns a few funeral homes in Northeastern Connecticut. (For the record, I stuck to helping out with administrative work and did a lot of landscaping). It's a business that is generally quite difficult to plan for and as my father did a lot of the work himself, we would have periods where he was really busy and other periods where he wasn’t until he was again. As a result, we didn't take many vacations too far away from home.  

As a kid, I figured if I could “predict” mortality in town, we could plan an exotic vacation. I explained at one point to a high school math teacher what I was trying to do, and I remember she laughed and said, “That’s what actuaries try to do.” I had no idea at that point what an actuary was, but I did find out that I had no idea what I was doing and was terrible (and still am) at mortality studies. But my curiosity did lead me in the direction of the actuarial profession and getting in undergrad in actuarial science, even if I'm not an actuary today. 

I enjoy the work I do today. It’s not always easy, but there are always problems to solve, information to “sponge,” and ways to express creativity. But ultimately my work is helping out someone else when they really need it.
 

What advice do you have for actuarial students? 

Study hard and pass exams certainly! But when working: be curious, figure out how to improve processes, and try to understand as best you can how the work you are doing fits into decision-making processes in your immediate area or the company.  

I'd also add that it's important to establish a good network of people both inside and outside of the actuarial profession at Pacific Life. It takes a lot of different skill sets to be successful in this business and in many instances, we can learn a lot from one another and solve problems more efficiently just by having wider networks.
 

What advice do you have for actuarial students? 

Study hard and pass exams certainly! But when working: be curious, figure out how to improve processes, and try to understand as best you can how the work you are doing fits into decision-making processes in your immediate area or the company.  

I'd also add that it's important to establish a good network of people both inside and outside of the actuarial profession at Pacific Life. It takes a lot of different skill sets to be successful in this business and in many instances, we can learn a lot from one another and solve problems more efficiently just by having wider networks.
 

What is the most enjoyable and the most challenging part of your job? 

The most enjoyable part of my job is interacting with so many incredibly smart and hardworking people on a daily basis while providing meaningful products, protection, and service to our policyowners, it's nice to end the day feeling good about what we do.

The most challenging part is probably keeping up with changes, new ideas, new approaches, and new products that we take on as a result of working with so many incredibly smart and hardworking people.