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Actuary Resume 2026 - exam ladder, pricing and reserving sample free

Антон Литвинов
Антон Литвинов Founder, AI Resume Master
in 𝕏
Published: 03.10.2026 Updated: 03.10.2026

An actuarial resume is unusual in one specific way: the most-read block on the page is not your experience, it is your exams. A pricing manager or a reserving lead scans the exam section first, and they are reading three things in it - which exams you have passed, when you passed them, and when you sit the next one. The third is the one candidates leave off, and leaving it off reads as somebody who has stopped. After that comes the work, and the work has its own vocabulary that has to appear literally: loss triangles, chain ladder, Bornhuetter-Ferguson, IBNR, loss cost, trend, credibility, class plan relativities, experience study, mortality and lapse assumptions, GLM. Then the tools, because an actuarial team that runs on Prophet and SQL will not interview somebody whose resume says strong analytical skills. Write the exams precisely, the work in its own terms with the size of what you handled, and the software by name, and you have an actuarial resume. Write 'excellent mathematics background' and you have a mathematics graduate's resume instead.

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Actuary resume sample

The order an actuarial reviewer reads in: exams with dates and the next sitting, then the technical work with the size of the book attached, then the software, then education. At entry level the exam block goes above experience; once you are credentialed it moves down and the work takes the top.

Exams with dates and the next sitting

Exam name, pass date, and the date of the exam you are sitting next. A candidate with two exams and a scheduled third reads as somebody progressing; the same candidate without the scheduled third reads as somebody who gave up two years ago.

Work in actuarial vocabulary

Reserving written as triangles, chain ladder, Bornhuetter-Ferguson and IBNR by segment. Pricing written as indications, trend, credibility weighting, relativities and filings. These are the words a reviewer searches for, and generic analytics language does not substitute for them.

Size of the book, not the dollars

Lines of business owned, reserve segments reviewed, number of policies or claims in the dataset, states filed in, model runtime. Scale described in exposures and segments is specific and verifiable in a way that a premium figure is not.

ATS friendly

Actuarial openings are screened on literal strings - Exam P, Exam FM, ASA, FCAS, GLM, SQL, Prophet, AXIS, ResQ. Spell the exam names the way the syllabus spells them, keep one column so the parser does not interleave the exam table into your bullets, use MM/YYYY dates, and never put the exam list in a two-column table or a graphic.

Sample resume text

Use it as a reference: keep the structure and wording, put in your own facts and numbers.

Ethan Pruitt

Actuarial Analyst, Personal Lines Pricing (ACAS candidate)
Hartford, CT
ethan.pruitt@example.com
(860) 555-0144
linkedin.com/in/example

Profile

Actuarial Analyst in property-casualty personal lines pricing, 3 years. ACAS candidate - Exams P, FM, MAS-I, MAS-II and Exam 5 passed, Exam 6 sitting 04/2026, all three VEE credits complete. Own the quarterly rate indication for private passenger auto in 7 states on roughly 1.1 million earned exposures, build frequency and severity GLMs in Emblem and R, and produced the exhibits behind 4 approved rate filings. Rebuilt the indication pipeline in SQL and Python and cut the run from two days to four hours.

Experience

Actuarial Analyst, Personal Lines Pricing07/2024 - present

Northvale Mutual Insurance, Hartford, CT

  • Own the quarterly rate indication for private passenger auto in 7 states on roughly 1.1 million earned exposures, including on-levelling, loss development, trend selection and the expense and profit provision
  • Build frequency and severity GLMs in Emblem for 14 rating variables, validate with holdout samples and actual-versus-expected testing, and deploy the class plan through Radar
  • Prepared the actuarial exhibits and memoranda behind 4 approved rate filings in 2025, including two rounds of regulator objection responses on territory definitions
  • Ran the dislocation and capping analysis for a class plan refresh and presented the policyholder impact distribution to the product committee
  • Rebuilt the monthly indication data pipeline in SQL and Python, cutting the run from two days of manual Excel work to four hours with automated reconciliation checks
Actuarial Assistant, Reserving06/2023 - 06/2024

Garnet Ridge Casualty Company, Hartford, CT

  • Produced quarterly reserve reviews for 9 segments across commercial auto and general liability in ResQ, using chain ladder, Bornhuetter-Ferguson and frequency-severity methods
  • Built and maintained paid and incurred loss development triangles with 12 years of development and documented every method selection for the appointed actuary's review
  • Analysed case reserve adequacy and large loss emergence and flagged a reserving change in one segment that was adopted in the following quarterly review
  • Automated the triangle data extract in SQL, removing a recurring two-day manual step each quarter
Actuarial Intern, Pricing05/2022 - 08/2022

Garnet Ridge Casualty Company, Hartford, CT

  • Fitted a severity GLM on roughly 180,000 homeowners claims in R and produced the lift chart and validation summary presented to the pricing team
  • Compiled competitor rate comparison exhibits from publicly filed rate manuals for three states
  • Documented the internship model in a handover note that the team reused for the following year's analysis

Education

University of Connecticut2019 - 2023

Bachelor of Science, Actuarial Science, minor in Statistics

Skills

Rate indications and overall loss cost analysisLoss development triangles, chain ladder and Bornhuetter-FergusonFrequency and severity GLMs with holdout validationTerritory and class plan relativities, credibility weightingOn-levelling, premium and loss trend selectionRate filing exhibits, memoranda and objection responsesDislocation and capping analysisR, Python (pandas, scikit-learn), SQL, VBAEmblem and Radar, ResQ, Excel modellingTableau dashboards for pricing monitoring

Actuarial Exams and Credits

  • Exam 5 - Basic Techniques for Ratemaking and Estimating Claim Liabilities - passed 10/2025
  • Exam MAS-II - Modern Actuarial Statistics II - passed 04/2025
  • Exam MAS-I - Modern Actuarial Statistics I - passed 10/2024
  • Exam FM - Financial Mathematics - passed 11/2022
  • Exam P - Probability - passed 06/2022
  • VEE credits complete - Economics, Accounting and Finance, Mathematical Statistics
  • Exam 6 - Regulation and Financial Reporting - sitting 04/2026

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What you get

  • A complete actuarial resume sample
  • 3 PDF templates
  • The right way to write exams, VEE credits and the next sitting
  • 6 mistakes that cost actuarial interviews
Profile

Actuary profile summary

Three or four lines: your credential or exam position, the practice area, what you own, and the tooling. Practice area matters more here than in most professions, because life, health, retirement and property-casualty work are genuinely different jobs with different exams behind them. A reviewer wants to know within one line whether you are a reserving actuary on commercial auto or a valuation actuary on a term life block.

Entry level and credentialed resumes are weighted differently. Without experience, the paragraph leads with exams, coursework and the internship, and the tooling carries real weight because it is the part you can prove. With experience, exams drop to one clause and the paragraph leads with the segments you own, the indications or reserve reviews you deliver, and whether your work goes to a regulator, an auditor or a board.

WeakMotivated actuarial candidate with a strong mathematics and statistics background, excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, and proficiency in Microsoft Excel. Passed two actuarial exams and eager to begin a career in insurance.
StrongActuarial Analyst, property-casualty, 3 years in personal lines pricing. ACAS candidate - Exams P, FM, MAS-I, MAS-II and Exam 5 passed, Exam 6 sitting 04/2026, all three VEE credits complete. Own the rate indication for private passenger auto in 7 states, build GLM-based class plan and territory relativities in R and Emblem on a dataset of roughly 1.1 million earned exposures, and prepared the support exhibits for 4 approved rate filings. Rebuilt the monthly indication pipeline in SQL and Python and cut the run from two days to four hours.
Tip
Write the exam you are sitting next with its month and year, even if you have not sat it yet. It is the single line that separates an active candidate from somebody whose exam progress stalled, and reviewers look for it deliberately.
Skills

Actuarial skills for a resume

Three groups: the actuarial techniques, the software, and the data skills that increasingly decide who gets the interview. Name the techniques in their own words and name the software by product, because the gap between a resume that says statistical modelling and one that says GLMs in Emblem with Radar for deployment is the gap between a maybe and a phone screen.

Hard skills

  • Reserving: loss development triangles, chain ladder, Bornhuetter-Ferguson, expected loss ratio and frequency-severity methods, IBNR and case reserve analysis by segment
  • Pricing and ratemaking: loss cost and premium trend, on-levelling, loss development for pricing, credibility weighting, expense and profit provisions, overall rate indication
  • Classification ratemaking: territory and class plan relativities, deductible and limit factors, increased limit factors, and dislocation and capping analysis
  • Generalised linear models for frequency and severity, offset and interaction handling, model validation with lift charts, actual-versus-expected and holdout testing
  • Experience studies: mortality, lapse, morbidity and expense assumptions, credibility and assumption setting documentation
  • Valuation and reserving for life and health: statutory and GAAP reserves, cash-flow testing, and long-duration targeted improvements for life blocks
  • Capital and risk: economic capital modelling, risk-based capital reporting, own risk and solvency assessment work and reinsurance structure analysis
  • Rate filings and regulatory support: filing exhibits, actuarial memoranda, objection responses and documentation of methodology
  • Software screened by name: Excel with VBA, R, Python with pandas, numpy and scikit-learn, SQL, SAS, Prophet, AXIS, ResQ, Emblem and Radar, Tableau and Power BI
  • Actuarial standards of practice and documentation discipline - producing work another actuary can review and reproduce

Soft skills

  • Explaining why the indication is plus nine when the business wants plus three
  • Writing documentation a reviewing actuary can follow a year later without asking you
  • Defending an assumption to a regulator or an auditor without overclaiming its precision
  • Noticing that a data pull looks wrong before it reaches a reserve review
  • Study discipline over several hundred hours a sitting while holding a full workload
  • Asking the underwriter what actually changed in the book instead of modelling around it
  • Saying that the data will not support the segmentation somebody wants
  • Presenting a model to people who will never read the formula
  • Handing a model over to the next analyst with the assumptions written down
  • Checking your own work against a crude benchmark before trusting the output
Experience

How to write actuarial experience

Formula: what you owned plus the size of it plus the technique plus the tool plus where the output went. 'Performed actuarial analysis' is not experience. Which lines of business, how many segments or states, which method, in which software, and whether the result went into a filing, a reserve opinion, a pricing decision or a financial statement.

Where the output goes is the part candidates undersell, and it is the part that proves seniority. Work that feeds a rate filing, a statement of actuarial opinion, a reserve review signed by an appointed actuary or a quarterly valuation carries accountability that an internal study does not. Say it. Internships should be written the same way as jobs - four or five bullets with scale and tooling, not one line listing the department you sat in.

Weak- Assisted with pricing analysis and reserve reviews using Excel and SQL. Prepared reports for management and supported various actuarial projects.
Strong- Own the quarterly rate indication for private passenger auto in 7 states on roughly 1.1 million earned exposures, building frequency and severity GLMs in Emblem, credibility-weighting territory and class relativities, and producing the exhibits behind 4 approved rate filings including two rounds of objection responses.
What to include
Lines of business and states or segments owned - policy or claim counts in the dataset - method named (chain ladder, Bornhuetter-Ferguson, GLM, experience study) - software by product - where the output went: filing, reserve review, valuation, pricing decision - any runtime or process improvement with the before and after.
Education

Exams, VEE credits and education

The exam track is the qualification, and it belongs on the page in its own section with dates. The Society of Actuaries route for life, health, retirement and finance work runs through Exam P on probability, Exam FM on financial mathematics, FAM, SRM on statistics for risk modelling, PA on predictive analytics and ALTAM or ASTAM, plus three Validation by Educational Experience credits in economics, accounting and finance, and mathematical statistics, leading to the Associate designation and then the Fellowship with a chosen track. The Casualty Actuarial Society route for property-casualty work runs through Exams P and FM, MAS-I and MAS-II, Exam 5 on ratemaking and reserving, then Exam 6 on regulation and financial reporting to the Associate designation, and Exams 7, 8 and 9 to Fellowship. Write whichever track you are on and never mix the two.

  • An Exams section placed above Experience while you are a candidate, with exam name, pass month and year, one per line
  • The next sitting written explicitly - 'Exam 6 - sitting 04/2026' - because its absence is read as stalled progress
  • VEE credits listed as complete or named individually: economics, accounting and finance, mathematical statistics
  • The credential written exactly: ASA, FSA with the track, ACAS or FCAS. If you are not credentialed, write candidate, never the designation itself
  • Modules and e-learning completed on either track, since they are a real part of the requirement and reviewers know the sequence
  • Degree in actuarial science, mathematics, statistics, economics or a quantitative field, with relevant coursework in probability, regression, time series, stochastic processes and computing
  • Membership and professional development: continuing education hours if you are credentialed, and any actuarial club or case competition at student level
Careful
Never write ASA, FSA, ACAS or FCAS unless the designation has been awarded. Those are registered professional credentials, membership is checkable, and claiming one you have not earned is a professional conduct issue rather than a resume exaggeration. Candidate with the sections listed is the correct wording.
No experience

Entry level actuarial resume with no experience

Entry-level actuarial hiring is one of the most formulaic screens in any profession, and that works in your favour because you know exactly what is being looked for: exams passed, exams scheduled, VEE progress, programming ability and any internship. Two exams passed before graduation is the practical threshold most teams look for, and an exam scheduled on top of that matters as much as the ones behind you.

Where candidates lose ground is the technical section. Almost every applicant writes advanced Excel; far fewer can write R or Python with a project behind it, and fewer still can write SQL and mean it. Put one or two projects on the page with the dataset size, the method and the result - a GLM fitted on a public claims dataset with validation, a survival analysis, a simulation of a simple reinsurance structure. A project with real data is the only evidence a graduate can offer that they can do the work rather than pass the exams.

  • Exams passed with dates and at least one exam scheduled, placed at the top of the page above education
  • VEE credits complete or in progress, named individually
  • One or two quantitative projects with dataset size, technique and outcome - not coursework titles
  • Programming named honestly at a stated level: R, Python with pandas, SQL, VBA, and Excel depth described rather than claimed
  • Internship or part-time analytical work written as output: records handled, model built, report delivered, software used

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Mistakes

Common mistakes

Exams buried under education

At candidate level the exam block is the most important section on the page and it belongs above experience and education. Putting it last, or folding it into a certifications list at the bottom, hides the one thing the reviewer opened the file to find.

No next sitting on the page

Exams passed with no scheduled exam is an ambiguous signal, and reviewers resolve the ambiguity pessimistically - either the progress stopped or a sitting went badly. One line with a month and a year removes the doubt entirely.

Strong mathematical skills as a claim

Everyone applying has a quantitative degree, so the claim carries no information. Replace it with a method and a dataset: a GLM on a stated number of exposures, a triangle analysis across stated segments, a simulation with its assumptions.

Internships written as one line each

A summer in a reserving team is the most relevant thing a graduate has, and compressing it to a job title and dates wastes it. Four bullets with the segments, the method, the software and what you delivered is worth more than every course on your transcript.

A designation claimed before it is awarded

ASA, FSA, ACAS and FCAS are awarded credentials with checkable membership. Writing one you have not been granted is a professional conduct problem, not an optimistic rounding, and the profession is small enough that it surfaces fast.

Analytics language instead of actuarial language

Data-driven insights, stakeholder reporting, business intelligence - these read as a generic analyst resume pointed at an actuarial opening. Triangles, IBNR, on-levelling, credibility, relativities, experience study, indication. Use the vocabulary of the work or the reviewer will assume you have not done it.

Takeaways

Takeaways

Remember

  • Exam section at the top while you are a candidate
  • Every exam with a pass date, plus the next sitting
  • Practice area stated in the first line
  • Scale in exposures, claims, segments or states
  • Software by product name - R, SQL, Prophet, ResQ, Emblem
  • Candidate, never a designation you do not hold
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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Two passed is the practical threshold most entry-level actuarial teams look for, and a third scheduled makes the profile read as actively moving. Beyond that, what matters is the pace and the direction: three exams passed in eighteen months with a fourth booked tells a clearer story than five exams spread over six years with nothing scheduled. Write the dates and let the pace speak.
Write the one you are actually on, and write it consistently. The Society of Actuaries route leads to life, health, retirement and finance work; the Casualty Actuarial Society route leads to property-casualty pricing and reserving. The first two exams are shared, so an early candidate can honestly say they are undecided, but listing a mixture of later exams from both tracks reads as confusion about which career you are pursuing.
They compress. A fellow does not need a line-by-line exam list; the designation plus the track - FSA, Individual Life and Annuities, or FCAS - carries all of it. Move the credential to the header and one line of the profile, and give the top of the page to the segments you own, the reserve reviews or indications you sign off on, and the governance your work goes through.
Use exposures and counts rather than premium or reserves. Lines of business owned, states filed in, reserve segments reviewed, number of policies or claims in the dataset, years of development in the triangle, number of rating variables in the class plan. These are more informative than a dollar figure anyway, because they describe the complexity of the work rather than the size of the company that gave it to you.
Enough to be named specifically. Excel with VBA is still the baseline, SQL is close to mandatory because the data rarely arrives clean, and R or Python is what separates two otherwise identical candidates - particularly for predictive analytics and GLM work. Name the libraries if you use them, say what you built, and give one runtime or process improvement with a before and after, because that is the form of evidence a hiring manager can picture immediately.
It happens, but the resume has to do real translation work rather than hoping the reviewer does it. The transferable parts are the statistical method, the data discipline, documentation to actuarial standards and the exam track overlap at the start. The non-transferable parts are the reserving and valuation frameworks and the software, so be explicit about which exams you have on the new track and which tools you have taught yourself. A crossing resume that pretends the two are interchangeable reads as naive.
Usually the exam table. Candidates like to lay exams out in two or three columns to save space, and a parser reads columns across rather than down, so 'Exam P 06/2024' and 'Exam FM 11/2024' come back interleaved into unreadable fragments or dropped entirely. Keep the exam list as plain single-column lines, spell exam names the way the syllabus spells them, use MM/YYYY dates consistently, and keep the whole document to one column with standard headings.
Yes - the full sample above, and all three templates on this page. You can build your own resume from any of them in the builder for free and see the finished layout; downloading the PDF is paid, either by subscription or as a one-time payment. The templates keep the exam section as parseable single-column lines, which is the part of an actuarial resume that most often breaks in a screening system.
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