Was an actuary for 8 years, got my Associateship (roughly halfway through the progression to Fellow). Failed a few of the exams a couple of times, passed a few on the first try. At the time, each exam had a roughly 40-60% pass rate, so by the time you get to the 4th or 5th exam, you are dealing with a pretty smart, invested group...AND it is still difficult to pass.
My job mainly consisted of statistics and data applied specifically to insurance, which I found very boring. I was in life insurance, which is quite simple (people only die once!). Health insurance would have been more interesting, but I am in favor of single payor, so this would have been difficult for me. Property & Casualty (vehicles, property, events, umbrella, custom, etc) would have been the most interesting.
Once I decided to leave, I got an MBA (core courses were trivial due to actuarial knowledge of stats, finance, econ, accounting, etc), and ended up in Analytics/DataScience at tech companies, where my skills transferred quite well.
My job mainly consisted of statistics and data applied specifically to insurance, which I found very boring. I was in life insurance, which is quite simple (people only die once!). Health insurance would have been more interesting, but I am in favor of single payor, so this would have been difficult for me. Property & Casualty (vehicles, property, events, umbrella, custom, etc) would have been the most interesting.
Once I decided to leave, I got an MBA (core courses were trivial due to actuarial knowledge of stats, finance, econ, accounting, etc), and ended up in Analytics/DataScience at tech companies, where my skills transferred quite well.