Maverick Actuaries

I was reading Maverick at Work by William Taylor and Polly LaBarre last night, just the first few chapters though. It mentioned that to be outstanding as an organization, you need to find out your true calling. Look at Southwest, they are in the "freedom business" to democratize the skies and people who work with southwest are the freedom fighters.

What values do actuaries stand for? Can actuaries be mavericks too? Other than dealing with numbers and reports everyday, what's the bigger picture? I remember one of my bosses told me that we are not just in the pension consulting business, we are not just merely pension actuaries who sign the funding valuation reports. We are in the retirement business.

In a way, we are in the freedom business too, an average person may work about 33 years (start working at 22 and retire at age 55). After all these years of hard work, all he/she wants, perhaps, is to have enough money to live through the retirement and do something he/she loves.

As a pension actuary, we can safeguard their retirement funds (i.e. make sure the company pension funds are well-funded and making contributions on time). Hence, when an individual retires, she has the freedom to do what she loves because she knows that her retirement fund is there for her.

What about other actuaries? For P&C actuaries (Property & Casualty), are they not in the lifestyle business? Since what type of cars and what house you live in is all about your living style, and hence, the need of auto and home insurance is part of the deal to your lifestyle right? (Just a thought)

P.S. I bought this book after reading the blogpost by Lori @ SmartLemming. Thanks Lori, I'm glad that I bought and read this book!