Curtis Lee Robbins, ASA, MAAA, FCA
Years in the field: 36
Current Company: Greenwood Consultants
How/ When did you find out about Actuarial Science?
As an excellent student in mathematics with an interest in business and social sciences, I was introduced to actuarial science through a parent of a friend while in college at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Ball State offered a major in Actuarial Science and minor in Business. My advisor was a well-known statistical research actuary and professor, John Beekman. Prior to my senior year, I gained understanding of practical employment as a summer intern at what was then known as American United Life in Indianapolis, Indiana. I completed two exams prior to graduation and, after being named “outstanding senior in Actuarial Science”, my career path began through my first position at a life insurance company in Indianapolis.
Why did you want to be an actuary?
Several aspects of the actuarial profession appealed to me. First, I was able to utilize my skills in mathematics and computer science as well as my interest in business. Second, as an actuary I would be part of a respected profession and community accompanied by a credential designation. Third, actuaries were relatively few in number with a secure, stable, and in-demand career path. Last but not least, many specialty tracks provided career options which proved to be of great value as I consider my career over the years.
What was your first actuarial job or internship? What made you switch to non-actuarial later in your career?
As noted above, my first practical experience was a summer internship before my senior year at Ball State. In the days of early computers and calculators, manual spreadsheets served as a way of learning how to engage process and reporting with accuracy as a necessity! After graduation, my first full-time position allowed me more opportunities to work with life and annuity calculations using a computer and analysis including the new, sophisticated matrix-oriented APL programming language. I also gained early experience in corporate financial forecasting utilizing a model for 10-year projections based on a variety of parameters.
As my career progressed, I eventually moved to AFLAC where I engaged the use of a group life pricing model through an automated process for our underwriters, collaborating with our data processing department. My people skills were recognized, and I was invited to join International Operations supporting supplemental health products in Japan and other countries, traveling to review pricing assumptions and gaining statistical information to support our IBNR work for U.S. reporting. Looking to gain more experience in traditional health products, I joined Life of Georgia in Atlanta where I worked with a new Strategic Business Unit focused on growing the individual health business for a wide range of new comprehensive, supplemental health, long-term care, and Medicare Supplement products. After gaining my credentials as an ASA and MAAA, I joined Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Indiana in an FSA-level role leading the small-group markets during early health-care reform initiatives. BCBS of Indiana, which became Anthem, provided the experience for my next FSA-level role at Empire BCBS in New York where I led the large group markets and provided support for improving productivity for the entire actuarial department, and defining roles and career paths for non-actuarial support team members. With my interest in health care reform, I then joined the BCBS Association in Chicago supporting system-wide health trends, utilization, actuarial policy, and oversight for Brand Protection and Financial Services. In my desire to move back into a more traditional corporate role, I had the opportunity to move back to New York City supporting AIG as their Chief International Accident and Health Actuary supporting over 70 countries. After the events of 9/11, I relocated to Florida and joined a non-traditional Chief Actuary role supporting utilization and statistics for a home-health consulting company. I found the opportunity to return to a conventional actuarial role in another FSA-level position with a mutual company in Michigan supporting individual products, including new HSA-based high-deductible health plans. A brief time later, I was invited to join Humana to lead professional development for actuaries working with Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement product actuaries. In this role, I worked closely with Human Resources and our Learning Professionals to engage and support many ideas in actuarial services including disciplined selection, a promotion process, a qualification process, a recognition program, a rotation program and performance reviews. Professional development was successful and recognized corporate-wide with new leadership by Human Resources and the new incoming Chief Actuary. I finished my remaining years at Humana as Director of Actuarial Services in Puerto Rico and supporting Acquired Blocks in Corporate Actuarial.
Preceding and after retirement from Humana, Rich Junker and I teamed together in supporting and championing professional development for the actuarial profession by advancing engagement of the Society of Actuaries Competency Framework.
What made you decide to join SOA vs CAS?
Very simply, the Society of Actuaries offered more options in a variety of practice areas that were of interest to me. Over the years, I appreciate both the SOA and the CAS. In my experience with the SOA, the quality of professionalism and leadership is evident considering the SOA’s response to change and recognition of their growing role in supporting advancement of the profession. In addition to excellent support, the SOA has offered many opportunities for me in volunteer and leadership roles supporting health care reform topics on cost, quality, and access as well as platforms to contribute written articles to Leadership and Development, Actuaries of the Future, and international sections newsletters.
Personal experience/journey with exam track? How long did it take you to get designated?
As noted above, I passed the first two exams before graduation from Ball State University. I passed my third exam after starting my first full-time role. Then, life took over with a newborn child in our family and exam four (Life Contingencies) took a few sittings. Before passing exam four and since I was early in my career, I took an alternative role outside the profession for about four years to explore my interest in computer science, joining a remote-computing company (yes, before the advent of desk-top computing), where I gained MBA-level experience with banks, manufacturing, and technology companies by training clients and using packaged software similar to the Microsoft tools of Word, Excel, Project Management, and database management. When Apple desk-top computing changed the world, I re-entered the actuarial profession while still early in my career. In the meantime, the SOA decided to change the exam structure, dividing all subject content into separate exams which lengthened my path to Associateship. Excluding the side-change to work outside the profession and considering the change to a longer exam structure, I completed my Associateship in seven years. In that time, I gained proficiency in competencies that would later qualify me for FSA-level roles and responsibilities, considering my ASA and MAAA credentials.
Richard Junker, FSA, MAAA
Years in the field: 55
Current Company: Greenwood Consultants
How/ When did you find out about Actuarial Science?
I attended a liberal arts school, the University of Iowa. I was a math major, but not until my senior year did I discover the possibility of a career as an actuary. In my final semester I happened to take the statistics course taught by Robert Hogg, unknown to me going in, the author of the text for the second actuarial examination back then. I reported to the University placement service and landed an interview with a mega-insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. Given that I had not yet even sat for the very first actuarial exam, I was dismissed as not vice-presidential material. A few weeks later I took the first actuarial exam and awaited the results. A couple of weeks previously, a recruiter had gotten me into the door at John Hancock in Boston, who offered me a job, IF I passed the first actuarial exam. Which I did with a minimum score of six, hanging on through the six-week wait for exam results, working at Manpower to subsist. With my mongrel pedigree, I was in the door!
Why did you want to be an actuary?
I was pretty good with math, when I first encountered algebra in ninth grade. But I was extremely good with Latin. Yet I could not imagine a career as a linguist, so I stuck with math. As the top grades continued flowing through college graduation, I still had no direction when my senior year dawned. It was at the university placement service that I finally connected with the obligation to find myself a livelihood. Given that I had landed a lucky number in the first Selective Service System’s draft lottery and would most likely not go to Vietnam for my first experience of independent adult living, identifying a career became a possibility.
It was an approach-avoidance trail that committed me to the profession. I worked at John Hancock for two years, enjoying modest success, passing three actuarial exams and paying off the last dollar of my college loans. As my reward, I headed for Munich, Germany, to see the 1972 Olympics and begin my life as a flaneur/vagabond over the next year. Returning home to Waterloo, Iowa, with $20 in my pocket, I said hello to my mother and took a job the next Monday at the best-paying job in town, the John Deere Tractor Factory, where my Uncle Augie and my Dad Herman had worked. I lasted four months chipping and grinding transmission cases in the foundry, accumulating a grubstake to make my actuarial comeback back East, determined to never see the inside of a factory in my long life! Having lived on subsistence for the three years of my time out, I left behind every vestige of leisure life yearnings, pounding out the remaining actuarial exams in five years. And never looked back.
What was your first actuarial job or internship? What made you switch to non-actuarial later in your career?
I have fond memories of my time at John Hancock in Boston. Until I boarded that plane for Hartford, I had never traveled beyond the Iowa state line. Boston was a dream that made seeing the world a real possibility. But my SECOND job three years later was like viewing my world in color for the first time, as I landed with a reinsurer in Greenwich, Connecticut. It might as well have been Emerald City, Oz, from my perspective. I was the first and only actuarial student, in a company of 65 employees, with three FSAs, whom I adored to a one. I felt myself transformed to a prince among royalty, so recently removed from anxiously nursing my fast-diminishing nest-egg. Reinsurance is a major marketing business, and I was soon invited to client lunches, absorbing all the discussions of underwriting, block reinsurance and deal-making. I chafed to be done with my current actuarial exam, so I could be on to the next exam, to approximate the infinite wisdom of my mentors, to be a PEER.
What made you decide to join SOA vs CAS?
The die was soft cast when I joined the John Hancock LIFE Insurance company. Then permanently cast when I hired on next with a LIFE reinsurer.
Personal experience/journey with exam track? How long did it take you to get designated?
Back then students had the option–faced the decision–to pursue an individual or an employee benefits track. Thinking of diversifying my future possibilities, I opted for the employee benefits track. I got through it all despite having zero work experience of employee benefits. But I adored all the defined benefits pension funding methods! Cool, cool stuff.
I failed three times. Coming off three years of slim living to a new town with no friends to distract me, I poured all my energy into finishing off the exams. Once on the treadmill of actuarial exams, I was determined to resume my former life of free choices as fast as possible. The plan on the final six-hour exam was to pass it, then transfer my new free time and my acute discipline to learning to play piano. I failed with a “5” and took the test over the next fall. By then I had had enough of solitary living, so the piano dream faded; alack, it remains Plan B on the agenda for my retirement years when my knees fail me.
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Questions & Article edited by Marilyn Simpson & Aisha Ali.
Be sure to keep your eye out for PART II, featuring Curtis Lee Robbins and Rich Junker’s new book, Design Your Future with the Competency Framework.