This week’s Share your Story blog features Rehan Siddique FCAS, MAAA and Vice President & Board Member of the South Asian Network of Actuaries (SANA)
Marilyn: Tell us a little bit about yourself…
Rehan: I graduated from Purdue University in Indiana in 2016, and I’ve had a few different jobs since then. I started off at Milliman in Milwaukee doing P&C consulting for a couple years, then moved to Chicago to do P&C consulting work for Oliver Wyman. After the 2020 pandemic started, my wife and I moved to Seattle to get a change of scenery. We were there for about three years, and then last summer, we moved back to Chicago.
Given my interest in climate related work, I came back to Milliman after I got my fellowship. I’m doing a lot of really interesting private work, which is exactly where I want it to be in my career. Other than that, I also do personal lines pricing for Home and Auto. My office is based out of San Francisco, so I fly there a few times a year. California and Florida are my main markets, and then wherever else I can help with in terms of our climate research, like wildfires and floods.
Marilyn: What was your experience with the exams?
Rehan: I started my first exam in 2013 after my freshman year of college and then I took about one exam per year on average. I got my fellowship in 2021. I went to an actuarial program at Purdue University, so they helped with some of those early exams. I failed three sittings over the course of my exam taking career (Exams C, S, and 6). After passing Exam 6, I passed my fellowship exams on the first try.
I like the structure and stability of the exam process , and I feel like that’s what attracts a lot of people. I mean, it wasn’t fun, but it was. It becomes such a part of your life that you get used to it and you can advance your career that way.
Aisha: So how did you start with SANA?
Rehan: In 2021 I got my fellowship, and I was already volunteering with the CAS in what is now the candidate advocacy working group (CAWG). I thought “I want to help in whatever way I can” and at that time a lot of the DEI groups were starting to pop up. I thought “let’s see if there’s anything South Asian related”, and I just so happened to see something on my LinkedIn feed posted by Ritu Jain, the founder of SANA. At the time, we had no LinkedIn presence or anything, so I really have no idea how it popped up (thanks algorithm). This was before the organization had officially launched and I reached out to her directly to let her know I wanted to volunteer. SANA wasn’t even a 501(C)(3) certified group yet.
SANA was formed entirely by SOA people, and they all worked at Prudential at the time. So I think they were looking for someone outside of that group. I came in with a P&C background working in consulting, which I think really helped. I also brought a different perspective from the rest of the board as a Muslim and Pakistani-American. I came in as director of networking at the time when we didn’t really have many other work streams going on. I was in that role for about a year and a half, and then I joined the board at the beginning of 2023.
Aisha: Yes, it’s crazy to see the progression of SANA. And it seems it started very small and now it’s a fairly large organization!
Rehan: It has been crazy, the growth has really been exponential as people across the world are seeing the value in an international actuarial organization dedicated to South Asians. We are starting to raise more money from our great sponsors, which is also enabling us to launch initiatives like our scholarship and career fairs.
Aisha: What is SANA’s mission?
Rehan: Our mission is to establish a strong network of current and aspiring South Asian actuaries worldwide and provide professional advancement opportunities, early actuarial education, support and broader community upliftment. So that’s the one liner, but it doesn’t really encapsulate all the good we are doing right now and hope to keep doing.
Aisha: How can someone become a member or volunteer?
Rehan: We’re active on LinkedIn, and we have a website, it’s SANAactuaries.org. If people are interested, you can go there. There are links on how to register and how to become a volunteer. You can join our mailing list, and our director of membership can reach out to have an ‘onboarding’ call to become a member or volunteer. I would say our LinkedIn page is where we get most of our engagement.
Aisha: What are your current offerings for members? And what are some of the strategic initiatives going forward?
Rehan: There’s a lot going on right now. I’ll start with mentorship. That’s the big one, and we are really trying to grow in that regard. One of the goals for us this year is to try to attract more senior actuaries to join SANA and volunteer with our mentorship program. Right now, most of our members are people with less than five years of experience and college students, which is great, we want to help as much as we can to help them advance in their career and help them find jobs. But we want to get more senior actuaries who are willing to help the community and help those younger actuaries or college students understand what the profession is.
I think one thing that’s not really talked about in the actuarial profession is that most of necessary skills and knowledge needed on a day-to-day basis as a successful actuary isn’t really taught in the exams, it’s taught on the job. That’s why mentorship is so crucial to this career and to becoming a good actuary.
Another goal is to get that cross pollination between US, Europe, and the South Asian region and other big diaspora communities, like Singapore, Malaysia, Australia. There are a lot of people of South Asian descent there who are second third, fourth, fifth generation South Asians and so we want to connect all those communities.
So that’s the first thing, mentorship and knowledge. We really want to give that opportunity to our members.
Second is networking events. We have been doing virtual for the longest time and last year, we started moving more to in person events because COVID had been winding down and we got funding. The main locations for our in-person events are the San Francisco area, Chicago, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, and Denver. Those are usually a coffee chat in the morning, or a happy hour type situation.
DW Simpson recently sponsored a SANA Cocktail hour at Parlor Pizza in Chicago this summer where over 40 guests attended.
Another one of our big goals for this past year was our scholarship. In our inaugural class of SANA Scholars, we had five recipients. These recipients had their exam registration costs covered as well as a 6-month full access subscription to Coaching Actuaries with a renewal for those who fail their exam the first time. We believe this puts students in the best possible position to pass an exam. It’s an all-woman cast of scholarship recipients, which we’re pretty proud of. We have two people who were born and raised in the US, one from Pakistan, one from Bangladesh, and one from Sri Lanka. Global reach has been important for me. We are hoping to do two rounds of scholarships every year to help pay for exams, so that’s another direct financial benefit for our members.
The next offering is professional development. We do host things like resume workshops. We’re trying to reach out to universities to partner with their actuarial clubs, and we’re hoping to start our professional or continuing education offerings. So, partnering with more senior actuaries looking for an opportunity to present, we’re hoping to give them a platform and offer more senior actuaries who need their continuing education credits to attend and get an hour’s worth of credits or something.
In terms of upcoming events, we have a career fair on Thursday, August 22nd, 2024. This will be a virtual event and DW Simpson will have a booth there.
Marilyn: I remember we talked about some of that at the cocktail party (SANA happy hour sponsored by DW Simpson). That’s great, that you guys have made all these initiatives happen, especially the scholarship.
Rehan: The scholarship was a lot of work. But you know, that was something that I was passionate about last year. I want to get this going because so many times we think, ‘Well, why do I want to join SANA?’ All these things are great, but here’s the money in your pocket! Let us pay for your exam, your study material. That’s by far the biggest barrier to this career and that was always huge for me. I’m glad we finally did it.
Aisha: What are some of the main takeaways you hope the actuarial communities learns from SANA?
Rehan: I think that’s a tough question. The main takeaways I would say are that there are more South Asian actuaries than you think and in the South Asian region, in particular, their economies are all in a place that actuarial expertise is just beginning. India is definitely the most developed in the region economically and they’re already a beacon of what it looks like to have a successful economic growth and actuarial growth in a really great way. We really want to help other countries in the region to enjoy a similar growth so actuarial opportunities continue to increase. Partnering with SOA, CAS, and hopefully some other actuarial organizations in the region as well, is a way that we can help promote that actuarial growth with our partners in those countries. We can help them get students to take exams, train them, give them access to seminars, etc. We can give them the opportunity to network, not just with the Western actuaries like me who live in the US, but also just amongst each other.
What you find right now is that there’s a lot of outsourcing of work. For example, actuaries in India will outsource their work to companies in Nepal, US firms will outsource work to India, Middle East firms will outsource to Pakistan…etc. The thing that people take away is that there is a lot of opportunity for actuarial science in general in the South Asia region, and a lot of opportunity to learn from each other. The industries are so different, everyone’s doing things in a completely different way, so you can increase your own ability by interacting with all these people from all over the world .
Aisha: And I know you talked about the upcoming projects, and events, you talked about the networking event in Chicago. Do you have any last closing thoughts or advice for future actuaries?
Rehan: I think the advice I appreciated most is not being afraid to cold email or not being scared to just have that conversation with someone. It can be hard to get out of your comfort zone and just shoot a LinkedIn message to someone and I have been embracing that a lot in the last couple of years. Even if I just have a question about something and I am on LinkedIn, and I see some actuary talking about wildfire risk or something, I’ll just shoot them a message asking about their thoughts.
Talking to someone that you never really met is so important. Virtually or in person at conferences, go talk to people because the actuarial world is so small, and there’s so much knowledge out there. You never know what people are working on and there is plenty of innovative and cutting-edge stuff that is happening in the actuarial world. Just having access to that pool of people is amazing. So, get out there, just talk to people.
Marilyn: Yeah, I think that’s great advice. It’s important to capitalize on your curiosity and the actuarial community is filled with a lot of curious and intelligent people.