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Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

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Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#151

Post by gruez »

gizmo686 wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 'scam' seems to be insofar as wealthy and powerful entities can exploit the functional inability of those less wealthy and powerful to meet them on even terms in the legal system. Even without insurance or greater wealth, a party from whom you believe a liability should exist who has no interest in paying could have done the same thing here. If you aren't willing to sue over a disputed liability, it might as we…

> Any proposal to do that in effect makes the police investigation a court of first instance, which either means creating additional procedural rights that apply before it can be completed (driving up costs) or a very real denial of due process. Not nessasarily. The 'additional weight' could still be something that requires a suit to take advantage of directly, but which the threat of compels behavior. For example, m…

>3) Ought to have known you were liable

How would that even be defined? Is it just based on the balance of evidence available? We already have something for this. If one party is really obviously guilty, then the other party can call for a summary judgement and skip much of the expensive trial.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#152

Post by sjg007 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #50
dhosek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather got his architecture license without a college degree (in the 1920s). He often related riding down to Champagne, IL to take the exam in the rumble seat of a Model T Ford with a couple college grads to take the exam. He passed the exam and they both failed. I was somewhat surprised watching the Perry Mason series on HBO last year when Perry Mason was sworn to the bar without actually going to any sort o…

> was sworn to the bar without actually going to any sort of law school. It can still be done today in most US states. Also, note that even the self-represented can take on a government and win. See Jim Pattison's (Canadian billionaire) tax hearings vs. the Crown (Canada), which he won after a decade of litigation. Multiple prosecutors and judges retired during that time period. Besides developing further tax filing…

Seems like billionaire lawyer insurance would be a good market.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#153

Post by tzs »

xeRTRex wrote: post #118

One of the most frustrating aspects of the process is that once outside of insurance/insurance-adjacent industries, the credentials are useless. I have my FSA (fellowship of the SOA) and CERA (chartered enterprise risk analyst) from the SOA. I no longer wanted to work in insurance and left for data science. I felt the need to obtain a graduate degree to feel qualified enough for the data science space. My Master's de…

> you're constrained to legacy industries

Is insurance really a legacy industry?

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#154

Post by gruez »

SilasX wrote: post #116
dragonwriter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you call someone who victimizes people he know have a disadvantage in suing him? A for-profit business. Sure, unequal, wealth-gated practical access to the courts is a real problem, and it impacts basically every area of American society. But it doesn't make mandatory auto liability insurance a scam, any more than it makes literally every commercial industry a scam.

The claim I was defending was that the way auto liability insurance is done is a scam, not that the concept of requiring liability insurance is a scam. Looking back, the original post's comment on that point was a final aside that was ambiguous. But my defense is of the charitable interpretation of that remark. Any auto liability insurance system should be written to avoid that kind of gaming.

>The claim I was defending was that the way auto liability insurance is done is a scam

Seems like it's working as intended? The purpose of auto liability insurance is to... insure the policyholder from liability. If you're not the policyholder, it's not working for you. If you're a policy and you're not experiencing losses stemming from your liability (ie. you crashed your own car), it's not covered. Others in this thread seem to think it's a general purpose mechanism for making all parties involved whole, which is a misunderstanding.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#155

Post by wwweston »

gizmo686 wrote: post #68
romwell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side story about how satisfied people can be with the mandated insurance. I was on coast-to-coast road trip when I got into an accident in TX. Someone was trying to pass me on the left in a turning lane, veered into the incoming lane, and then hit my vehicle's front wheels from the back. The police ticketed the other driver, and told me that insurance will surely take care of that on my side. "Wow, it's worse than we…

Whats the scam? The insurance company was hired to provide insurance for the other driver. By all accounts they did so. If the other driver had no insurance, your options would have been the same: hope they pay out of good will, or sue them. The public policy motivation for liability insurance is to protect the lawsuit route. If you sue an uninsured driver and win, you might not be able to collect (getting blood from…

> You choose to drive with only liabilty insurance, and are upset that insurance didn't cover an accident when you had no liability.

Seems clear to me he's upset the other driver's liability insurance isn't covering the accident in a case where law enforcement and others see clear liability for that other driver, and other driver's insurer's reasons seem to more or less amount to "you haven't legally compelled me to pay yet, and probably won't."

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#156

Post by nicoburns »

dragonwriter wrote: post #117
lostcolony wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police report, however, did. Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of law" is to abdicate corporations of all responsibility other than profit making. Just because a person can't afford justice doesn't mean we should accept injustice.

> The police report, however, did. Police reports are evidence that can support a finding of liability, but they are not a legal establishment of liability. There are very good reasons (the due process clause of the 14th Amendment comes to mind) why that should be the case, it's not a scam.. > Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of…

So you don’t think corporations have any responsibility to act ethically?

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#157

Post by _t4za »

d136o wrote: post #120
gurchik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there insurance products that people are really satisfied with and trust will pay out in case of event X? I've always been happy with renter's insurance and have paid it since my first apartment in college. I pay $100/yr for a 50k limit policy. Unlike car insurance I am not required to have this, but I've always considered it to be worth it. I also pay for pet insurance. Again, not required to have it but when…

Thank you for the positive example! Have you had to get anything paid out from renters insurance? Pet insurance seems like a great business to be in… is there anything that requires you to actually have pet insurance? Would it cover costs from your pet hurting someone else? Or is it more to cover pet health costs? Really curious to know the ways it’s similar or not to US human health insurance hah

I've never made a renter's insurance claim.

Pet insurance is only for emergency and/or life-threatening injuries and conditions, and surgeries and other costs related to them. Think getting hit by a car or getting cancer. It doesn't cover vaccinations, annual visits, and tests done for preventative measures. This is the main difference between pet insurance and US human health insurance since if I understand correctly, most (all?) medical plans offered in the US are required to provide preventative coverage for annual visits, vaccinations, etc.

My pets are young and healthy so 100% of their medical costs are preventative which made me consider cancelling my policy. For reference I pay $65/mo for my policy which covers three pets. In my area an annual exam and vaccination series for the three pets costs $300 so about 2/3rds of my annual pet medical expenses is "wasted" on premiums. But a minor accident that could happen to any pet ended up costing more than a year's worth of premiums and it was nearly 100% covered by insurance without a deductible applying.

I've still paid more in premiums than I've gotten back (which is obvious; how else does the insurance make a profit?). I was considering self-insuring instead by taking the money I was spending on premiums and putting it into a savings account. After doing some research on emergency procedures I realized that in some rare circumstances a single injury could cost a decade of premiums. If this happened multiple times I'd have to make a tough decision to put down the pet simply because I couldn't afford the procedure. These pets didn't ask to be brought into this world and are often abused and neglected before becoming adopted. They deserve a long and healthy life if one is possible. I'd rather "waste" a few hundred dollars a year for the peace of mind that I can afford to treat any illness or injury that occurs.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#158

Post by gurchik »

heavyset_go wrote: post #74
gurchik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there insurance products that people are really satisfied with and trust will pay out in case of event X? I've always been happy with renter's insurance and have paid it since my first apartment in college. I pay $100/yr for a 50k limit policy. Unlike car insurance I am not required to have this, but I've always considered it to be worth it. I also pay for pet insurance. Again, not required to have it but when…

> I also pay for pet insurance. Again, not required to have it but when I considered cancelling and self-insuring I filed a claim and was immediately paid out hassle free. That convinced me to keep it. Don't get rid of it, the cost of healthcare for pets is quickly reaching the cost of healthcare for humans.

I believe it. I had a high deductible health insurance plan and had a serious injury that required a hospital stay. Even though I paid for all of it before meeting my deductible, it was still cheaper than the medical costs I have spent on one of my three pets who is actually young and very healthy, but accidents happen.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#159

Post by opensandwich »

Another actuary checking in from Institute of Actuaries Australia - I'm a "qualified" actuary (associate level) who decided to not even try for the fellowship exams and instead change course completely and do a PhD in Machine Learning.

No one outside of the actuarial industry cares or really knows what it means to be an actuary. Having an actuarial background in non-traditional actuarial areas is almost more of a curse than a blessing as people don't really know what to do with you. Furthermore actuaries seem to demand a premium for a cohort that don't have strong enough grounding to do ML research or enough development chops to be an ML engineer. So you end up competing with other people in the data science field...It really is a weird position to be in.

Re: Want to be an actuary? Odds are, you’ll fail the test

#160

Post by nwiswell »

nicoburns wrote: post #156
dragonwriter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The police report, however, did. Police reports are evidence that can support a finding of liability, but they are not a legal establishment of liability. There are very good reasons (the due process clause of the 14th Amendment comes to mind) why that should be the case, it's not a scam.. > Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of…

So you don’t think corporations have any responsibility to act ethically?

> responsibility to act ethically

They have the opposite responsibility, if anything... They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and considering that the behavior being suggested here would see them quickly run out of business by their less-moral competition, it would probably be a breach of that duty.

The solution is to change laws about redress. For example, statutory punitive damages and attorneys' fees in lawsuits against insurers where the final judgement is significantly different from the insurer's initial offer.

Talk about what is ethical is idle because that simply does not drive corporate behavior.

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