Most cover letter advice starts with the letter. Start with the form instead. The commonest waste of an evening in this cycle is a carefully written letter pasted into a box nobody asked for, on a form that was only ever going to judge you on a CV upload and four eligibility answers.
So the first job is ten minutes of reconnaissance per employer, and the second is writing only what that employer actually reads.
First, find out what you are being asked for
Four UK actuarial employers, four different demands. Every row is that employer's own wording on its own page, read on 2026-09-10.
| Employer | What the application asks you to produce | What comes next |
|---|---|---|
| WTW | "Apply online and attach your CV" | Online test and video interview, then a virtual assessment centre |
| Aon | A form capturing personal information and academic history, plus an eligibility check | Online assessments, video interview, shortlisting, assessment centre |
| KPMG | About 45 minutes: explore the role, then "tell us about your academic background" | Two online assessments, six recorded video answers, then Launch Pad |
| Broadstone | "Your CV and personal details, along with a supporting statement" | Screening call, then an assessment centre |
Three of the four never mention a cover letter.
WTW's 2027 Retirement Actuarial Graduate posting in London, read on 2026-09-10, lists six stages and opens with "Stage 1: Apply online and attach your CV". Nothing on it asks for prose. It does carry the sentence that decides your whole WTW strategy: "Please note that we do not accept multiple applications and you should only select and apply to one programme per year". Its closing date is stated as "Closing Date: 30th September 2026".
Aon's UK graduates page, read on 2026-09-10, describes stage one as "where we will capture your personal information and academic history, and check your eligibility for your intended stream", then online assessments, a video interview, shortlisting and an assessment centre of "group and individual exercises". No letter anywhere in it, and one warning worth acting on: "Assessments Centres begin prior to closing dates and applications may close early if roles are filled."
KPMG's applying page, read on 2026-09-10, budgets 45 minutes for stage one and describes it as "Learn more about KPMG and explore the role you're applying for. Then tell us about your academic background." The persuading you do for KPMG is not written at all: stage three is "Record answers to six interview questions".
Broadstone's early careers page, read on 2026-09-10, is the exception: "You will submit your CV and personal details, along with a supporting statement that provides us with more detail about you." A supporting statement is a cover letter with a different label, and it has to do the same four jobs.
When a letter is worth writing, and when it is not
Three situations, and realistically only three.
- The form asks for one, under any name: cover letter, covering letter, supporting statement, personal statement, or a free text box headed "why are you applying for this role".
- The route in is an email. Quantum Advisory's careers page, read on 2026-09-10, asks you to "please submit your CV to" a named recruitment inbox for every current vacancy. An email application always contains a letter, because the message you attach the CV to is the letter whether you call it one or not.
- You are approaching a firm that recruits when it needs someone rather than on one cycle. Broadstone's page, for instance, says a vacancy "may go live at any point from Autumn (October/November) until Spring (April/May)". Outside a window there is often no form at all, and the letter is the application.
Outside those, an unrequested letter is at best neutral, and the effort buys more spent on the CV, the eligibility answers and the recorded video stage most of these processes actually run.
On length, none of the four employers above publishes one. Our rule of thumb, and it is only ours: one page, four paragraphs, comfortably under 400 words. If the form sets a limit, the limit is the brief.
The four paragraph jobs
A letter that earns its page does four things in order, one per paragraph.
Why this work. Not why maths. Why this job, described as tasks rather than as a subject.
Why this firm. One or two checkable specifics from the firm's own material, and what they mean for you.
What you bring, as evidence. One example, with what you did and what happened. Not a list of adjectives.
What happens next. A single closing line: your availability, your eligibility for the location, and the fact that you have applied through the form.
Everything below is about not fluffing the first two.
Why actuarial, answered so it survives one follow-up
Here is the answer most applications give:
I have always enjoyed maths and I want a career where I can use it to solve real problems.
The problem is not that it is false. It is that the first follow-up kills it. Why not data science? Why not accountancy? Both use maths on real problems, and neither asks you to sit the exams.
Two rewrites that survive the follow-up.
Rewrite one, pensions. "I want the part of the work where a number gets defended to somebody who did not produce it. In a pensions valuation, the funding level goes to a trustee board that has to make a decision on it, and the assumptions behind it get challenged. The appeal is the combination: the modelling, then explaining it to a non specialist and being accountable for it. That accountability is what the qualification is for, and it is the reason I am applying for an actuarial role rather than a data role."
Rewrite two, general insurance. "I want to work where the answer is checked against reality on a known timetable. In reserving, you set an expectation and then watch actual claims arrive against it, and you have to explain the gap. I built a small model of a motor book from published data to see what that felt like, and the interesting part was not the arithmetic, it was deciding which assumption had been wrong. I have not found another numerate career with a feedback loop that explicit."
Both name a task rather than a subject, and both answer "why not data science" without being asked. Neither needs a figure, which matters: a figure in a letter is one you have to date and source in the interview.
Why this firm, researched from its own material
The failure mode here is adjectives. "Your collaborative culture and market leading reputation" could be pasted into any application in the country, which is exactly how it reads.
The fix is to use something only that firm could have said. Two examples from the pages above.
WTW's graduate hub, read on 2026-09-10, names three actuarial graduate programmes sitting in three different businesses: Actuarial Graduate Analyst, Graduate Actuarial Consultant in Insurance, and Retirement Actuarial Graduate. Knowing which of the three you have applied to, and why, is a specific nobody can fake. It also matters mechanically, because the same page sets a different entry bar for each of the three, the Actuarial Graduate Analyst asking for "At least a 2:1 degree in a numerate discipline OR 2:1 degree in a non-numerate discipline plus an A or B in A-Level Maths".
LCP's graduate FAQs, read on 2026-09-10, publish minimum requirements department by department and answer the question that shapes your application: "Can I apply for more than one department?" The answer is "Unfortunately, no. We encourage you to apply for the programme and department that interests you the most." When you get one choice, the department is the specific your letter has to justify.
The pattern holds generally: practice areas, offices, and the programmes a firm names and no longer names are all on its own pages. Recruiter summaries and job boards are pointers, not sources.
Written competency questions: the same discipline, fewer words
Some forms replace the letter with two or three written competency questions. These are the interview's competency questions in writing, so the evidence rule is identical and the word count is not.
Compress rather than summarise: roughly one sentence of situation, one of task, three or four on what you personally did, and one on the outcome, with a number in it if you have one. First person singular throughout, because "we" is where written answers go to die: the reader cannot tell what you did.
Two habits lift a written answer above the pile. Answer the question that was asked, including its verb: one about spotting an error wants an error you spotted, not a general story about being careful. And keep one sentence at the end for what you changed afterwards, which is the part that reads like a person.
Our interview questions guide has the same material in spoken form, and the two should agree: a form answer that contradicts your interview answer is a problem you have to explain later.
The checks before you submit
Eligibility questions end applications quietly, and most of them are decided before a human opens your file.
- Grades, against this programme's wording. Not the firm's house standard, and not last year's. The WTW example above is the reason: three actuarial routes at one employer, three different A-level Maths requirements.
- How many applications this firm allows. WTW's posting states one programme per year. LCP's FAQs state one department, and add that if you are unsuccessful "You are welcome to reapply to LCP the following year when applications open for the next graduate programme."
- Location. If a programme runs in several offices, applying to the wrong one is not always recoverable inside a cycle.
- Right to work and sponsorship. Check the specific employer and the specific programme, using the visa sponsorship tracker and the current GOV.UK rules rather than a remembered threshold.
- The closing date, and the earlier one. LCP's early careers page, read on 2026-09-10, states that applications open on Monday 28 September 2026 and close on Friday 23 October 2026, then warns: "Please note that, due to application volume, we may close applications as early as Friday 9 October 2026, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible." Aon's page carries the same warning in different words. Treat the published deadline as the outside edge, not the plan.
Then read your answers once more for what spellcheck will not catch: a firm's name written wrongly. Lloyd's of London is the insurance market; Lloyds Banking Group is a bank. The UK actuarial tracker holds the current windows in one place.
What to do next
Do the reconnaissance first. Open the form, list what it demands, and only then decide whether you are writing anything at all. More often than not the honest answer is a stronger CV and better eligibility answers rather than a letter.
Get the CV right before the letter: two of the four processes above open by asking for it, and it is the document that follows you into every interview. The free CV template is a worked example you can type over, the free CV check flags the areas we would look at first, and our CV writing guide covers exams, exemptions and technical skills in detail.
When you want a person on it, the CV review is written feedback from a qualified actuary, and the cover letter review add-on covers a letter or supporting statement alongside it. If the open question is which firm and which department rather than which words, 1-1 coaching is the hour for that.