General insurance, life insurance, pensions and investments can lead to very different day-to-day work even though they sit within the same profession.
When comparing them, think about the problems you want to work on, how much client contact you want, whether you prefer markets or insurance risks, where you want to work and the type of technical work you enjoy.
Your first choice matters, but it does not lock your entire career in place.
What does each area do all day?
General insurance is non-life: motor, home, liability, property, marine, energy, cyber. It has four broad areas. Pricing builds the models that set premiums. Reserving estimates what business already written will finally cost, projecting development triangles to ultimate and booking IBNR. Capital works out what the insurer must hold to survive a 1-in-200-year event, the Solvency UK SCR. Catastrophe and exposure management runs the vendor CAT models that feed reinsurance buying. Graduate roles can sit in any of these areas, depending on the employer.
Life insurance is two businesses under one label: protection (term assurance, critical illness, income protection) and retirement (annuities, unit-linked savings, legacy with-profits books). Large areas of UK life actuarial work include protection, annuities, pension risk transfer, valuation, capital and asset-liability management. Year one is often running and checking cash-flow models, reconciling results quarter on quarter, and cleansing scheme member data for bulk annuity quotes.
Pensions is mostly consulting, built around a statutory role. Under section 47 of the Pensions Act 1995 every private-sector defined benefit scheme must appoint a named Scheme Actuary, a Fellow with a practising certificate, who advises the trustees rather than the employer. Graduate work often combines calculations with client-facing consulting, including valuation work, member calculations, actuarial factors and drafting advice for trustees and employers. Add data cleansing, IAS 19 disclosures, GMP equalisation projects and taking the minutes at trustee meetings before you present at them.
Investments appears in several settings, including investment consultancies, fiduciary managers, insurers and asset managers, with climate work across all of them. Graduate tasks on the advisory side: quarterly performance monitoring, journey-plan modelling, drafting Statements of Investment Principles and trustee papers, manager research notes, monitoring LDI collateral headroom, TCFD reporting.
| Area | Risk you model | Typical first-seat work | Client contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| General insurance | Claim frequency and severity, catastrophe, reserve uncertainty | Reserving triangles, pricing models | Mostly internal in many insurer roles; often high in consultancy |
| Life | Longevity, mortality, lapse, credit and market risk | Checking valuation models, bulk annuity quote support | Mostly internal in many insurer roles |
| Pensions | Longevity, interest rates, inflation, sponsor covenant | Member calculations, valuations, GMP work | Often high in consultancy, including trustee meetings |
| Investments | Interest rates, inflation, credit, collateral | Performance monitoring, journey plans, hedge monitoring | Varies significantly by employer |
What is the technical flavour of each?
General insurance is often statistical and data-heavy, particularly in pricing. Generalised linear models are still the workhorse of personal-lines pricing. Gradient boosting machines are gaining ground where the data is thickest, but they are harder to explain, and explainability is what the FCA's fairness expectations press on, so hybrids are common and GLMs remain central.
Life is often centred on long-term cashflow projection, assumptions and balance-sheet management. Expected present value (cash flow, times probability of payment, times discount factor) is the core calculation, repeated at scale in Prophet or another proprietary model, with the Solvency UK balance sheet over the top. Mortality is projected, not assumed: if the CMI's models suggest people will live longer than previously expected, an annuity writer's liabilities rise.
Pensions combines present-value calculations with scheme rules, regulation, investment and client advice. One scheme carries five liability numbers at once (technical provisions, low dependency, buy-out, PPF section 179 and accounting), which is why interviewers ask how the same scheme can be 85% funded on one basis and 108% funded on another.
Investments centres on markets, asset behaviour and how assets interact with liabilities: duration, PV01, hedge ratios, collateral headroom. The idea underneath all of it is that the liabilities are the benchmark, so cash is not the low-risk asset for a pension scheme.
How much client contact do you get?
Pensions and investment consulting often provide client exposure relatively early because graduates support trustee and client work.
In-house life and general-insurance roles tend to involve more internal stakeholders: underwriters, claims teams, the reserving committee, the board and the PRA. Actuarial consultancies can offer external client work in those areas too.
The exact balance depends more on the employer and team than the practice-area label alone.
Which pays most once you qualify?
Goodman Masson's 2026 UK Salary Guide gives the clearest side-by-side. These are recruiter placement ranges rather than guaranteed market salaries.
| Level | General insurance | Life | Pensions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior (0–4 exams) | £35k–£50k | £33k–£47k | £33k–£45k |
| Part-qualified (5–9) | £50k–£65k | £45k–£64k | £50k–£55k |
| Nearly qualified (10–13) | £65k–£85k | £58k–£76k | £55k–£65k |
| Newly qualified (0–1 yr) | £85k–£110k | £73k–£90k | £65k–£75k |
| Qualified (2–5 yrs) | £105k–£155k | £85k–£125k | £80k–£90k |
Selby Jennings' 2025 Europe guide agrees at the top end for London Market general insurance. Bonuses grow with seniority too: roughly 0%–10% for students, 10%–25% around qualification, 30%–50% for a head of department. Neither guide breaks out investment actuaries separately, so investment pay follows the employer type rather than a published band.
Pay is one consideration among several. The London Market premium also comes with London rent, so price it against that. Our salary guide and the salary calculator hold the full sourced tables.
Where are the jobs?
General insurance, particularly the London Market, is more concentrated in London. Pensions consulting has a wider regional footprint. Life roles are spread across London and several large insurer locations, while investment roles depend heavily on employer type.
A few examples rather than every office: Aviva's actuarial pathway is based in Bristol, Norwich and York; LCP recruits into London, Winchester and Edinburgh; Hymans Robertson into Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham; First Actuarial across several regional offices. Personal-lines general insurance also gives you regional options at Aviva, Admiral, Ageas and Hastings. Outside the South East, pensions and life give you the widest choice.
How reversible is the choice?
Moving between areas is usually easier earlier in your career, before your experience and specialist knowledge become highly concentrated. The core exams are the same whichever area you enter, and graduate rotations are often built so you can test seats.
Two bridges are well used. Pensions and life sit on opposite sides of the same risk-transfer market, and pensions actuaries who specialise in bulk annuities and longevity move across to life insurers. Pensions and investments share employers, clients and trustee boards.
General insurance has more distinct insurance-specific methods and market language, so moving between it and pensions or life may require more re-learning.
On the exams: specialisation arrives with Fellowship's two Specialist Principles subjects and one Specialist Advanced subject, SP2 then SA2 in life, SP4 then SA4 in pensions, SP7 and SP8 then SA3 in general insurance, SP5 and SP6 then SA7 in investments. That choice comes years after you pick a first seat, so it is not the reason to choose one.
How do you answer "why this area?" at interview?
Three ingredients, in this order.
- What genuinely interests you about the area.
- One current development you have researched and can explain.
- One part of the actual graduate work you want to experience.
For the second ingredient, one concise example per area:
- Pensions: current funding and endgame developments.
- Life: growth and competition in pension risk transfer.
- General insurance: the pricing cycle, claims inflation or a recent Lloyd's result.
- Investments: interest rates, gilt markets or changes in LDI.
Check the current figure and source shortly before the interview.
A simple way to choose
Choose general insurance if you are drawn to insurance risk, data, pricing or the London Market.
Choose life if you like long-term cashflows, mortality and longevity, insurer balance sheets or pension risk transfer.
Choose pensions if you want a mix of calculations, consulting and client work around long-term pension promises.
Choose investments if markets, bonds, interest rates and asset-liability decisions interest you most.
These are starting points rather than rules. The same practice area can feel very different between an insurer, consultancy and investment firm.
Explore the areas in more detail
Each practice-area course shows what the work involves through explanations, worked examples and practical exercises.
Inside General Insurance → · Inside Life Insurance → · Inside Pensions → · Inside Investments →
Still unsure? Explore Become an Actuary →