UK companies presently have more invested in pension schemes than the rest of Europe put together. However, the question remains whether individual companies have set aside enough to meet their pensions’ obligations 20, 30 or even 40 years down the line. People are living longer than ever before, and the recent economic turmoil has demonstrated that those who manage pension schemes cannot always rely on good investment returns to help meet the costs of the benefits promised.

As a market leader in actuarial consulting, Aon has been advising companies and trustees on their defined benefit pension schemes for over 60 years. Our Actuarial Consultants specialise in advising our clients on those schemes to help them manage the associated financial and operational risks, now and in the future.

Actuarial Analyst

As an Actuarial Analyst, you will find that no two days in the office are the same. You will work on a range of client teams with colleagues who advise either the trustees who manage the pension scheme, or the company that provides it.

Our aim is for you to develop into a trusted advisor for your clients as soon as possible. This will be achieved through developing both your technical and consulting skills – including your understanding of key calculations, communication techniques, project management and networking. Throughout your career with Aon, you will continually improve your commercial awareness and professionalism which will make you stand out as a successful consultant.

You will get involved with:

• Regular assessment of the financial position of pension schemes
• Identifying and implementing ways for trustees and companies to reduce the risks in relation to their schemes, including longevity risks, investment risks and inflation risk
• Calculations relating to the pension scheme for the company’s financial accounts
• Calculations in respect of individual pension scheme members’ benefits
• The day-to-day management of the pension scheme
• Estimation of Pension Protection Fund levies
• Corporate transactions – i.e. when a merger or acquisition of companies takes place, the liabilities of the companies’ pension schemes need to be taken into account in the deal
• The final close-down of the schemes when risk is passed to a third party

You will be given opportunities to work on various projects and gain early exposure to clients to support your development. We also provide the opportunity for you to be involved in one of our market-leading specialist teams.

Longevity Modelling Analyst

Within our actuarial department we have market-leading specialist teams. One of these teams, the Longevity Modelling team, have graduate opportunities for 2020 based in Birmingham and Manchester.

Aon is the foremost longevity risk adviser in the UK, helping pension plans, insurers and reinsurers understand how long their pensioners are likely to live and how variable this could be. This helps them determine how much money to set aside, and whether it makes sense to insure against the risk of increasing life expectancy. The advice of our longevity modelling analysts underlies the largest risk hedging transactions executed to date in the UK and overseas. New joiners to this team will help deliver the highest quality advice to our clients. In return, we’ll help you become an expert, with training on our modelling approaches, cutting edge tools and computer programming techniques.

As a member of our longevity team your responsibilities will involve:

• Providing/supporting our market leading longevity modelling and advice in relation to longevity deals (where we may be advising pension plans, their sponsors, insurers or reinsurers);
• Developing our proprietary longevity modelling to maintain Aon’s technical lead;
• Creating and maintaining the cashflow models that back large-scale longevity swaps;
• Supporting the wider Aon consulting population in relation to longevity;
• Building longevity expertise within the Risk Settlement Group and the wider Aon group.

This role differs from the standard pensions consulting role – you’ll be involved in more technical modelling work and contributing to the development of our internal models and analytical tools, in addition to supporting the delivery of the advice we provide to our clients.

Training and development

All roles include plenty of on-the-job experience. As a graduate, you will also enjoy technical and consulting workshops. These will give you the skills and competencies needed to continue to provide innovative solutions to meet our clients’ needs, as well as building your confidence and experience in proactively managing client relationships.

As you progress through your career, you will have access to a variety of interactive training sessions to supplement your experience and help you develop into a Consultant more quickly.

We want you to be as successful as possible, so we will fully support your study towards professional qualification as a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. This includes providing you with an extensive range of study and tuition materials designed to support rapid progress through the exams, together with paid study leave to help you work towards the exams and financial rewards for successful exam sittings.

Requirements

To apply for all roles within this Stream you must be educated to degree level with a 2:1 or equivalent qualification in a numerate/semi-numerate discipline and a ‘B’ or above in Maths A-level, or equivalent. Strong commercial awareness, lots of ambition and an enthusiastic approach are also important.

Applicants for the longevity modelling analyst roles should also possess a strong mathematical capability, with experience in numerical modelling, (e.g. with Excel/VBA, R, Matlab, C#, C++, .Net) beneficial but not essential.