Quant career with an actuary base

[JinK]

Hello I am still an undergrad with interests in finance, insurance and machine learning.
Is there a financial quant job with an actuary base( or vice versa?) If so, would it be better to get in the job market right away or do a masters or phd?

Sorry if this is a bit too general but simply put, whether it is the finance or insurance area, I enjoy (wish to take as an occupation) reading recent papers on deep learning and using such methods (or my own) for optimization and modelling.
Interested in the quantitative field, I have prepared for and have an ASA(Associate of Actuaries) certificate. I also have great interests in deep learning and optimization and have a thesis published. I have been considering MFE as a masters before getting anywhere but am not so sure whether that would be best considering my interests. I feel that not only do I need the quantitative base but also the domain knowledge be it finance or insurance.

Considering my interests and what I have done, in your opinion, what would be the best next step that I could take right after graduating school? I feel somewhat stuck in between finance and insurance and all...

Thanks.

 

[Ken Abbott]

Get a job first. Make sure it's what you want to do. An actuarial background is very useful, but make sure your understand exactly what those uses are.

 

[JinK]

Thanks. I do realize that the analytical skills required for an actuary would be handy but I hoped to know if there were specific types of positions that an actuarial knack would be directly useful... say risk management dept or team under some quant firm. Getting a job first will be best and surely I can take chances to try applying to others if that first job was not my fit. But I am still left hanging with the problem of which one to try first. I guess I will have to do some more searching..

 

[Liam]

Thanks. I do realize that the analytical skills required for an actuary would be handy but I hoped to know if there were specific types of positions that an actuarial knack would be directly useful... say risk management dept or team under some quant firm. Getting a job first will be best and surely I can take chances to try applying to others if that first job was not my fit. But I am still left hanging with the problem of which one to try first. I guess I will have to do some more searching..

You are overthinking which job to apply to first. It doesn't have to be THAT level of perfect fit.

As long as you don't start in a job so far removed from your skillset that there is zero math/analytics involved it won't damage your ambition.
If you feel hiring managers will get bent out shape looking at your CV/resume because it has bits of this and that in it, just write it so that for quant roles, quant stuff is played up, actuary roles actuary stuff is played up.

Rather than fixating on a very obscure role, a better plan is to get a more generic role and take a look around you. Adjust preferences according to how different realities are and then figure out how to get into such a hybrid role. Reality of obscure roles is that you get into them by accident and can't force the issue. Also, even if you have a career full of roles that are very you, only 10-25% of those roles will be a perfect fit, if that. As long as you get career stability it's not an issue.

 

[JinK]

You are overthinking which job to apply to first. It doesn't have to be THAT level of perfect fit.

As long as you don't start in a job so far removed from your skillset that there is zero math/analytics involved it won't damage your ambition.
If you feel hiring managers will get bent out shape looking at your CV/resume because it has bits of this and that in it, just write it so that for quant roles, quant stuff is played up, actuary roles actuary stuff is played up.

Rather than fixating on a very obscure role, a better plan is to get a more generic role and take a look around you. Adjust preferences according to how different realities are and then figure out how to get into such a hybrid role. Reality of obscure roles is that you get into them by accident and can't force the issue. Also, even if you have a career full of roles that are very you, only 10-25% of those roles will be a perfect fit, if that. As long as you get career stability it's not an issue.

Yeah, I guess I am overthinking... plus with the lack of information or experience with which I can make a clean cut decision, starting off with some generic quantitative role would be best among all choices available. Thank you. Simple but it really helps.