Why most Actuarial graduates stay unemployed

Actuarial Career has been rated highly for a number of years, just like Medicine and Surgery. Each year, a large number of A and A- students are admitted to pursue BSC Actuarial Science at various Universities in Kenya. However, most graduates from this course stay unemployed for years. Why?

Below are some of the reasons

1. A good number of insurance firms in Kenya require that, for them to employ any actuarial graduate, the graduate must have sat for about five professional papers offered by the institute and faculty of Actuaries and passed.

2. A large number of Actuarial graduates lack technical skills to inject in the Actuarial Industry. What they have is more theoretical. Some of them can't even remember some of these theories that they learnt 4years back.

I suggest the following solutions to the unemployment issue of Actuarial graduates.

1. Any student admitted to any university to pursue Actuarial Science should start sitting for the professional papers offered by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, at least when they are in their second year of study. This will enable them to finish a good number of papers by the end of their fourth year of study at the university.

2. Venture into postgraduate studies in Actuarial Science and be employed as a Lecturer or a Manager.

3.Sit for other professional exams like CIFA from the KASNEB.