Hi everyone,i'm currently a student in a french engineer school specializing for my last year in financial engineering. I can do in parallel one year in Dauphine and another year (n+1) in Dess Actuary to get the actuary degree.I clearly want to work in financial market, managing funds using quant strategies and tools (VaR, portfolio management...) and i ask you some help to answer some questions:Could we work in financial market doing what i said earlier with actuary studies ?What are the pros/cons of actuary to work in financial market ?What sort of door are closed to actuary people ?Feel free to answer more possible questions. Thank you for your help.LudoP.S: if french people (i know there is a lot here) could also answer from their own experience that would be great too...

Hi Ludo,Outside France, it usually takes years or even decades to become an actuary ! And it is mostly devoted to insurance companies.It is somehow a distinction or a title you get once you can prove you are able to go through some heavy calculations and have good knowledge of accounting, law, pension plan...Anyway, as a French actuary, I can tell you that actuarial sciences and financial engineering are using common framework and vocabulary. You will hear of stochastic processes, Monte carlo simulations, jumps, risk, volatility... and spend some time to adapt a model to a specific risk in a pay-off function. Actuarial sciences are a good compromise to understand how financial products work, as there are more and more interaction between insurance and finance (see for instance credit derivatives, long-dated options which require provisions, guaranteed products...). You can easily move from a research or risk-control department to any trading floor or asset management environment.Anyway, it is interesting to see how fascinating this qualification remains. I remember asking what the job of an actuary was prior to decide to attend ISFA program : an actor ? well you know in the film industry... or well you are going to be one of these weird guys working in the basement near the computer room doing very complicated calculations nobody else has a clue how to do it... The real world can be a completely different story fortunately.

Hi Ludo,If you graduate from a top school (Centrale/Supelec or Mines/Telecom Pa) then it's probably not worth to do it (rather try the CFA Level I).Else it can be another credential, but not really for what you want to do (portfolio management...).By the way are you really serious when you talk about portfolio management with VaR????You know VAR is used for risk management processes rather than for PM.Hope it helps