Every product starts with an actuarial judgement.
Actuarial hires carry weight with boards, auditors and regulators, so fit matters as much as qualification. Our consultants each focus on one part of the actuarial market and follow how reporting requirements, product activity and team structures are changing, so every search starts from a shared understanding of the role. We introduce people whose experience matches the line of business, the framework and the level of ownership your team needs, giving leadership a hire whose judgement it can rely on.
Actuarial recruitment for you
Our consultants each specialise in one area of the market. In actuarial, that means keeping our market knowledge current every day, tracking how RBC and C-ROSS II are reshaping teams, how new roles such as RBC manager and IFRS 17 specialist are defined, and how pay is moving. For chief actuaries and heads of function, we extend into executive search. We look at the whole picture: technical depth in pricing, reserving, capital and reporting, alongside:
- Judgement: challenging assumptions constructively
- Communication: making model output useful to the business
- Integrity: standing behind figures that others rely on
Every candidate is screened by a consultant who knows the actuarial market, beyond titles and exam progress.
We recruit across actuarial work for insurers, reinsurers and their advisers, from analyst level through to chief actuary:
- Actuarial General Insurance: reserving and pricing actuaries who keep property, casualty, and accident and health portfolios on a sound footing.
- Actuarial Health: actuaries who price and value medical and critical illness cover as claims experience changes.
- Actuarial Investment: ALM and investment actuaries who match assets to long-term liabilities and support capital-efficient investment decisions.
- Actuarial Life Insurance: life actuaries across participating, protection and savings business, from experience studies to embedded value.
- Actuarial Pensions: retirement actuaries who advise employers and trustees on scheme funding, valuations and benefit design.
- Actuarial Re-Insurance: actuaries who structure, price and assess reinsurance programmes for cedants and reinsurers.
- Product Development: product actuaries and specialists who turn customer need and commercial strategy into products that can be priced, approved and launched.
- Valuation & Pricing: specialists who set assumptions, build models and support IFRS 17 and solvency reporting.
For in-house teams at insurers, reinsurers and multinational corporations’ benefits functions, we start with the shape of the team. We talk through how pricing, valuation and reporting responsibilities are split, where a qualified actuary is essential and where a strong student can grow into the role. We also look at how hires fit around your reporting calendar. From there, we help you weigh which roles suit permanent hiring and where contract support covers a busy period.
For consultancies and professional services firms, the focus is delivery. We introduce candidates who are ready to work with clients from day one and comfortable moving between projects, including those able to work across Hong Kong and Mainland China. Language needs, line of business experience, rates, contract length and start dates are agreed up front, so the search runs to your client’s requirements.
We offer permanent, contract and executive search hiring. See our permanent recruitment and contract hiring pages for more detail.
Alongside global insurers, we support organisations where actuarial judgement shapes financial and regulatory outcomes:
- Insurtech: digital and insurtech units within global insurers, where new distribution and product models still need sound pricing and reserving behind them.
- FMCG & Consumer Goods: multinational corporations with pensions and employee benefit commitments that call for actuarial oversight.
- Professional Services: actuarial consulting and audit firms advising insurers and employers across the region.
- Re-Insurance: reinsurers and reinsurance teams pricing and managing risk ceded by insurers.
- Brokers: insurance and reinsurance brokers whose analytics teams help clients design and place programmes.
Actuarial hiring depends on understanding the work behind the title. Our consultants explore what each candidate has priced, valued, modelled or signed off. We also look at how they have handled scrutiny from auditors, regulators and their own leadership, all before they reach your interview stage.
We share current salary insight, realistic availability and a clear view of how comparable profiles are moving between Hong Kong and Mainland China, so you can plan with confidence. We take part in actuarial networking events across Hong Kong, and our network of 900,000+ candidates reaches actuaries who are not actively looking or visible on job boards.
We work across permanent, contract and executive search hiring. Our understanding of life, general insurance, reinsurance, pensions and consulting work shapes the brief, the search and the shortlist.
Actuarial hiring trends for insurance and pensions
Hong Kong’s risk-based capital rules, Mainland China’s C-ROSS II and IFRS 17 now sit behind much of the actuarial hiring we see across the region. Briefs increasingly ask for hands-on reporting experience under one or more of them, rather than familiarity in general. Hong Kong briefs tend to centre on capital calculations and ORSA, while Mainland briefs look for experience of capital tiers, look-through and capital planning. IFRS 17 runs through both markets, bringing assumptions governance and audit scrutiny with it.
Qualification stage shapes how a role is scoped, from student and newly qualified through to senior. For leadership roles, a track record of signing off work and speaking for the function to a regulator carries as much weight as the credentials. Modelling platforms and data tools matter too, but they are the easier part to learn. Knowing how a framework treats a product, and when an assumption needs a second look, comes from reporting seasons worked.
That is what our consultants explore with each candidate before a shortlist reaches you, so the experience you see matches the framework and level your team reports under.
Actuarial pay in Hong Kong and Mainland China rises with seniority, and the ranges widen as it does. Early-career bands sit close together, while leadership packages vary far more, which is why senior hires are best benchmarked individually. As a guide, annual base salaries currently sit in these ranges:
- Analysts / Associates: HK$270,000 to HK$580,000 in Hong Kong and ¥120,000 to ¥400,000 in Mainland China, from entry-level analysts through to actuarial associates.
- Managers / Qualified Actuaries: HK$580,000 to HK$820,000, and ¥400,000 to ¥600,000.
- Senior Managers: HK$820,000 to HK$1,020,000, and ¥600,000 to ¥840,000.
- Associate Directors / Directors: HK$960,000 to HK$2,160,000, and ¥780,000 to ¥1,680,000.
- Chief Actuaries: HK$2,160,000 to HK$3,600,000+, and ¥1,680,000 to ¥3,000,000+.
- These are base salaries, so any bonus and benefits sit on top. Senior manager and associate director ranges sit close together, so the scope of the role matters as much as the title.
Contract actuaries are paid on a rate rather than an annual salary, so the two do not compare directly. For tailored benchmarking by line of business, qualification stage and seniority, visit our benchmarking page.
AI is changing who sits around the actuarial table. Where insurers bring machine learning into pricing, claims triage or experience analysis, actuaries and data scientists increasingly share the same models. That makes hiring a question of balance: actuaries who understand what a model is doing, and data specialists who understand why actuarial assumptions are set the way they are.
The actuarial role in that partnership is validation and accountability. A model that predicts well still needs someone to test whether its output is fair, stable and explainable before it influences a premium or a reserve. In Hong Kong, the privacy regulator’s AI framework recommends human oversight in proportion to the risk an AI system poses. Mainland China has its own rules on personal information and AI services. Actuaries who have worked within those expectations help an AI initiative move through governance smoothly.
When you are interviewing, asking candidates how they have validated a model they did not build can tell you a lot.
Hong Kong’s provisional 2025 figures point to two areas where actuarial capability is in focus. New long-term business grew by around half, driven mainly by participating products. That growth places weight on the pricing, asset-liability and bonus-setting work that par business depends on, and on the valuation teams who report it.
Reinsurance inward business also grew, but moved from an underwriting profit to a loss over the same period. Results like these sharpen attention on reinsurance pricing, reserving and portfolio review. For hiring managers, the figures offer a helpful starting point when deciding where to strengthen your actuarial team next.
Specialisms
We cover key specialisms within insurance and actuarial that help fuel transformation and growth within business.
Skills
Our specialist recruitment consultants work with key skills areas and niche insurance and actuarial communities, building their knowledge, network and experience to deliver excellent service to candidates and clients.
