Mitch Peterson was an Actuarial Intern at Zurich in Overland Park, KS. He did his internship in the summer of 2015.
How did you get your internship?
I attended a presentation on campus by Bryan Hartwig, a Truman alum who worked at Zurich. I talked with him after the presentation, and he offered to be a resource for me as I pursued an actuarial internship. He offered advice on taking actuarial exams and even critiqued my resume. When I applied and interviewed for the position at Zurich, Bryan was actually one of the lead interviewers, so it was very helpful to have gotten to know him beforehand.
One thing I would point out is that I met Bryan my sophomore year, almost a full year before applying for my internship. So I would say it’s never too early to go to presentations on campus and start making connections!
What sorts of things did you do during your internship?
I worked on the Transactional Pricing team. My main project involved working with the team’s proprietary weather model to project losses and refine assumptions within the model. I also worked to standardize another pricing tool that actuaries used to price individual accounts.
How did you benefit from the internship?
I learned so much! I gained a much more in-depth understanding of how insurance works in general, as well as the role actuaries play. I also increased my technical skills in Excel and VBA (which is important because that’s a HUGE part of my daily workflow still to this day). Overall, though, I would say the greatest benefit was the networking. As people I worked with changed jobs, I maintained those connections and some of them have even opened doors for me. The actuarial community is a small one, so knowing people within it is very advantageous.