Actuarial Science is the application of statistical methods to the study of risk, as a result one of the sectors that actuaries play a role in is Insurance, but you can find them working in other sectors, including finance and pensions.

In insurance, actuaries will investigate the likelihood of an event occurring, this enables the insurance company to price a policy covering that event appropriately. To do this they draw from several fields, including mathematics, data analysis and increasingly advanced computer science.

Actuaries are not core to the work of insurance, they are best viewed as specialists who facilitate one key aspect of the business but make up a relatively small proportion of the manpower. Most practicing actuaries will have studied actuarial science and have received accreditation from the Society of Actuaries.