Kayla Nguyen

Mr. Kyle Sasso

Actuarial Analyst II

Horace Mann Educators Corporation

2 October 2019

13:45

Interview Assessment #2

To go with his major in finance, Mr. Kyle Sasso became a financial advisor after college.

Though this job was steady, he was discontent with this area of the finance industry and was

drawn to the competitiveness found in actuarial science. Currently he is employed by Horace

Mann Educators Corporation, which is an insurance company in the DFW area; as of now he is

an actuarial analyst II and is still completing exams to further his opportunities as an actuary. In

my second interview, I got a real-world perspective on becoming an actuary and the preparation

that goes into the field.

An idea from my first interview lingered into my second; both interviews emphasized the

effects of having connections in the real world and how these help to boost one’s career. Mr.

Sasso stated that he was able to get his current job at Horace Mann through LinkedIn. Platforms

like LinkedIn are very popular among the business community and help individuals connect to

each other despite any geographic barrier. This instance of the usefulness of connections is

parallel to that of my first interview, where Mr. Nash met his business partner Tyler Hodgson

through LinkedIn and formed and Hodgson & Nash CPAs.

The prerequisites to becoming an actuary are actually similar to that of a CPA in a sense

that they both require a set of exams to be completed and passed prior to earning a license. For
both careers, the average passing rate of the exams is less than or equal to about fifty percent.

Depending on the designation one intends to pursue, there are around 7 to 10 actuarial exams,

whereas the CPA exam is comprised of 4 exams total. Mr. Sasso stressed the importance of each

exam and how it will serve to further you in your career; there are incentives to complete more

exams as these will most likely determine your position in a company and the more you move

up, the more opportunity that is available to you. Mr. Sasso actually likes the exam process as it

fits his competitive nature and he feels in control of how quickly he moves up in his career.

Overall, aside from the plethora of exams, the actuarial career plan seems appealing to

me because of its emphasis on statistics and the amount of leisure time is more abundant than

people think. In our interview, I learned that one of the most favored things about his job is the

flexibility of his schedule and amount of personal mobility. Therefore, he mentioned he does not

get stressed often and has a considerable amount of down time after quarter and year ends.