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Brittany Ryan

Brittany Ryan graduated with a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies and a Bachelor of Finance from the Australian National University and is now an actuarial associate at PwC.

7.00 AM

Too early…snooze alarm twice. 8:30am. Too late! I have a shower and catch the train into work. I arrive, and my manager hasn’t even arrived in yet! The team takes flexible working seriously.

9.00 AM

Busy day ahead. Bag in locker, computer in hand and the perfect desk in sight. That sit-stand functionality coupled with the luxury of two screens and a harbour view. Today’s off to a good start. I see Rahual, one of the other grads, and he’s rounding up people for coffee. Yes please! The coffee machines are good but the in-house barista is better. Nothing like a great chai latte to start the day.

PwC Brittany Ryan drinking coffee with colleagues

9.15 AM

Model fitting here I come. I only have one more generalised linear model to fit in SAS - a statistical program that I had never used when I started, but thanks to the the training I received and my team, I’m starting get the idea. My diagnostic plots and gains charts are starting to look pretty good. I check the clock. 11:25. Perfect timing. Time for my coaching catch up.

11.30 AM

I make my way to the lifts to meet my coach, he needs a coffee. Up to the fun space we go. It’s so convenient having the cafe right next to the fun space. There are so many options, but the ping pong table is king. No better way to discuss my professional development than over a game of ping pong.

PwC Brittany Ryan playing ping pong

12.00 PM

Lunch time. I’m still a bit sore from my gym class yesterday so I message the team to let them know that I’m going to skip working out today. Besides, there’s a lunch-and-learn on Geospatial Analytics which sounds interesting and I probably shouldn’t be sweaty for my client meeting.

1.00 PM

The afternoon has come so quickly! Time to prepare for my client meeting. Printed reports. Check. Slides on memory stick. Check. I note all the key points for my section of the report in my head and meet the team at the lifts to walk to the meeting. We arrive, I hand out the reports and put up the slides. So far so good. I sit down in the meeting room and we begin to discuss our findings from the latest monitoring report and how that looks against our projected expectations for the quarter. Our projections look good.

PwC Brittany Ryan client meeting

3.00 PM

Back at the office we have a discussion about feedback and debrief with the team about the insights we drew from the meeting, any features we have to be aware of at the next monitoring and valuation, and what additional analysis we might need to do to improve upon the modelling process. My head is full of everyone’s comments, I’m glad to get them all out as I write up the minutes for the meeting.

3.45 PM

Time for my study, catch up. Study for my actuarial exams has definitely been full on lately and there’s this one technical question that I can’t quite get my head around. I ask my study mentor about it and he steps me through the way that he would approach it, and where he’s seen it used in our work. It makes a lot more sense now.

4.15 PM

Back at my desk it’s time for some excel. I’m also working on an actuarial valuation and I’ve been given the task of setting assumptions for a particular payment type – rehabilitation costs. I look through all the relevant pieces of analysis and make some reasonable assumptions about what we expect the costs to be given an individual’s demographics – their age, injury and other factors. Just as I’m wrapping up Joey, one of the grads from the analytics team, comes by. It’s time for trivia. I knew our teams had the event on, but the day has gone so fast. Luckily I’m not late.

PwC Brittany Ryan at her desk

5.45 PM

What a day. I’m glad that I’ve gotten through so much and it’s great to be able to chill out with the rest of the team at trivia. It looks like it’s going to be a good night, I think I’ll be utilising flexible working tomorrow!