yo, yeh i am, i wasn't planning to, since finance is a more flexible major and some areas of finance overlap with actuarial studies, but then i found out i could overload and do 2 commerce majors (the more the better .. lol).
anyways, actuarial studies involves managing risk, using mathematical models to predict risk, to actually get into the details is quite hard, you'd need to understand some mathematics behind it first, but a basic example would be something like: Say you go get insurance for your car, after insurance, the individual will most likely exhibit moral hazard (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard#In_insurance), an actuary would gather data on this individual (his credit worthiness, past data etc etc) and then run models which will come up with a probability of him causing an accident or whatever other variable you want to find. This is the basic jist. They mainly work in insurance companies such as life insurance, health insurance, superannuation funds etc they could also work in financial institutions, ie, modelling different areas of risk for certain loan portfolios etc. Accountants, eh..., well i have nothing against them but it's so boring lol, accounting is, well... just accounting, not much variation there, no mathematics (well if you dig adding/subtraction/multiplication, then by all means do accounting
), and definitely earns less than actuaries and financial analysts in general. Finance, like i said, is much more flexible, you have the knowledge to do lots of investments (futures, options markets etc), once you build enough capital and climb the ranks of an investment bank, or major company, you will be able to do better investments, and if you're smart, you can make millions in seconds, or lose billions in seconds. So it's a risky area, but the returns are very high. My uncle is a CFO of the CCB shanghai branch, he has made so much profitable investments, earning 20-30 million RMB in a matter of seconds with good investments, however he has also lost quite a lot too, but as long as you make a net gain then it's all good
. Note that not everyone who does finance has to go do something related to the investment area, it's very broad, there's much more areas like risk management (similar to actuarial studies), working as an analyst at banks etc. However investments is something i've decided to specialize in
The maths (for a.s) is mostly applied mathematics, with algebra, probability, calculus, linear algebra, some stats and so on.
i still like finance more though, covers a wider range of areas
more employment opportunities, more arbitrage opportunities and earns much more than actuarial studies if you're smart ;P
have a read of
http://ifile.it/ocbv8r/ebooksclub.org__Calculus__One_Variable___10th_Edition.l_72x2j2n5nx4tx41.pdfit's pretty good for some basic actuarial studies mathematics
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