Early career opportunities

As a Graduate Actuarial Trainee Consultant at Hymans Robertson, you’ll be part of a supportive and forward-thinking team where your ideas and analysis will help our clients to make confident financial decisions. 

You’ll be aligned to one of our Actuarial Business Units - Actuarial Private or Actuarial Public. As you build your specialist knowledge within your field, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute to meaningful projects, learn from experienced actuaries and develop your technical and stakeholder management skills through structured training and mentoring. 

For those looking for something a little different to a traditional consulting career, who are excited by the technology that powers our actuarial teams and want to build in-depth, technical expertise of our programming languages, such as R! We also offer graduate analyst opportunities within our Insights and Analytics team. Here you’ll collaborate with our client facing actuarial teams to unlock the benefits of our cutting-edge technology for our clients. 

Whichever pathway you choose, we’ll also fully support your journey to qualification with the IFoA, giving you the tools and encouragement to thrive both professionally and personally.

We offer two distinct yet complementary pathways in this field.

The Investment Analyst pathway sits within our Investment DB team, where you’ll support consultants in delivering tailored investment advice to a wide range of clients. This includes work on investment strategy, asset allocation, manager selection, and governance - helping clients manage long-term liabilities and meet their funding objectives.

Alternatively, the DC Analyst pathway immerses you in the fast-evolving world of Defined Contribution (DC) pensions. You’ll develop expertise in scheme design, provider platform assessments, and at-retirement solutions, while contributing to projects that shape the future of workplace savings and member outcomes.

Whichever direction you follow, you’ll collaborate with experienced consultants and analysts, to contribute directly to meaningful client projects as you learn the core principles that drive our industry forward and build a strong foundation in pensions governance and investment consulting. Our graduate programmes in these areas also come with a competitive study support package for either the IFoA or CFA, depending on your longer-term career goals.

In addition to attending a number of University Careers Fairs and Insight Sessions, we run a mixture of in-person and virtual events throughout the year that aim to give candidates a better understanding of our opportunities and how to stand out during our recruitment process.

Find out more about our upcoming events

If you are considering applying for one of our Early Career Programmes, we'd suggest doing a little bit of research first into the actuarial field – this is a great way to build your knowledge about the profession and stand out throughout our application process. A few good places to start are the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries website, the online and print resources from Inside Careers and the online publication 'The Actuary'. 

Our programmes cover a number of our different Business Units including:

• Actuarial Public

• Actuarial Private

• Defined Contribution Consulting

• Investment DB; and 

• Insights and Analytics.

Actuarial Public: Our Actuarial Public team are the largest and most experienced LGPS-specific actuarial practice in the marketplace. Based in Glasgow, they help public sector pension funds to effectively manage risks while also meeting their long-term funding and investment objectives. You can find out more about the huge variety of work they do on their section of our website. Those that join this team will have the opportunity to be supported through their IFoA qualification, while gaining experience from a range of exciting projects across the Business Unit and developing their career in a way that suits them.

Actuarial Private: The largest of our Business Units, which comprises of both technical and client-facing teams. Graduates and interns joining the Actuarial Private Business Unit will be given an opportunity to spend time working across both specialisms as they build their skills in both mathematical modelling and client consulting, to help them decide which direction they would like their career to progress in. In both, you’ll have the opportunity to work on exciting projects to support private sector employers and scheme trustees to predict the financial risks affecting their defined benefit pensions, and you’ll work towards completing your IFoA qualification.

Defined Contribution Consulting: This is an exciting and growing area of our business, with DC now being the predominant main source of future pension contributions. Our team offers strategic, investment, governance, at-retirement and communications advice to a wide range of trustee and corporate clients. Similarly, the work you’ll be involved in as a graduate and intern is equally wide ranging, and we’d particularly encourage applications from people who are enthused by the stakeholder engagement element that this programme offers. Within this Business Unit, you’ll have the opportunity to study for either the IFoA of CFA exams, depending on how you’d like your career to progress. You can find out more about this team on their section of our website. 

Investment DB: The Investment DB Business Unit advises a diverse range of clients from large pension schemes and endowment funds to charities, other businesses and insurance companies. The team works closely with clients to design and monitor strategies that meet their objectives and liabilities whilst balancing their risk and return requirements – and are constantly thinking of new ideas to improve their portfolios. In this role, you’ll be involved in a breadth of projects that involve completing detailed technical analysis using our in-house models and providing tailored strategic consulting advice. You’ll also work towards either your IFoA or CFA qualification and will have the opportunity to work closely with colleagues across the business, including our specialist investment research and responsible investment teams.

Insights and Analytics: Our (I&A) community is a multi-disciplined team of technical experts in pensions, insurance, finance and risk modelling, and data management solutions. The I&A community advises clients directly as well as supporting our teams of actuarial and investment consultants in delivering strategic modelling and analytics. We help the firm to continually develop our approach using the latest technology, research and modelling methods to support our clients’ risk modelling requirements. Those who join this team will have the opportunity to be supported through their IFoA qualification, while gaining experience from a variety of exciting projects with teams across the firm!

Our application windows open in autumn, and you can apply on our website using the links in the sections above.

If you’d like to discuss this confidentially beforehand, then please do reach out to us via chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk and a member of the Recruitment Team will be in touch with you directly. 

With the recent advancements in generative AI technology, we have had a lot of questions from candidates about whether using tools like ChatGPT or Copilot to generate answers for their application questions would be allowed. 

We recognise that new AI technology can be incredibly useful for students - particularly for gathering relevant industry and employer research when drafting job applications – and agree that being able to use this technology is an important skill to have. However, where an applicant uses AI to generate all (or a large part) of their answers and then presents this as their own work we would consider this to be cheating. So for our application form questions we expect the answers you submit to be your own. If these appear to be auto-generated, it could affect your chances of progressing to the next stage of our application process. 

While generative AI is useful, it can't replicate your personal thoughts and reflections or convey your own skills and experiences - and it's these qualities that we are looking to find out more about throughout our recruitment process. By submitting an application you are agreeing to recognise the above conditions and confirming that the answers you submit are your own.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are important to our hiring practices and overall firm culture. Therefore, we are proud to recruit for our graduate and summer internship opportunities on the basis of your potential rather than your academic grades.

We don’t have any set minimum requirements in terms of academic achievement other than a confirmed ‘pass’ at undergraduate level for your academic degree. We also recognise that a degree from any university (and within any subject grouping) gives you an opportunity to gain valuable transferable skills that will be of great use to any employer – so we actively encourage applications from students from out with the traditional actuarial or mathematics fields often seen in our industry, and from students who have attended non-Russell group universities.

You may notice that part of our application asks you to share if you identify as coming from a lower socioeconomic background (if you are comfortable doing so). The information you provide within this section cannot put you at a disadvantage, but it may provide a positive uplift on your recorded academic achievements and application form to give us a fairer indication of your future potential.

We aim to keep the recruitment process for each of our programmes as straightforward and enjoyable as possible.

We won't just spend time assessing you as a candidate - each stage of our process is designed to help you to better your understanding of us as a business, our company culture and what you can expect throughout your time with us. For our graduate and internship programmes, you'll complete a short application form, psychometric tests and a two-stage interview – firstly with a member of our Human Resources team and then with the relevant business area.

We'd always suggest doing a bit of preparation ahead of each stage of our process to give you the best possible chance of progressing through and to help build your confidence in this area. We'd recommend the following resources:

• Application forms: Ahead of submitting your application, it's worth taking some time to think about what key information we’re looking for from you at this stage and how you can structure your answers to show this. We'll be assessing that you have the relevant skills and experience to carry out the job, that you’re enthusiastic about both the job and us as an employer and that you have potential to contribute to our organisation. Take a look at this short guide to filling out an application form on Prospects for more info.
• Psychometric tests: We use SHL as a provider for our psychometric assessments. They’re not an indicator of intelligence however they assess your reasoning and cognitive abilities to help us determine whether you have the skills required to do the job on offer. Though these can often seem daunting the great news is that you can increase your confidence with a bit of practice.
• Our numerical reasoning tests let us see how you deal with numbers. The test itself will offer you a few practice questions but you can also find some examples of these on sites such as Assessment Day. Our Job Focused Assessment is similar to a Situational Judgement Test, where you'll be given a list of work-related scenarios and asked to pick how you would progress from a list of options as well as answering a few questions on your personal drivers. Again, sites such as Assessment Day can give you a good indicator of what types of questions to expect.
• Interviews: Our interviews include a mixture of motivations, strengths, and competency-based questions. Our interviewers will always do their best to put you at ease, however the best way to ensure you do well on the day is to take a good look at our website and advert and think about the types of questions you may be asked in line with this.

You can find out more about the different types of interviews from sites such as Prospects. Our interviews are currently being carried out via MS Teams.

We have offices in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. When filling out your application form, you'll be asked to let us know which of our office locations and Business Units you are interested in. While we can't always guarantee a space for you in each of them, we'll do our best throughout the process to keep you informed about what business area and office location we are considering you against and will always consider the preferences you've selected.

We have a flexible working approach to working that includes flexible hours and hybrid working, often with two days spent in your office location each week. 

At Hymans we celebrate lifelong learning, and aim to give you every opportunity possible to develop within your career. We’ll encourage and support you to gain relevant professional qualifications, with appropriate time off to study and financial support for course fees and awards for passing some exams, where applicable. As a Hymans graduate, you’ll become a student member of either the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries or the CFA Institute. Please reach out to our recruitment team if you have any questions about these exams or the support available to you.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are important to our hiring practices and overall firm culture. You’ll have the opportunity in your application form to let us know if you identify as having a physical or neurological condition. We’ll also ask at each stage of the process whether we can support you further with any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process.

If you’d like to discuss this confidentially beforehand, then please do reach out to us via chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk and a member of the recruitment team will be in touch.

As well as posting key services and updates on our website, we’re also active on social media. You can visit our corporate LinkedIn account to keep up with new developments across our firm, but for those interested in hearing about the people of Hymans we’d suggest following our ‘Life at Hymans’ LinkedIn page.

The world of pensions can sometimes appear shrouded in mystery. We want to change that! We have several different ‘Doors Open’ opportunities that secondary school students can get involved in!

Our work experience programmes run in each of our offices once a year and offer the opportunity for those in their final two years of secondary school to visit our offices and gain an insight into what we do. Spaces are dependent on availability within your chosen office location, but we will always try to accommodate requests where possible! If this is something you’re interested in, get in touch with us via chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk.

If you have any specific questions about these opportunities or working with us then please do reach out at chat.to.us@hymans.co.uk.