If you have any other insights on P&C vs pension & life or private vs public sector work I'd love to pass them on to DD (even if they're dated opinions). It seems to me that working in one of the consulting firms would provide more variety and then later on maybe she develops a niche. She probably wants to stay in the Pacific Northwest, but any entry level exam track position would be awesome.
P&C vs. pension vs. Life: I'm prejudiced! Even years ago, the pension actuaries on an actuarial discussion board I was on (since discontinued) were the unhappiest. Private pensions are disappearing, of course, and many public pension plans are woefully underfunded. There are plenty of assumptions involved in evaluating how well-funded they are and actuaries get pressured to be as optimistic as possible.
Life insurance has some interesting parts with all the products that combine insurance and investing components (which I have never bought because there are too many moving parts). It's revealing, though, that the Society of Actuaries (which was the original one and formed for life insurance and pensions only) tried a few years ago to introduce a property-casualty exam track. They even offered "free" status as a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries to Fellows of the Casualty Actuarial Society (which was formed later, is smaller and focuses only on property-casualty) so they'd have enough members with P&C expertise to develop exams. It didn't work. I see from a search that the SOA is now life, health and pension only. I never took them up on their "free" FSA offer. It felt like cheating.
The CAS never found it necessary to develop a Life and Health track.
If I had it to do over again I would still become an FCAS and go into catastrophe modeling- the likely impact of a major event such as an earthquake or hurricane on an insurer's book of business. Economics, meteorology, statistics, compound interest- it's all there.
Finally- I got into consulting late in my career. I loved it but I was not good at "rainmaking" (bringing n new clients, selling more services to additional clients). They expect that as you get higher up in your career. It's high-pressure but the people who do it well are very well-compensated. I went back to "wage slave" my last 12 years and was perfectly happy with that.
