0 a person who calculates how likely accidents, such as fire, flood, or loss of property, are to happen, and tells insurance companies how much they should charge their customers
1 a person whose job is to calculate risk for insurance companies and pension funds, especially the age to which people are expected to live. The companies and funds use the results to make certain that they always have enough money to make payments to the people who have a right to them:
From these figures a firm of Manchester actuaries has drawn the startling conclusion that Bond Street is more used by women than by men.
I asked an eminent actuary the other day to make me some calculations.
This was on the day before the actuaries were to make their investigation.
Unlike their earlier appeals to science, though, this time around actuaries made a conscious effort to practice what the scientists seemed to be preaching.
As actuaries would discover by the mid-nineteenth century, too much competition also could be a threat to professional status.
His departure from the actuaries' commercial and intellectual norms guaranteed a cold professional response.
If they backed away, they risked playing into the hands of the new offices, which claimed that hiring an actuary was a needless expense.
First, the actuaries tend to smooth the value of assets by fiveyear averaging to moderate year-to-year fluctuations.