SA Actaury -> London/NY ER

Hi everyone

I’m looking to move into research (buy- or sell-side) in NY or London. Preferably London since I happen to have a British passport and family based in the UK.

I’m finished all the exams to become a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries London i.e. to get the FIA designation. To actually call myself an actuary I need 3 years of full time work experience in financial services of any description. I’m only 23 so I finished the exams at lightning speed. I worked for a year doing health care insurance consulting at Deloitte AIS (that’s their actuarial consulting arm). Since then I’ve been working as a buy-side equity analyst at a large long only here in SA (c.11 months). I much prefer this role and have no desire to go back to working as an actuary.

Nobody in the States or London will have heard of my undergrad degree (which was in maths, stats and act sci), or really give a s*&t about trying to interpret it. Being a qualified actuary might add some weight, but I’m not sure if IBs or AMs will care about that either. Also not sure if my current experience will add much (Size of the AM is AUM c. $30 billion – 4th largest in SA).

So my question is. Should I:

• Try get in by leveraging my FIA to join a research team covering insurers? (After my FIA becomes official and I’ve cleared CFA 2) • Have enough to apply to research positions in the said cities covering other? • Apply to do an MSC Fin (e.g. might get into one of LSEs programs) in order to access requisite networking and recruiting opportunities? I might even consider a top MBA if I got in.

GMAT 760. Cleared CFA 1 & Registered for 2 in June next year.

Thanks for any helpful suggestions and opinions. I’m really far the action at the moment and was hoping this forum might give me some sort of a gauge on how I would fair and my consequent choice for how to proceed.