What actuaries actually said about AI: 234 quotes, 52 organizations
Report · September 2026
What actuaries actually said about AI.
We spent this year on calls with actuaries, and what they said turned out to be worth more than anything we could write about it. So we’re putting the record out instead, in their words, with the names taken off.
Rather more was said than is printed here. What we left out is mostly about budgets, rivals and what people think of us, which is the half you would most want to check us on.
On the record, by name
A few people were willing to sign theirs.
The questions people asked us, with nobody selling them anything.
You still make the last call.
The tools have changed four times in a century and the output has gone up every time. Who signs the answer has not changed once.
Nobody has measured what an actuary gets through in a century, so there is no scale on this. It is an argument, not a count.
Tell us what you think.
We are still learning, from our customers and from the people who keep telling us what is actually on their desk. We will keep posting the record, and we are always happy to share what is in it.
The work they want gone is not the math.
Asked what they would hand over, not one person named a method or a judgment. They named the prep: moving data between systems, reading a competitor’s manual, retyping a rate table.
Nobody signs a number they do not understand.
An actuary signs an opinion in their own name, and has to say where every figure came from. You can’t put your name behind a black box, however right it turns out to be.
People stay in Excel so they can check the cell.
Nobody is sentimental about Excel. It is just the easiest way anyone has to check a number: see the arithmetic, disagree with one of them, change it without having to ask.
Risk-aware is not risk-averse.
Actuaries price risk for a living and can see the value here as well as anybody. What holds them back is that nobody has met the standard of evidence they work to yet.
They are already building it. Reproducibility is what stops them.
Plenty of them did not wait: loss picks built in Claude, agents written in-house. What comes back is never that the models fell short. It is that nobody could get the same answer twice, and an answer you can’t reproduce is one you can’t file.
Who
Chief actuaries, pricing leads, reserving leads and consultants working alone, at carriers, MGAs, captives and consultancies.
How we have it
People said these things to us on calls between January and August 2026, which is exactly why no name is attached to any of them. We cut for length and took the names and the employers off. Roles and the size of the place stay, because the same sentence means one thing from a chief actuary and another from somebody who is the whole department.