Actuary vs Financial Analyst
Measured from each occupation's own live postings: related jobs with a real gap between them. Posted pay favors the actuary by about $42k at the midpoint. Salary bands, both switching directions, and the shared skills below — every number from live postings, refreshed nightly.
Actuary
Financial Analyst
60 open roles · financial analyst salary · careers for financial analysts
The overlap, measured
Skills that appear in both occupations’ posting demand. This is the shared core; everything else on each side is the difference.
Switching, both directions
Actuary → Financial Analyst
Not scored: the pair shares too few skills in this direction to measure honestly. Run the instrument with your own skill set for a personal read.
Financial Analyst → Actuary
Credentialing exams (SOA/CAS) effectively required
Transition estimate: 12–24 mo + license.
The gap, from actuary postings: Risk Management, Statistics, Python.
Related comparisons
- Financial Controller vs Financial Analyst71% peak overlap
- Accountant vs Financial Analyst53% peak overlap
- Actuary vs Data Scientist53% peak overlap
- Bookkeeper vs Financial Analyst44% peak overlap
- Business Analyst vs Financial Analyst43% peak overlap
- Account Executive vs Actuary43% peak overlap
Which one do your skills favor?
Run the instrument with your own skill set and both readiness numbers recompute for you. Free, no account.
Quick answers
Which pays more, actuary or financial analyst?
Posted mid-bands from each occupation's own corpus: Actuary $92k–$145k, Financial Analyst $64k–$88k. At the midpoint that favors the actuary by about $42k a year. Only postings that state pay are counted.
Are actuary and financial analyst the same job?
Related but distinct: postings share a real core and then diverge. Skills both sets of postings ask for: Data Analysis, Financial Modeling, Forecasting, Accounting.
Can a financial analyst become a actuary?
Skill readiness is 49 percent in this direction. Note the credential gate: credentialing exams (soa/cas) effectively required. Estimated transition: 12–24 mo + license.
Method: each occupation’s salary band is the posted 25th–75th percentile from its own corpus; readiness is coverage of the destination’s posting-skill weight; shared skills are read from the overlap waterfall. Pairs sharing too few skills are not scored in that direction. Refreshed with the nightly scrape.