Hal Tepfer
Associate Professor of the Practice Director, Actuarial Science
A twenty-year veteran of Boston University’s Metropolitan College Actuarial Science program as a part-time instructor, Mr. Tepfer was appointed associate professor the practice and director of the Actuarial Science program in the fall of 2018. A recipient of MET’s Roger Deveau Part-Time Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Mr. Tepfer brings more than forty years of actuarial experience to the classroom, most recently as senior vice president at CBIZ RPS. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, an Enrolled Actuary with the Joint Board for Enrollment of Actuaries, a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and a member of other actuarial organizations. He serves on the American Academy of Actuaries’ Committee on Qualifications and is a member of the Society of Actuaries’ Education and Research Section. Tepfer is nationally recognized for his expertise in the area of pensions and health consulting, particularly with union plans.
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What advice do you have for new students?
The actuarial profession is both exciting and challenging, and for those reasons, now is a great time to be considering becoming an actuary. While the ‘old school’ model of an actuary is someone who grinds out premiums at an insurance company, actuaries today are working in a broad range of industries and using their actuarial skills in many different environments. So, it is important that an actuarial education provides students with the skills needed to answer questions that have never been asked before and solve problems that have never occurred before. In MET’s Actuarial Science program, we encourage students to go beyond rote learning and develop the skills to work in areas as diverse as finance, insurance, data mining, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence.
My advice is to learn more than just the basic mathematics of actuarial work. Focus on understanding the process involved in unwinding some of the more complex problems that exist in industry by applying the actuarial techniques that you learn as you work toward your master’s.