Royce Lim

Role: Analyst – Customer Labs, Analytics/Actuarial Reserving

Describe your rotations: what division were you in and what did you learn/get involved in?
I was given the opportunity to do two nine-month rotations. The first was in the Analytics team, which is part of Customer Labs. The second (still ongoing!) is in Actuarial Reserving.

In Analytics, I was immediately given the opportunity to use my fledgling data science skills, working on a tool that monitored the performance of some of our insurance claim models, and generated visualisations that drew attention to areas of concern.

I also worked on a major project that produced various metrics for assessing the performance of our products. I was tasked with reviewing some products, and played a major role in managing the code used for commercial products.

In Reserving, I’ve had the pleasure of working on a project that is using machine learning to create some traditional reserving models in an alternative way. These new models will allow us to gain new insights from our data, and will be used to provide better quality advice to the business.

Throughout my time here, I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge about general insurance, and have been strongly encouraged to develop the skills I need to for the roles I want in the future.

Describe in three words your experience on the graduate program so far: 
Valued, Supported and Trusted

What’s a typical day like? 
One of the most surprising things for me was that there was very little routine to each day. Some of the regular occurrences are development meetings with your manager and check-ins with your project team and broader team.

The work I do also varies drastically, and depends on what projects I am working on. Currently, in the Reserving team, most of my days involve varying mixes of data cleaning, data manipulation, and model generation, diagnosis and tuning. At the start of each month (and especially each quarter), my time is almost entirely devoted to assisting the team with preparing the standard month-end/quarter-end deliverables.

What has the support network at IAG been like for you as a Grad?
Joining as part of the graduate program, I started alongside others from diverse backgrounds who were facing the same challenges and feeling the same challenges as me. This gave me a great group of friends who I could relate to, and felt comfortable talking to about my experience. The graduate program also helped us link up with previous graduates who could share their experiences with us, and mentors who served as a wealth of knowledge about the company as a whole.

Outside of the program, the people I’ve interacted with have been universally great. My direct colleagues, managers, and even strangers working elsewhere in the organization have been friendly, understanding, and happy to spend their valuable time helping me. They have made me feel valued and supported, and settling in to new roles has been smooth!

Why would you recommend this program to uni students? 

• Good work-life balance and flexible work options.
• Felt valued and supported from day one.
• From my experience, the people have been universally great.
• Strong and structured focus on your development desires, needs, and goals – which is embedded in the organisation as well as the graduate program.
• Large organisation that doesn’t act like a traditional incumbent – recognises disruptors and is on the road to becoming more innovative, agile and responsive to change.

What have been the two most memorable experiences you have had on the Grad program? 
You’ll probably read about the 90 Day Business Challenge and Amazing Race in the other graduate stories, so I’m going to cheat by saying “yes” to both and give two other experiences.

One was presenting back the results of my first project to my colleagues in Analytics. As someone who has pretty poor presentation skills, this was a great opportunity for me to practice presenting in a safe and supportive environment. The response I received made me feel really valued.

Another was the Reserving team’s end-of-year pot-luck and Kris Kringle. Someone wrapped the gift they had purchased for me in wrapping paper – and placed in a full box of Cheezels – which was itself wrapped in another layer of wrapping paper – which was placed in a thick shopping bag coated in a final two layers of wrapping paper. It was great to see that humor was alive and well within the team!