About two-thirds of all actuaries work for life, health, and property/casualty insurance companies. Actuarial responsibilities in these fields generally include making sure that one's company properly defines and carefully evaluates the insurance risk, charges a fair price to assume the risk and has an efficient system to pay claims and expenses as they occur while operating profitably as a business
An increasing number of actuaries work as independent consultants. Some operate their own offices, while others work for large, nationwide actuarial consulting firms. Actuaries who work as consultants provide actuarial advice for a fee to clients. These clients may include insurance companies, corporations, hospitals, labor unions, joint labor-management trustees, state and local governments, federal government agencies and attorneys. Actuaries can also find job opportunities with the federal government or state and local government, for example, Social Security Administration, Health Care Financing Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Public Health Service, Department of Defense and Treasury Department.