Bruce Edwards has been teaching actuarial studies at Macquarie University for over 20 years. In that time, he has loved shaping the minds of future professionals in this very specialised field. Actuarial studies has also delivered Bruce, a new late in life passion as a mentor with Macquarie's Lucy mentorship program.

Welcome, Bruce. Thank you. Can I ask you, Bruce, what made a young Bruce Edwards decide to become an actuary? Well, I grew up in Queensland. I went to university in Queensland, did a science degree. My first year was maths chemistry, and physics decided that chemistry and physics was not my forte, so I focused on the maths, and the last two years was all maths.

When I graduated, I had three choices. One was becoming a teacher and I dismissed that immediately. because I saw the way that students treated their teachers at that time in Queensland. The other two choices were computer programming, which at that stage was a new area. And studying to become an actuary.

And so when I moved to Sydney after graduating my first job was kind of a combination of those last two. And over time it became obvious that the actuarial career was the one that I enjoyed the most. So I gravitated to that. And you've become a teacher. And I become a teacher, so people do change over their lifetime?

Yes. What does an actuary do? Where do they fit into society? 

Well, I ran a consulting firm for 17 years. I spent half my time doing financial modelling of things for the future and the other half explaining and communicating the results and the business decisions to the client. And I think that's actually a pretty fair description of the two things.

Most actuaries are employed in insurance. That's because business decisions made by insurers are looking into the future 

Most businesses when they come to sell, whatever it is they make, they know what it's cost before they sell it. Insurance companies don't because the cost is the future. Claims fortune telling, your fortune tellers not predicting the future.

No, but setting the assumptions for the company to make business decisions. Companies have to set. Beside liabilities to pay future claims. That's based on assumptions about the future. And it's the actuaries who actually own the assumption set and it gets reviewed year after year in a control cycle kind of process.

And that by coincidence is the name of the course that I teach at Macquarie, is control cycle. 

The actuarial control cycle. That's what it's all about. Most people consider it very, very dry. 

Is it interesting to you, Bruce? 

It's an exciting area. It's exciting. It's not dry at all. Actuaries are people who enjoy the problem solving, the mental gymnastics that goes into understanding, some digging deeply and looking at experience and things like that.

That's where you start. And then like any other profession, as you get older, you move more into management. That was the path that I followed as well. 

Is it a popular course here at Macquarie? 

Well, in my fourth year subject, we have 120 students this year, so it's not one of the big ones. It's a very rigorous course, which requires a pretty high standard of maths to be able to manage.

What makes a good actuary? 

The main differentiator is communication skills, ability to work with people. 

The actuaries that were most successful were the ones who communicate well. At the end of the day, it was really only teaching that made me comfortable getting up in front of a group of people. 

And I didn't start teaching till I was 50. Well, I started teaching when I retired, I suppose, from my full-time consulting role. Which was then at KPMG, and I was looking to try some different things. 

Basically I spoke to a friend out here at university. I said I'd be interested to try lecturing. And she said, that's good. You can teach control cycle. So that was how I started. I'm very ashamed of my very first lectures because I could not think about how I was going to talk for two hours.

And so for my first lecture, I came along prepared with something like 120 slides. Right. They do a picture show. 

And I remember I got through about 10 of them during the lecture and quickly worked out that that didn't work for me and it didn't work for the students. So quickly I switched to a more interactive style and developed the course, which I think has worked well.

The feedback from the students has always been really excellent and that's motivated me to, to keep going with the teaching. 

What's it given you? 

I think the satisfaction of giving something back. I've got a very broad and long experience as an actuary and I've got lots of war stories, and the students enjoy those stories.

They enjoy the practical side of my experience. What's it given me? The satisfaction of giving something back and helping the next generation. 

So this has been a long association. You studied here as well. It has been. So this goes back to the 1970s. Professor Pollard, who was the one who started the actuarial school here at Macquarie, decided to try a master's course as a bit of an experiment as the entry level was to be a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

So it was already qualified actuaries. I think there were about 15 of us in the class. 

And what, what are your memories of that time? Oh, look, it was all positive. 

Did you spend a lot of time on campus? 

I'm not sure we ever even came to campus. So it was the 15 of us and it was one evening a week and the 15 people were all working in the city.

Well, that particular course only went for one year, and I think they were a bit disappointed by the fact that only 15 people put their hands up in Sydney. There are only two universities that do actuarial studies, which is Macquarie and NSW and they're kind of friendly competitors in in that field.

And one of the nice things about teaching my subject at Macquarie is that we have a framework to teach within. 

But within that framework each of the lecturers can choose to relate the framework to their own experience, so I'm not bound to teach things that I really don't have much experience of.

Right. And I can choose the things to focus on, which I think are important. 

You are a mentor for part of Macquarie University's Lucy mentoring program? Tell me about it. 

I was still teaching. But I was looking for other activities and to try some different things. I came out and spoke to a friend out here about volunteering opportunities at Macquarie and what I found with the Lucy program, and I think one of the things that really makes it work is that both the mentor and mentee commit to meeting for 20 hours over 20 weeks. 

So basically an hour a week for 20 weeks. So you really get to know the person.

So there's two people actually get to know each other pretty well by the end of that time.

I've had one Lucy mentee every year since 2020, so I'm up to six at the moment, and I've found that's six hours a week. Yes. That's fantastic. Well, I'm actually mentoring 10 people at the moment, so that's 10 hours a week.

I'm retired, so I have the time to do that. I'm a part-time teacher, part-time mentor, and I love both of those activities. I could quickly see the value that I could add to the mentees. 

What is the value that you can add to the mentees? 

I think it's being a trusted advisor. I find the mentees are quite happy to talk to me about their daily issues and problems.

I joke with some of my friends that being a mentor is a bit like having a bigger family, with one big difference. 

And that is one big difference is that my mentees actually sometimes listen to what I say and sometimes act on my advice. My family never did and so that's a good feeling.

But my first mentee was 2020, so we've now been meeting every week for five years. 

How impactful has your mentorship been to that very first mentee's career? 

I can just feel and sense the difference that it makes. It's just someone to talk to. She's an international student. With English as a second language.

A brilliant student. She's done extremely well, but not so confident about how to deal with the Australian business communities. 

Does she become a little bit more assertive in her business life? 

How does she set boundaries when her employers wanted to work till two o'clock in the morning? So all those sorts of things, and she's just become a friend after five years, she and her boyfriend came to our place for Christmas lunch. 

So you do get very close. Very close, I would say. Yeah. And, and that's lovely. 

I had two sons. I never had daughters because that is one of the rules of the Lucy Mentorship program is that it's all women. It's only women. 

How popular is the program and how well is it working?

It works brilliantly. It runs on the smell of an oily rag, and it's all about volunteering. And volunteering is good both for the mentors and for the mentees. 

Last year we had 60 matches of mentors and mentees. This year we've got 140 matches. So it's growing really strongly. And we had 400 applications from students to be mentored.

So a full-time employee can't really do what I've done. 

And what does that contact give you? Does it keep you young? 

I think it does.

How long do you think you will be continuing to be a mentor? 

How long would you like to be doing this? I think the quick answer is forever. But I will reach a use by date at some stage. 

Really? Will you? Kind of expecting that. The mentees will tell me that when I reach my use by date, the mentees make excuses about coming into the city at seven 30 in the morning.