2022 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Julie Joyce Senior vice president and chief corporate actuary
Travelers Cos. Inc.
St. Paul, Minnesota
Knowing she wanted to do something that was math-related, Julie Joyce said a “not-that-great” accounting internship in college prompted her to switch her major to actuarial science.
The diversity of products and emerging risks are what attracted her to insurance, she said.
“There’s personal, auto, D&O, workers comp. … There was just a huge variety,” she said. “Then there were the emerging products; cyber was starting to become a bigger product, and climate change was certainly impacting catastrophe (losses).”
Today, she takes the pulse of every line as the chief corporate actuary at Travelers, a role she’s held since 2018. She has oversight of financial analyses and reporting and is an adviser to the company’s executive leadership, which relies on her to provide insights into earnings to investors.
It’s an area where she shines, said Dan Frey, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Travelers, who praised her “top-notch communications skills.”
“As an actuary, Julie is pretty involved in the quarterly earnings because she can marry her strong technical skills with her ability to explain complex issues in an easy-to-understand way,” he said. “She gets it, and she is able to communicate those complicated issues in a way that we can understand.”
Laughing about this endorsement, Ms. Joyce said she’s particularly “outgoing — for an actuary.” The actuarial field, she said, is known for attracting top talent in terms of math and analytics — and not exactly communications.
Jokes aside, she finds the work exciting; her favorite task is launching new products, she said.
“I’ve always felt like this is exactly where I want to be when we’ve launched a new product — developed it, figured out a rating plan, figured out what we want to offer for coverage and then launched that new product,” she said.
“There are some opportunities where you’re going to learn a little bit when you put that product out in the marketplace. You’ve looked at what competitors are offering and doing. You’ve looked at what you think your losses will be, but there’s definitely a test-and-learn element to launching a new product.”
