A Bermuda resident has become one of the youngest people in the world to complete a gruelling series of actuarial exams.

Numair Khan, 20, will formally receive his Fellow of the Society of Actuaries designation in October after the fellowship admissions course in New Orleans, Louisiana.

“Once the fellowship is done, I could be the youngest in the world, but we still have to verify that,” he said.

The Royal Gazette understands that the youngest person to pass the actuarial exams is officially American Roy Ju who qualified in August 2015, also at the age of 20.

Mr Khan said that when he learnt on August 21 that he had passed his final actuarial exam, he felt grateful and relieved.

“I failed the last exam in the previous sitting, so I had been studying quite a bit,” he said. “Just being done with all the flash cards and notes was quite a relief.”

The final hurdle was also more challenging because in July he started working as a full-time actuary in the risk department at Global Atlantic, after a period of internship. The firm is a life reinsurer owned by KKR.

This is not the first time Mr Khan has made headlines.

In 2021, when he was 14, he became the second-youngest person in the world to qualify as a chartered certified accountant.

He is one of four children of accountant Muhammad Khan and medical doctor Samina Faraz, originally from Pakistan.

“We came here when I was 2,” Mr Khan said. “Bermuda is my home. It is all I have ever known. It was a great place to grow up.”

He started home schooling around middle school.

“We were initially following a structured, online system,” he said. “Over time, I ventured more into mathematics.”

He showed such a talent for figures that his father suggested he start studying for his chartered accounting exam when he was 11. He nailed the test three years later.

The next step was to start on his actuarial exams.

“I thought I would give it my best shot and see what happened,” he said.

He started working on them at 16.

“They are definitely tricky and tough to study for,” he said. “There is so much material to learn. They are very technical and mathematically involved.”

A passing grade is at least 70 per cent.

“Learning new concepts and applying them to the exams was tough,” he said. “I had not studied mathematics formally, particularly calculus, so I had to do a lot of self-study before doing them.”

He was not alone, however. His older sister and younger brother, Hasan and Unaysah, were also at various stages of attaining accounting and actuarial qualifications.

“My older sister, Unaysah, and I started accounting together,” he said. “She completed her exams by 18 and then started working as an accountant.”

Their father acted as their tutor and their shared passion for numbers brought them all closer together.

He completed university remotely, gaining a bachelor’s in accounting from Oxford Brookes University.

“Studying in general is not just about knowing how to succeed, but also about knowing how to fail,” Mr Khan said. “Failing is inevitable. The important thing is how you get back up afterwards. It is so much easier when you have people around you who love and support you, like I do.”

In the future he would like to further study programming and machine learning.

“Artificial intelligence is the focus in all industries,” he said.