> why not both? an environment of stagnant companies offering jobs involving difficult calculations sounds ripe for disruption- is it being strangled by regulation or something?

Those jobs only exist because of regulation. The regulation dictates that the insurance companies must do those calculations and that the calculations must be done by a specially ordained priesthood of actuaries who have passed a bunch of random math and finance exams. That priesthood does not want technological disruption, they like their spreadsheets just fine, thank you. In recent years the executives at the insurance companies went through a fad where they decided they wanted to try out this whole "disruption" and "innovation" thing, so they created various kinds of "innovation" departments. Typically, when a company does that, after a few years "innovation" becomes a four letter word and they never talk about it again. In order to climb the corporate ladder as an actuary, you have to focus on the politics surrounding you and not on the terrible technology surrounding you.

I’m not an actuary, but worked earlier in my career for a “chief innovation officer”. Being young and dumb I feel for it, and in truth we had an awesome team that did some really cool stuff with lasting value.

But once we had a few wins, the chief innovator guy got promoted away, and he was the guy with political power. The various fiefdoms goobled up the innovation budget like thanksgiving turkey. The IT idiots “innovated” by buying high capacity toner. The data center people bought new air conditioners.