Being an actuary may not be everyone's idea of fun, but if Andy Bell is anything to go by, it can be a lucrative profession.

His Manchester-based firm is one of the largest administrators of self invested personal pensions (Sipps) in the UK, handling pension investments of over £5bn on behalf of 35,000 clients, plus £2.8bn of assets through its Lawshare operation.

Having graduated from Nottingham University in 1987 with a first class degree in maths, Bell went on to train as an actuary and became a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1993. Two years later, he co-founded AJ Bell, and the rest, as they say, is history. It made a tasty £9.6m profit on £24.5m sales in the year to September 2008.