That is very true. I was doing a vanilla Bsc in maths, and had a long hard thought about it. My friends dad, an actuary gave me an example of a super qualified maths guy, who was doing the accounts in the firm fine, however he was fired and a CA hired because he lacked the professional accreditation.
Funny seraphim, im basically doing that plan (bsc/be(mech). But mech has a lot of subjects that don't look very quanty. BUT, I dont think you need to be that good to stand out. In the UK, a Maths degree is quite hard to get into in the good unis, often needing AAA (98.3 uai) or AAAA (no conversion for this), and they seem to get good jobs (the ones with 2.1 honours or greater).
You could always get an ops/tech div job and then do CFA, and use that as a small career boost.
IMO its better to do maths, and learn a bit about what actuarial is like, if you enjoy it, do the masters in actuarial to get the exemptions.
Seraphim: What book would you recommend for introductory financial mathematics?