Tonya Bowman Manning, FSA 2000, MAA, EA, FCA

Chief Actuary and Senior Vice President, AON Consulting,
Winston-Salem, NC

Brief description of the type of work you currently do:

Oversee intellectual capital, thought leadership, processes, systems and general operations of Defined Benefit practice.

Primary Area of Practice:

Retirement Systems

Professional Background:

I am the Chief Actuary for Aon Consulting's US Retirement Practice and a Senior Vice President. My professional expertise is the modeling, analysis and design of retirement benefits and compliance with IRC and accounting standards. For over 20 years, I have provided actuarial and consulting support for multiple types of plans for organizations of various sizes and structures. As Chief Actuary, I am responsible for supervising the actuarial intellectual capital development across the practice, as well as quality assurance and compliance with actuarial professional standards. I am chair of the US Retirement Practice's Professional Standards Council and a member of the US Standards and Compliance Council. My responsibilities also include systems oversight and the delivery of internal continuing education. I have represented the US on Aon's Global Retirement Practice Council, where I led the Council's Innovation Task Force and participated on the Global Standards Task Force.

Volunteer Experience:

I am currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Society of Actuaries and, prior to that, served as chair of the Society's Pension Section Council. I have also provided E&E support for the SOA through writing exam questions and pre-testing exams for the Joint Board. I am currently a member of the Pension Council, the Pension Accounting Committee and the Volunteer Resource Committee for the American Academy of Actuaries and have recently joined the ASB. For several years, I have participated on the Enrolled Actuaries Meeting Program Committee and am a frequent speaker at the Enrolled Actuaries meeting and CCA and SOA meetings and webcasts.

Vision Statement:

A key component of the Society of Actuaries' strategy is cultivating new opportunities. The business community continues to view the actuarial profession as a resource for strong analytical skills and problem solving in traditional areas such as insurance and employee benefits, but business needs are changing. While we should never abandon our analytical and technical skills, we must broaden our skills and areas of practice in order to best remain relevant in the marketplace. New financial risks are constantly emerging and businesses struggle to understand, measure and mitigate them. We can position ourselves as key business partners by applying actuarial principles to these new and highly complex financial markets and products. The recent market turmoil has virtually 'slung the door open' for actuaries in this regard–we just need to walk through it, armed with new models, business acumen and our strong analytical skills. The Society of Actuaries, as an organization devoted to research and education, is positioned to help actuaries to do just that. The Society can advance our profession by maintaining a flexible, current education curriculum that helps members acquire key business skills. In addition, its research must be forward-thinking, recognizing issues before they develop, and creating models and analytics to solve them once they do emerge. This will enable our profession to evolve, cultivating new opportunities while ensuring actuaries and their skills will remain relevant to businesses.