Society of Actuaries Approves Continuing Professional Development Requirement for Members, Names ERM Designation

• For immediate release: March 30, 2007
• For more information:
• Kim McKeown
• 847.706.3528

At its March 19–20 meeting the Society of Actuaries Board of Governors approved the establishment of a continuing professional development (CPD) requirement for SOA members to be developed by the organization's Knowledge Management Strategic Action Team for Board review in June 2007. The Board also endorsed "Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst" (CERA) as the official name of the SOA's new enterprise risk management designation and reviewed implementation steps.

"Both the CPD requirement and ERM designation are examples of the SOA's response to important developments in the marketplace," said President Ed Robbins, noting that both issues were closely connected to the advancement of key member–endorsed strategic goals of ERM leadership and enhancing the profession's image and align closely to the organization's educational focus. He added that the SOA intends to make every effort to coordinate its requirements with those of other actuarial organizations.

Turning to elections, the Board also moved to enhance transparency by approving the release of vote counts for president–elect candidates in 2007 and asked the Nominating Committee to recommend additional measures for the future. Additionally, three reserved Board seats were approved for the 2007 election to better reflect Canadian, retirement and health benefits perspectives.

In its strategy discussion the Board also reviewed SOA membership demographics, concluded that strategically important diversity issues exist, and asked the Issues Advisory Council (IAC) to develop approaches to enhance diversity. Acting on input from the SOA "Important Issues Process," the Board discussed and determined that "untapped opportunities in the health discipline" was an urgent and important strategic issue and initiated further exploration by commissioning the IAC to prepare a white paper further outlining the issue and potential courses of action and their implications.

In its annual checkup on progress against strategic goals the Board reviewed key balanced scorecard outcomes and endorsed continuing enhancements to the system, including new measures of actuary brand strength.