Editor's Column

Editor's Column

by Ruth Ann Woodley

Here we are on our second issue using electronic newsletters, and the process is developing nicely. Here's an update on our plans for this version going forward, and what we are working on so far.

You may notice that this issue is a little shorter than in the past; our plan is to deliver issues a little more frequently (four in 2007, hopefully five to six in future years), but keep them shorter and easier to digest. Thanks to everyone who sent feedback on the January issue, and since this is still a pilot program and a learning process, I encourage anyone to let me know what you like and don't like or suggestions for changes.

I did get some very helpful feedback that the new format makes it harder to read the newsletter off-line, for those who like to catch up on reading while flying, traveling, etc. For those readers who would like this option, you can save the Web page for specific articles or the whole newsletter to your computer to view later. From the newsletter email, just click through to the chosen article, or to the "Print-Friendly Newsletter" to get the whole newsletter. On that page, choose "Save As" from the "Page" menu (in Windows Explorer), and you'll be able to save it to your computer as an HTML file.

We are also working on a process to keep links to these newsletters on the EAS Web site, and to ensure that you can still find the articles by searching for a specific topic, title or author in the SOA's search engine. And we will continue to put the articles on the Resource Center page of the EAS Web site so that you can find all past articles on a particular topic of interest, whether that's legal issues, sales practices, or other aspects of running a business.

Finally, as you may have noticed in the newsletter sidebar, we are pondering the future of our FAS 87 and 106 assumptions survey. In the past these have been conducted annually, but based on some feedback the section is strongly considering doing the survey either less frequently or not at all. We'd love to hear from those of you who find this information valuable, so we don't take away a tool you use.

Ruth Ann Woodley, FSA, MAAA, is vice president with Ruark Consulting, LLC in Simsbury, Conn., and is editor of The Independent Consultant. She can be reached at 860.651.6236.