By Anthony Cappelletti
Welcome to General Insurance Insights, the SOA’s newsletter for those with an interest in general insurance (aka property and casualty insurance). This newsletter marks the first volume of what will be a regular publication intended to inform its readers on issues pertaining to general insurance and to foster the development of a general insurance community within the SOA. Starting in 2016, General Insurance Insights will be published two times a year.
The SOA began development of the General Insurance Track in 2012 and started offering exams in the track in the fall of 2013. The General Insurance Track was developed to be consistent with the same rigor and high standards of SOA’s other fellowship tracks. At this point in time, there are more than 100 individuals that have written SOA General Insurance Track exams and modules. While the General Insurance Track is new, SOA education in general insurance is not new. The SOA has included general insurance topics in the Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice e–Learning Course and, since the Fall of 2012, offered general insurance as one of the six extensions for the ERM exam. Several SOA members have selected the general insurance extension of the ERM exam, along with many whose careers include significant exposure to general insurance.
Over the past couple of years, the SOA has made available a number of general insurance professional development opportunities for its members, including:
- Annual meeting sessions on various topics (ratemaking and reserving, actuarial climate research, predictive modeling, detection of fraudulent claims, ERM, cyber risk exposures, agricultural insurance, micro-insurance opportunities, ORSA, reinsurance and capital market convergence);
- Two SOA General Insurance Seminars (2014 in Singapore, 2015 in South Korea);
- Availability of the SOA General Insurance fellowship module Applications of Statistical Techniques as a stand-alone e-course; and
- Annual ERM Symposium co-sponsored by the SOA, CIA and CAS.
With respect to upcoming professional development with general insurance content, the SOA has planned a webcast on cyber risk and insurance for January 2016. Additional professional development opportunities will be offered later in the year.
The format of this newsletter includes several articles to keep readers with an interest in general insurance informed and a listing of upcoming professional development opportunities. We also invite readers to submit articles, or ideas for articles, and will respond to questions from readers.
There are many issues facing general insurance actuaries today (e.g., weather-related catastrophic events, cyber risk exposures, telematics, developments in capital modeling). We look forward to keeping readers informed in topics of interest to general insurance actuaries and to developing the general insurance actuarial community within the SOA.
Anthony Cappelletti, FSA, BSc, FCAS, FCIA, is staff fellow, General Insurance, for the Society of Actuaries. He can be contacted at acappelletti@soa.org.