NOTE: Since declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic in March by the World Health Organization, no SOA in-person events were held in 2020. In-person events will likely occur sometime in 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic is deemed to be under control and government restrictions on travel and public gatherings are no longer in place.
The following is a list of professional development (PD) opportunities offered by the SOA in 2020 that included content relevant to general insurance (GI):
- Inside InsurTech: Leveraging New Data Sources Webcast—Jan. 29
- Python Bootcamp for Actuaries 2020—March 4–5, Littleton, Colo.
- 2020 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium—March 9–10, Tampa, Fla.
- Model Governance for Advanced Analytics, Webcast—March 23
- Reinsurance 101 Webcast—April 6
- SOA & CAA Joint Webcast Series, IFRS 17—April 10
- COVID-19: What a Small Company Actuary Needs to Know—Virtual Town Hall—April 17
- A Medical and Epidemiological View of COVID-19 for the Insurance Industry Webcast—April 23
- BEAT Regulations Webcast—May 12
- IFRS 17—Current Challenges and Future Considerations Webcast—May 20
- Inside InsurTech: New Insurance Products for the Digital World Webcast—May 21
- ERM and Professionalism Webcast—May 26
- JRMS Webcast—Managing Cyber Risk—June 16
- Inside InsurTech: Tools for the Future Webcast —July 15
- Emerging Tools & Technologies—Comparison and Use Cases Webcast—July 28
- R—Coding for a Big World Analysis Webcast —July 30
- Emerging Tools & Technologies—Cloud computing Webcast—Aug. 6
- Highlights of New ASOP No. 56 on Modeling Webcast—Aug. 13
- Innovations in Actuarial Education Webcast—Aug. 19
- Pandemic Risk Management: Contingency Planning and Allocation Webcast—Sept. 2
- Peer-to-Peer Insurance and Digital Concierge Webcast—Sept. 11
- Actuarial Professionalism: Judge & Jury Webcast—Sept. 17
- Predictive Analytics 4.0, Virtual Symposium—Sept. 24–25
- 2020 SOA/Plug and Play InsurTech Roundtable—Kick Off—Oct. 22
- Business Development and Marketing for Actuaries Webcast—Nov. 3
- The SOA Predictive Analytics Virtual Seminar—Nov. 13
- Let's Make a Deal—Professionalism is Nonnegotiable Webcast—Dec. 8
This year’s SOA Virtual Annual Meeting & Exhibit, which was held Oct. 26–29, included the following sessions that were of interest to actuaries in all practice areas, including GI:
- Data + Graphics = Business Intelligence
- Actuarial Professionalism in an Evolving World
- Driving Actuarial Innovation
- Overcoming Unconscious Bias
- Don't Be Automated: Staying Relevant in the 21st Century
- Interpretability of Predictive Models in Underwriting
- What To Do With All This Data???
- My Past Just Crossed My Future: The Global Actuarial Workforce of the Future
- Economic Scenario Generation for Life, Pension and P&C Applications
- The Machines are Taking Over … But is Anyone Watching?
- How to Research: A Presentation for Non-Research Actuaries
- Employing Emotional Intelligence to Create Diverse and Inclusive Teams
- IFRS 17—A Global Standard With Local Impact
- AIT Research on Artificial Intelligence
- Actuarial Professionalism: Judge & Jury
If you miss a webcast, remember that recordings of past webcasts are available on-demand.
The SOA offers the following GI relevant e-courses for PD:
- Applications of Statistical Techniques for Professional Development e-Course, and
- Enterprise Risk Management e-Course.
Be sure to have a look at the SOA’s webpage for professional development opportunities. The webpage allows filtering on many levels to facilitate searching for opportunities. It also includes links to past events that may include access to the presentation slide deck.
Reading actuarial papers is a good source of PD. During the year, the SOA published Volume 24 of the North American Actuarial Journal. Volume 24 included many interesting GI papers including:
- “Can Automobile Insurance Telematics Predict the Risk of Near-Miss Events?” by Montserrat Guillen, Jens Perch Nielsen, Ana M. Pérez-Marín and Valandis Elpidorou.
- “Text Mining Methods Applied to Insurance Company Customer Calls: A Case Study” by Xiyue Liao, Guoqiang Chen, Ben Ku, Rahul Narula and Janet Duncan.
- “Predictive Analytics and Medical Malpractice” by Edward W. Frees and Lisa Gao
- “Pricing Flood Insurance with a Hierarchical Physics-Based Model” by Mathieu Boudreault, Patrick Grenier, Mathieu Pigeon, Jean-Mathieu Potvin and Richard Turcotte.
- “Remote Sensing Applications for Insurance: A Predictive Model for Pasture Yield in the Presence of Systemic Weather” by C. Brock Porth, Lysa Porth, Wenjun Zhu, Milton Boyd, Ken Seng Tan and Kai Liu.
- “The Design of Weather Index Insurance Using Principal Component Regression and Partial Least Squares Regression: The Case of Forage Crops” by Milton Boyd, Brock Porth, Lysa Porth, Ken Seng Tan, Shuo Wang and Wenjun Zhu.
- “Capital Requirements for Cyber Risk and Cyber Risk Insurance: An Analysis of Solvency II, the U.S. Risk-Based Capital Standards, and the Swiss Solvency Test” by Martin Eling and Werner Schnell.
Check out the SOA’s research for general insurance related topics at SOA General Insurance Research, SOA Climate Research and SOA Risk Management Research. Research briefs and statistics on COVID-19 can be found on Society of Actuaries COVID-19 Research. Reading research papers can be a good source of professional development. Research papers published in 2020 that are relevant to GI include:
- “Projecting a Dependent Loss Ratio Under Shifting Parameters”;
- “Quantification of Cyber Risk for Actuaries”;
- “Residential Flood Risk in the United States: Quantifying Flood Losses, Mortgage Risk and Sea Level Rise”;
- “Trends in Normalized Weather-Related Property Losses in the United States: 1960–2018”;
- “Exposure Measures for Pricing and Analyzing the Risks in Cyber Insurance”;
- “13th Annual Survey Of Emerging Risks”; and
- “Negative Interest Rates and the Insurance Industry.”
The SOA counts on everyone’s support and ideas to make the most of our continuing education opportunities. If you have any GI specific (or GI relevant) ideas for seminars, meeting sessions, and webcast topics, or would like to write a GI relevant article, please forward them to SOA Staff Fellow Anthony Cappelletti at acappelletti@soa.org.
There are also volunteer opportunities to work on the GI Track exams as an item writer and/or grader. Refer to the SOA website for volunteering—select View Volunteer Opportunities and then select General Insurance Exams Item Writers.
In addition to offerings from the SOA, there were many virtual GI PD opportunities during the year from other sources. For example:
- In March, the International Actuarial Association’s ASTIN section held the webinar “Spectral Risk Measures (SRM) and Applications in Insurance ERM.”
- In April, the American Academy of Actuaries held the webinar “P/C Public Policy Update,” the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Data Quality, Validation and Movement Analysis—Requirements and Approaches to Manage Quality under Solvency II,” the International Association of Actuaries held the web seminar “Research Brief: The impact of COVID-19” and the ASTIN webinar “Triangle-Free Reserving,” the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held the webinar “How Property and Casualty Providers are Dealing With COVID-19 Pressures on Coverage and Options,” the Insurance Information Institute held the webinar “Triple-I Economic Briefing—COVID-19’s Impact on P/C Insurance Markets” and the Casualty Actuarial Society held the webinars “What Should Define the Future of Insurance Regulations,” and “Professionalism in Novel Situations.”
- In May, the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Data Science Pricing of Motor Insurance,” Pinnacle Actuaries Resources Inc. held the webinar “COVID-19's Economic Impact on Driving Patterns and Insurance,” the International Association of Actuaries held the Sections Virtual Colloquium and the web seminar “AFIR-ERM Live Session on Artificial Intelligence” and the Casualty Actuarial Society held the webinar “Don't Put All Your AALs in One Basket: Catastrophe Concentration Pricing for Primary Insurers.”
- In June, the International Association of Actuaries held the webinar “Climate Change, Insurance and Vulnerable Populations” and the ASTIN web seminar “Bayesian Claims Reserving Methods in Non-Life Insurance Part II,” the Institute of Actuaries of India held the “Webinar on General Insurance,” and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held the webinar “McKinsey 2020 State of the P&C Insurance Industry.”
- In July, the American Academy of Actuaries held the webinar “Workers' Compensation: Impacts of COVID–19,” the International Association of Actuaries held the webinar “Current Views about Professionalism in the Use of Big Data,” Pinnacle Actuaries Resources Inc. held the webinar “Causes of Recent Adverse Development,” and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held the webinar “CCSC Fireside Chat on Climate Change and the Work of Actuaries.”
- In August, the American Academy of Actuaries held the webinar “In Times of Uncertainty, Professionalism Is Certain,” Pinnacle Actuaries Resources Inc. held the webinar “Flood Insurance—Past, Present and Future,” and the Casualty Actuarial Society held the webinar “COVID-19 and Traffic Safety Puzzle of 2020.”
- In September, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held their appointed actuary seminar virtually, Reuters held the webinar “Auto Insurance: Preparing for a Post Covid-19 Landscape,” and the Casualty Actuarial Society held the “Virtual Casualty Loss Reserve Seminar & Workshops.”
- In October, the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Big Data and Anti-Discrimination—Lessons Learned from Unisex-Tariffs,” the International Association of Actuaries held the AFIR-ERM webinar “Risk Book Series—The ORSA,” and the Casualty Actuarial Society held the “2020 In Focus Virtual Seminar.”
- In November, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries held their GIRO 2020 conference virtually, the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Managing Quality and Explainability in Machine Learning and AI,” the Institute of Actuaries Australia held the webinar “COVID-19 Issues for GI Actuaries—Reflection and Update,” the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held their annual conference, act20, virtually, and the Casualty Actuarial Society held the webinar “Autonomous Trucking.”
- In December, the European Actuarial Academy held the webinars “Non-Life Pricing & Profitability Analysis Using Machine Learning Techniques with R Applications” and “Cyber Insurance,” and the American Academy of Actuaries held the virtual seminar on “Effective P/C Loss Reserve Opinions.”