December 2021

Content

GI PD Opportunities Update

By Anthony Cappelletti

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Editor’s Note: In-person events in 2021 occurred only in locations where the COVID-19 pandemic was deemed to be under control and government restrictions on travel and public gatherings were no longer in place.

The following is a list of professional development (PD) opportunities offered by the SOA in 2021 that included content relevant to general insurance (GI):

  • “COVID Today: What is Scientifically Settled and What is Not?” Jan. 21—Webcast
  • “Inside the Black Box: Machine Learning for Actuaries,” March 2—Webcast
  • “A Changing Tide: Distribution, Technology, And Evolution In The New Wave of Microinsurance,” April 8—Webcast
  • Inside InsurTech: Virtual Roundtable, April 22—Virtual event
  • “Data Science: Novel Applications for Actuaries,” April 28—Webcast
  • “Chief Risk Officer Perspectives: ERM During the Pandemic Webcast,” May 25—Webcast
  • 2021 SOA China Symposium, June 3–4—Shanghai Shi, China
  • “Actuarial Standards of Practice for Enterprise Risk Management.” June 8—Webcast
  • Predictive Analytics Seminar, June 14—Online event
  • The SOA Asia-Pacific Annual Symposium, June 17–18—Hybrid Event, Taipei, Taiwan
  • “The SOA Environmental Risk Series: What Matters for Actuaries,” July 16—Webcast
  • “Data Visualization: Elements of a Strong Presentation,” Aug. 10—Webcast
  • “Risk Management in Emerging Markets and Smaller Insurers,” Oct. 19—Webcast
  • 2021 ImpACT, SOA Annual Conference, Oct. 25–29—Virtual event
  • “Practical AI usage for Claims and Underwriting,” Oct. 27—Webcast
  • Climate Risk Symposium—The Evolving Role of the Actuary in Climate Risk, Nov.2—Virtual event
  • “SOA Webcast on IFRS17,” Nov. 8—Webcast
  • “Let's Make a Deal: Professionalism is Nonnegotiable,” Nov. 10—Webcast
  • SOA ImpACT Asia: Risk & Capital Management Virtual Seminar, Nov. 18—Virtual event
  • “Actuarial Professionalism: Judge & Jury Webcast,” Dec. 1—Webcast
  • SOA Data Analytics and Professionalism Virtual Seminar, Dec. 2—Virtual event

If you missed a webcast, remember that recordings of past webcasts are available on-demand.

The 2021 SOA Annual Conference, ImpACT, was initially planned as a hybrid in-person/virtual event. However, challenges stemming from the pandemic required that it be held entirely as a virtual event for safety reasons. The virtual meeting was held Oct. 25–29. It included the following sessions that were relevant to GI:

  • “Cyber: How Many Risk Categories Does it Cross?”
  • “Technological Barbarians at the Gate: Learning from Upheaval in Other Industries”
  • “Integrating Strategy and Risk for Insurers”
  • “A Courtroom Case: Data Democratization to Drive Analytics?”
  • “Climate Risk Research for Actuaries”
  • “Insurance for the Next 100 Million”
  • “How Good Are Your Risk Disclosures? A Comparative Analysis”
  • “Is Knowledge Power? How Preferences Influence Risk Judgements We Make”
  • “AITSC Present I—Lightning Talks on Latest Research”
  • “AITSC Present II—Actuarial Innovation and Technology Research Roundtable”
  • “Professionalism: Actuaries vs. the Code”
  • “Highlights of the SOA General Insurance Research Program” (On-Demand Session)
  • “Insurtech Actuaries: How Did I Get Here and Where Next?” (On-Demand Session)
  • “Resurrecting the White Swan Mindset: How Much More Can Be Forecast” (On-Demand Session)

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.”

Additionally, the SOA offers the following three certificate programs, all of which are relevant to GI:

  • IFRI Certificate,
  • Predictive Analytics Certificate, and
  • Ethical & Responsible Use of Data Certificate.

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 25 of the North American Actuarial Journal. Volume 25 included many interesting GI papers including.

  • “Fitting Nonstationary Cox Processes: An Application to Fire Insurance Data” by Hansjörg Albrecher, José Carlos Araujo-Acuna & Jan Beirlant.
  • “Feasibility of Long-Term Interest Balance among Stakeholders in the Natural Catastrophe Insurance Market” by Ning Zhang, Yang-Che Wu & Wan-Shiou Yang.
  • “Dynamic Bayesian Ratemaking: A Markov Chain Approximation Approach” by Hong Li, Yang Lu & Wenjun Zhu.
  • “A New Class of Severity Regression Models with an Application to IBNR Prediction” by Tsz Chai Fung, Andrei L. Badescu & X. Sheldon Lin.
  • “An Empirical Analysis of Insurer Participation in the U.S. Cyber Insurance Market” by Cassandra R. Cole & Stephen G. Fier.
  • “Boosting Insights in Insurance Tariff Plans with Tree-Based Machine Learning Methods” by Roel Henckaerts, Marie-Pier Côté, Katrien Antonio & Roel Verbelen.
  • “Price Index Insurances in the Agriculture Markets” by Hirbod Assa & Meng (Simon) Wang.

Check out the SOA Research Institute for general insurance related topics at SOA General Insurance Research, SOA Catastrophe & Climate Research and SOA Risk Management Research. Research briefs and statistics on COVID-19 can be found at SOA Research Institute Reports on COVID-19. Reading research papers can be a good source of professional development. SOA research papers relevant to GI that were published in 2021 include the following:

  • “The Potential Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Medical Malpractice Claims from Diagnostic Errors in Radiology in New York”
  • “Telematics Car Driving Data Analytics”
  • “Modeling and Pricing Cybersecurity Risks in Fog Computing Based IoT Architectures”
  • “Business Interruption Insurance Compendium”
  • “Evolving Trends in Commercial Liability Insurance”
  • “Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Wildfire Risk by Mid Century”
  • “Projected Changes in Insurability and Affordability of Insurance Coverages due to Climate Change”
  • “Early Detection of Insurer Insolvency”
  • “Environmental Risk in Crop Insurance: An Overview”
  • “New Fire Hazard Risk from Policy Responses to Climate Change”

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 GI PD opportunities from other sources. For example, from June to November of this year, the following were offered by other organizations:

  • In June, the Casualty Actuarial Society held the webinar “Pandemic Risk Modeling—Methods, Challenges and Opportunities,” the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Operational Risk for Actuaries,” and the Society of Actuaries in Ireland held the webinar “Climate change risk scenarios in the ORSA.”
  • In July, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held the webinar “IFRS 17 Discount Rate Educational Note External Consultation Update,” the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries held the Asia Conference 2021 Webinar Series, and the Institute of Actuaries of India held the webinar “Data Science and Analytics.”
  • In August, the American Academy of Actuaries held the webinar “Cyber Risk Trends and Issues in Insurance,” the International Association of Actuaries held the ASTIN webinar “The Professional Actuary in Times of Uncertainty,” and Pinnacle Actuaries Resources Inc. held the webinar “Optimizing Efficiency with Large Datasets.”
  • In September, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries held their appointed actuary seminar virtually, the Casualty Actuarial Society held the webinar “New Thinking for Pricing Climate Risk,” and the International Association of Actuaries held the webinar “Application of Climate-Related Scenarios.”
  • In October, the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Macro-Level Actuarial Reserving,” the Institute of Actuaries of Australia held the virtual seminar “Injury and Disability Schemes,” the Institute of Actuaries of India held the webinar “Analytics in General Insurance,” and the International Association of Actuaries held the ASTIN webinar “Three-layer problems and the Generalized Pareto Distribution.”
  • In November, the European Actuarial Academy held the webinar “Advanced Concepts of Clustering in Insurance,” the International Association of Actuaries held the ASTIN webinar “Opportunities for Applying Actuarial Techniques in Banking,” the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries held the GIRO 2021 Webinar Series and the Singapore Actuarial Society held the Singapore Actuarial Conference virtually.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.

Anthony Cappelletti, FSA, FCIA, FCAS, is a staff fellow for the SOA. He can be contacted at acappelletti@soa.org.