Candidate Questionnaire
Kelly Rabin, FSA 2006, MAAA 2006, CFA 2011
Hannover Re
Vice President & Actuary
Orlando, FL (I work out of my home in Issaquah, WA )
Brief description of current work:
Life reinsurance structured solutions
Primary Area of Practice:
Life
Professional Background
Provide a brief description of your professional background and the type of work you have performed and explain how these experiences have uniquely prepared you as an Elected Board Member and qualify you in carrying out the strategic direction of the SOA.
I have almost 20 years of experience in the actuarial profession, most of which have been in the life and annuity space working on both product development and valuation. I have spent most of my time at direct insurers, but also spent several years in consulting and currently work in reinsurance. I have been managing people since 2006 and been in executive leadership roles since 2011. My experience working for a variety of companies in a variety of roles has helped me grow my EQ and AQ skills. I am a driver who loves to sink her teeth into projects, but I’m also very focused on seeking out different opinions and building consensus where possible. My experience working for global companies and with global clients enables me to see things beyond just the US perspective. As a woman in what is still a male-dominated profession at the highest levels of organizations, DEI topics are also very close to my heart.
Volunteer, Governance and Personal Experience
Describe how your volunteer, governance and personal experiences would strengthen your contributions to the SOA Board, the organization, and strategic plan execution. Please list your relevant volunteer experience. Please include the name of the organization, your role, and approximate dates.
I began volunteering with the SOA upon getting my FSA in 2006. I have held a variety of roles in Education and Examinations, Section Councils, and professional development. My broad volunteer experience has enabled me to build successful collaborative relationships with SOA staff and other volunteers throughout the organization.
- Education and Examinations (2006-2009)
- Product Development Section Council Elected Member (2014-2016), Chair (2015-2016)
- Leadership & Development Section Council Member (2019-present), Chair (2021-present)
- Community Engagement Strategy Working Group (2021-present)
- Outstanding Volunteer Selection Committee Chair (2021, 2022)
- Chair of the Life & Annuity Symposium (2018, 2019)
- Co-Chair of the Life Meeting (2021, 2022)
I also have prior experience serving on fiduciary and advisory boards that is directly applicable to the SOA Board role. I’m familiar with the oversight requirements of various 501(c) organizations and have experience providing strategic leadership and change management across different types of organizations.
- National Vice President – Finance and Chair of Finance Committee, Delta Sigma Pi Professional Business Fraternity (2015-2019)
- Trustee, Delta Sigma Pi Leadership Foundation (2015-2019)
- Advisory Board Member, Bellevue Family YMCA (2012-2014)
- Vestry Member, St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church (2022-present)
Agility/Change
Describe a significant change that you led in the workplace or in your volunteer activities. Explain what worked well and what could have gone better.
Beginning in 2021, the decision was made by the SOA to merge the Life & Annuity Symposium (a product-focused meeting) with the Valuation Actuary Symposium. Both of these meetings were beloved by attendees in terms of offering continuing education sessions that specifically targeted their areas of focus, vs. ImpACT that covers a much broader range of topics. Volunteers and staff needed to work closely together to ensure the meeting merger was successful and that we continued to offer a valuable attendee experience. This was made more complex by the fact that 2021 ended up being a virtual meeting.
What worked well:
- Being flexible. Planning a meeting in a pandemic meant needing to pivot, and then pivot again.
- Letting go. When working on an initiative that involves so many people, it’s important to share your point of view (your experience is valuable!) and then realize where you have control and where you don’t.
- Validating stakeholder difficulty in dealing with change – just because you have embraced an idea doesn’t mean that everyone else is there yet. Stop selling and listen.
What could have gone better:
- Section engagement. The roll out of the new process and plans to engage those who have historically developed most of the content could have been more intentional. It’s important to build change management in as an explicit step when doing something significantly different.
Motivating/Influencing
Describe a difficult situation or disagreement that you had in a professional setting during which opinions varied and you worked through the issues that led to a successful result.
A key part of being a pricing actuary is balancing the need to drive sales and represent the customer perspective with the need to protect the company and achieve profitability objectives. I have often found myself in settings where legal and risk professionals have a different view of the risk associated with a product or transaction than I do. I’ve found the following steps to be helpful when this occurs:
- Pause and check my ego. It’s easy for a disagreement to feel personal, but in business that is not the intention.
- Use facts, not feelings.
- Get creative and try to find a win/win solution.
- Once a decision has been made, get on board and implement it. Even if I don’t agree with the end decision, as a team member I can still understand the “why” and be able to articulate that message.
Diversity
What additional actions do you think the Board should take regarding diversity, equity and inclusion?
The Board should continue to create and update dashboards that track different DEI metrics. We need data to know where we have been and where we are going. One informal index that I use is the “look around the room” approach when I am at industry meetings. I recently attended the ReFocus Conference and compared my experience there to the first time I attended in 2015. It is better now in terms of diversity, but not that much better. Companies may be hiring more women and people of color, but are those individuals getting the opportunity to have experiences that will help them grow and develop and ultimately move to the next level? Can we offer conference attendance sponsorships to facilitate diverse attendance? Once we get a diverse audience there, how do we make them feel welcome and included, and provide networking opportunities that don’t rely on talking to those you already know? It’s not enough to just have a seat at the table. You need to feel like your presence is valued and like you belong. We also need to continue to educate our members around why DEI initiatives result in better business outcomes and also better actuaries.
International
What can the SOA Board do to balance the needs of our global membership? How will your experience help the Board accomplish this?
To make SOA membership highly valued and not just transactional, we need to create community, both in small pockets where people have much in common, and across the globe where we can learn from each other. I’m optimistic about the SOA Hub app’s ability to help people connect in new and different ways, including internationally. I also think the new Community structure that is currently being piloted will offer us new, less bureaucratic ways for people to engage on topics they care about. That said, I think we also need offerings explicitly tailored to different areas of the globe. Our initiatives in Asia are a great example. The cultural and time zone differences mean that people who sit in Schaumburg can’t effectively reach all our international members by themselves. We should look at our international expansion plan standalone and understand the various tradeoffs of choices we make.
Emerging
Recently, the number of new candidates for actuarial exams has been declining. What additional actions should the Board take on this topic in relation to keeping the SOA successful?
While we’ve done some research and taken some action to stem the decline, there is more to be done. SOA membership is a product that we are marketing, and I’m not sure we always know who we are marketing to or the most effective way to do so. Is it an awareness problem or are candidates considering us and rejecting us? I’d like to see us create user personas around those who could be a fit for our profession and tailor our offerings and marketing accordingly. We need to figure out how to make actuarial careers seem exciting and alluring for highly-motivated students when compared to opportunities in data science and other finance careers. The early career work is pretty similar, but what are the long-term opportunities as an actuary to lead or otherwise make a bigger professional or societal impact? Can we inspire students (and ourselves) with what we do to make the world a better place? Are there interesting problems actuaries work on that aren’t available in these other professions? Can we help current SOA members define what they do in a more interesting way, as our grassroots recruiters to the profession? I’m as guilty as anyone of saying, “I crunch numbers for insurance companies” when asked what an actuary does. Does that make anyone want to join the profession? We can help our members be better at marketing the profession and what we do.