Who will lead the SOA? You decide.

Candidate Questionnaire

Mark Shemtob, FSA 2016, MAAA 1982, EA 1984, MSPA 1987, FCA 2017
Retired F/T, actuarial consulting and financial planning P/T
MS Advisory LLC and Mark Shemtob Financial Planner LLC
Denville, NJ

Brief description of current work:

Help individuals to create financial plans based on retirement goals, insurance needs, risk profile, legacy hopes, and tax considerations

Primary Area of Practice:

Retirement

Other Areas of Practice

Insurance

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 worked as a retirement plan actuary for 4 decades. Almost exclusively with my own consulting practice. This role helped me build business skills as well as the softer skills needed for hiring, collaborating, educating staff and maintaining good talent. From a business perspective I needed to learn to adapt as necessitated by external factors. This required both research into understanding current and possible future trends as well as creativity to incorporate needed changes into my practice. In 2011, I became a Certified Financial Planner. My goal was to learn more about how individuals use or might use the financial security products that are created by our profession. As part of that process, I educated myself on a variety of different types of insurance products and how they are developed by actuaries. In addition, as a CFP® I learned the importance of serving as a fiduciary.

The SOA Board has the strategic responsibility to be visionary in planning how to evolve in the face of change. This requires a need to both research and understand challenges and future trends, collaborate with fellow board members, and create action plans to be initiated. My professional experiences have prepared me to serve in the role as a Board member.

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.

• Society of Actuaries
  • Retirement Section's Defined Contribution Initiative: 2021-
• Conference of Consulting Actuaries
  • Defined Contribution Community (Co leader): 2022-
• American Academy of Actuaries
  • Social Security Committee (Vice Chair 2014-5) 2009 – 2015
  • Lifetime Income Risk Committee (Co Chair 2019-) 2011 –
  • Pension Committee 2016 –
  • Retirement System Assessment and Policy (RSAP) Committee 2016-

During my career I saw the private sector change to defined contribution plans. This concerned me for two reasons. (1) Prospects for future retirees that would not have a lifetime pension (2) implications for actuaries that practiced in the defined benefit space. In 2011 I started my volunteer work on this issue with the Academy Lifetime Income Risk Committee. As Co-Chair, I am responsible for overseeing publications that focus on this challenge to future retirees and how the defined contribution system could adapt. This committee being comprised of both pension and life actuaries has helped me to learn more about the annuity industry and how pension and life actuaries see this challenge.

When I heard that the Society was adding a defined contribution initiative under the Retirement Section, I volunteered and have become engaged in those efforts. This initiative was designed to help retirement actuaries bring their expertise to the defined contribution world thus improving employment prospects to our profession. The Conference of Consulting Actuaries by way of my urging has recently added a Defined Contribution Community which I will be co-chairing. This will help to expose retirement actuaries to areas where our specialty will provide opportunities.

Under the RSAP Committee there are two newer areas of focus that I have volunteered to work on: DEI and ESG issues. As a Society Board Member, I would hope to bring additional perspectives on these important topics.

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.

The most significant change that I led in my workplace was the transition of ownership from me as the sole owner of my consulting business to my three long time key employees. At the age of 62 (1-1-2016) I decided that I would retire at age 65 (1/1/2019). I had multiple offers to buy my business with a three-year employment contract but felt that I owed a debt to these three loyal employees who indicated that would want to continue the business without me. The challenge was that they could not afford to pay me the amounts of funds up front and I wasn’t sure that they could run the business effectively without me and make the promised payments. They could not borrow funds without paying a high interest rate on a non-secured loan.

We agreed on a 3-year (2016-2018) arrangement where I would start transitioning slowly both the practice and business responsibilities that I had been handling. We set a price (up-front money and a 5-year note) for the business where both parties would need to commit 6 months prior to the end of the 3-year transition to go ahead with the sale. All went well and we closed on 1/1/19. As an added transitional safeguard, I entered a 5-year consulting agreement with them to further help with as needed. As of 4/20/22, the date I am writing this all has run according to plan.

Inasmuch as all has gone well, I don’t think I would do anything differently. All clients have been happy with transition as have the new owners and I.

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.

As co-chair of the Academy Lifetime Income Risk Committee I felt that it was important for the Academy to take a strong position on the importance of plan sponsors being encouraged to offer lifetime income options directly from their defined contribution plans; both insured and non-insured income options. I proposed that the Academy issue an advocacy statement in support of this proposition. The Academy being non-partisan tends to shy away from advocacy. They had only issued one prior advocacy statement. I along with members from the Committee started on this project in 2015. There was significant push back for a variety of reasons. It appeared to be doomed for failure however I continued to press for its adoption. From a public policy perspective, the idea of encouraging defined contribution plans to offer lifetime income options seemed fundamental to the Academy’s role. Over the next year we had several discussions with all interested parties. Finally, the statement did get approved and published in 2017 and was ultimately presented as a position paper and not an advocacy statement. I got plenty of help along the way from fellow volunteers and Academy staff to get this done; but believe that it was my commitment that was crucial. In 2019 the SECURE Act included a provision that provided safe harbors for insured annuity offerings in DC plans. There is still much more work needed and several of us at the Academy are now considering another somewhat related Position paper. 

Diversity

What additional actions do you think the Board should take regarding diversity, equity and inclusion?

Of the three main DEI challenges articulated by the Society, I believe growing the pipeline of underrepresented groups will go a long way in supporting the other two goals. A more diverse membership should lead to the potential for an increase in inclusive experiences for all active members. In addition, having a more diverse membership should provide greater exposure to community needs previously under looked in our research.

Understanding why certain groups are not well represented is essential to make this change. The Society could engage in a comprehensive study to collect data that would help to shed light on this issue. This study would need to take place in high schools and universities throughout the country targeting students from underrepresented groups that appear to be good candidates for our profession. The type of data to be collected should include knowledge of our profession. If our profession is known to the students, more information should be collected as why they are or are not considering it as a professional choice. If the profession is unknown than more emphasis should be placed on educating students about our profession as outlined below in the “Emerging” question.

It would also be helpful to increase the number of members from underrepresented groups engaging in Society volunteer opportunities as well as to learn from them why they choose the actuarial profession as a career.

International

What can the SOA Board do to balance the needs of our global membership? How will your experience help the Board accomplish this?

I believe it would be helpful to start by understanding how different types of financial security programs in other countries (that our profession is engaged in creating and monitoring) differs from those used in the USA. Understanding why they are different is also crucial. By the Society shifting to a greater emphasis on credentialing in universities, there will be an increased opportunity to have the required studies tailored to the specifics of each country. Of course, there needs to be certain core competencies required throughout the world.

Helping members to interact with those in different countries would help to create more of a global membership. The Society can identify actuaries in different countries with different specialties as a resource for membership. I was recently involved in a project to consider how Collective Defined Contribution Plans might be used in the US. There is a wide variety of these types of plans which are used mostly in Europe. I was able to find actuaries in Europe that would discuss them with me but it took a bit of networking to get there. It would be of value especially for actuaries that don’t work for international firms to have such a resource.

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?

There are increasing alternative opportunities in risk management careers that do not require the same level of commitment for credentialling. The credentialling challenge can be mitigated if individuals started the process in college and if education is more focused on acquiring skills (including business management) and not only credentials. But to do so they should have an interest in our profession in high school while they are engaged in their college searches. Few high school students know about our profession and those that do, have limited knowledge of the scope of work we are involved in; often their impression is limited to work we do for insurance companies. There is lack of awareness of the newer professional opportunities offered.

We need to be forward thinking as to what next generations find valuable. For many it may be societal purpose. We should be informing high schoolers of the large array of actuarial opportunities such as climate change analysis, enterprise risk management, retirement and healthcare security and research into how tomorrow’s financial systems will need to evolve as a result of AI, big data and globalization. One way the Society could address this challenge is the production of a new up to date film geared exclusively towards high schoolers addressing the scope of our work. We would need volunteer actuaries around the country willing to reach out to local high schools and get an opportunity to come into the schools to present the film and have a discussion and Q/A. These volunteer actuaries might first be invited to a training conference at SOA headquarters.