Description: The author shared her personal experience in how to find a mentor and work with the mentor to improve her communication and managerial skills.

Description: This article will be looking at key leadership principles which help in understanding how someone responds at different levels of tension. The article identifies the five levels of tension and the accompanying physical, tonal and verbal cues. These principles are from the ChangeWorks and MasterStream systems developed by T. Falcon Napier.

Description: Metadata for entire issue

Description: The author explores challenges that actuaries face at work, and the typical response continuum, which includes panic, inertia, striving, coping, and mastery.

Description: The article discusses the sustainability of the ACA individual market from a public entitlement standpoint. A key point of measuring sustainability is the reliance on market forces rather than federal budget constraints. The article explains why an actuarial viewpoint of sustainability is necessary to a greater extent than other public assistance and social insurance programs. The article challenges actuaries to be a bold, objective voice in a space that is full of opinionated but often uninformed viewpoints.

Description: This article examines the number of years people have served on the SOA Board and categorizes these people in various ways in order to determine if there is a leadership establishment at the SOA.

Description: This article discusses how to manage another person's level of productive tension. This is one of the most critical skills of being an influential leader. This guidance is based on the Changeworks and MasterStream systems developed by T. Falcon Napier.

Description: Stress tests and scenarios are often used as an informative tool to help stakeholders understand the risk profile of a firm. These analyses are often informational only and not directly linked to internal decision-making. This paper describes our approach to integrating stress tests into a regular decision-making process as part of our Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA). We have implemented a framework and analytical process that both enhances management’s understanding of our risk profile and links that to the development of our risk appetite. In this applied paper, we describe the framework and supporting analytics we established to achieve this goal and the practical implications for obtaining buy-in from senior management to establish this as an ongoing process.

Description: Actuaries should understand the economic considerations involved in the formulary drug decision-making process, and the presence of actuarial input in the process could improve it, especially by tying it to overall decision making for the health plan. From Prescription Drugs Monograph, M-HB04-1.

Description: Updates on the efforts of the Academy’s health practice council. its work groups and task forces, to educate health care policymakers on issues including principles for reform, Medicare, the individual insurance market, and risk factors.