Description: This article continues the Passing the Torch Interview Series. Linda Liu and Amanda Jacques invite Simon Curtis, currently president of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) and recently joined Deloitte as a partner in their Toronto office after a long career at Manulife. Simon shares with us his career experience and talks about the changes and challenges facing the actuarial profession.

Description: It's a given that actuaries have well-developed technical skills. Early career development for actuaries is focused on building a strong technical and industry foundation. However, once that development has occurred an actuary still has most of their career left. Many want to remain technical experts operating in an environment they love. Others, either by design or otherwise, end up in leadership and management roles. In fact, actuaries are typically very well positioned to become senior leaders within their organizations. However, while the technical development of actuaries is a well-defined path, leadership development is not. The competencies that make for good technical actuaries aren't necessarily the competencies that make good leaders. An actuary striving for a broad leadership role needs to build strong communication and influencing skills, as well as strategic and general business skills. They must be able to quickly adapt to being submerged in a fast-paced, results-oriented environment. This workshop is intended to educate mid-level actuaries on the key characteristics that define good leaders and how to focus on building the skills necessary to successfully transition into a leadership role. At the conclusion of the session, attendees will be able to: - Determine if a leadership path is right for them - Learn the key competencies that make good leaders - Understand how to build the skills necessary to move from technical expert to leader

Description: The Lee and Carter LC method is getting widely adopted for long-run forecasts of age specific mortality rates. That popularity is first due to the model simplicity. Moreover, the LC model has given successful results for various countries e.g. U.S., Chile, G7 countries. However, some difficulties arose when using population data from certain countries such as UK and Australia. In the present paper, the LC model is applied to data from four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The Singular Value Decomposition SVD, the Weighted Least Square WLS and the Maximum Likelihood estimate MLE are used. These approaches give satisfactory results. The appropriate fitting period needs, however, to be well chosen. The properties of the model's parameters are studied using a bootstrap simulation.

Description: A discussion of the theoretically correct approach to the valuation of cross-border insurance ventures

Description: Insight into National Strategic Plan for the Insurance Industry in Argentina (PlaNes 2012-2020), with details of a meeting in May 2012 that provided an excellent platform for the actuarial community to voice their perspective.

Description: This essay examines several key factors that have contributed to China’s success in the economic reform spanning the past three decades and the double-edged nature of these factors going forward.

Description: This article by Carlos Arocha explores the protection gap throughout Latin America for coverage against natural catastrophic events. As climate change has increased both the frequency and severity of these events, coverage gaps have weighed on both household and public sector economics. In the article, Carlos highlights different methods for evaluating the size of this protection gap, and discusses a number of different ideas for closing this gap, through private sector initiatives, public sector changes, or private-public partnerships.

Description: This article outlines and summarizes research from Swiss Re about the prevalence of the Health Protection Gap throughout Asia, with a particular focus on China. Authors Robert Burr and David Zhang share key statistics on the scope of the gap, which is more than 800Bn USD in China alone, and discuss the role that technology and private-public partnership can play in reducing this gap over time. Readers will come away with an understanding of the scale of the problem within the Asia region as well as new ideas on how to solve similar problems within their own region.

Description: The SOA has a growing number of research projects specifically addressing opportunities and insights for its membership in Asia.

Description: The SOA is committed to meeting member and candidate needs outside North America.