Description: Biases can creep up in models in numerous ways. After discussing various forms of bias, presenting a framework useful to manage bias in models, and contextualizing this effort in the current environment, this session will focus on practical issues faced by the industry.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute hosted a virtual Open House on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Central. The topic of this virtual Open House was the Institute’s Actuarial Innovation & Technology Strategic Research Program. There was a presentation and a question-and-answer session.

Description: As data continues to become more robust and readily available, there has been a push in the actuarial field to transition away from Excel to SQL and Python native cloud-based platforms. While these platforms are widely used and powerful, they present their own challenges for the actuarial industry, requiring processes to be production-ready from the onset, technical expertise for integration, and robust requirements documentation. Low-code tools provide a unique alternative solution, which works well when the organizations operating model allows for actuarial and IT to work together, giving actuaries the flexibility they need while maintaining a level of control followed by the organization. Make use of demonstrations to showcase low-code tools (such as Alteryx and Dataiku) and their use case in the actuarial space. Learn how these low barrier-to-entry tools can be leveraged to create robust and controlled processes. Discuss how low-code tools can integrate with coding languages such as Python as well as efficiently prepare data for downstream visualization platforms such as Tableau and PowerBI.

Description: Modeling teams are getting larger to deal with more complex models and to support more enhancement requests from business and actuarial teams. Actuarial modeling teams can adapt tools and techniques used in the broader IT industry to be more efficient, handle large number of requests while maintaining their quality of work. Explore DevOps tools to track requests, progress made, work assignment and version control systems. See Azure DevOps in action as presenters use it as an illustrative tool to showcase these activities and how they can be beneficial to an actuarial modeling team (regardless of their preferred actuarial modeling system).

Description: An increasingly common question in our industry is - what should actuaries be doing and what should IT be doing? This gets at the difference between the self-service model, where actuaries have minimal reliance on ITand the shared-service model, where IT is a partner that helps with goals such as developing capabilities and running production models. The presenters will cover the unique value proposition of actuarial and IT functions and use that context to explore the pros and cons of the two models. They will ask what is going to drive the operating model in the future, considering the implications of trends in governance, technology toolkit and company culture. The presentation will be followed by interactive discussions on three case studies related to how IT and actuarial teams can work together most effectively, allowing the group to learn what works and what doesn't work from other companies approaching these challenges.

Description: Gather with members and non-members in the China actuarial community to discuss recent topics and related issues in areas such as macroeconomic sharing, pension, investment, product strategy, and more.

Description: ReFocus is an annual global conference for senior-level life insurance and reinsurance executives hosted jointly by ACLI and the Society of Actuaries (SOA). This event features top-notch speakers, thought-provoking sessions, and superior networking opportunities.

Description: This chapter introduces a few probability distributions that play an important role in understanding and analyzing healthcare data. While theoretical in nature, these distributions model real life if appropriately chosen. Probability distributions are mathematical representations of how statistical data behave.

Description: Insurance professionals are seeing the industry change before their very eyes, and many are being forced to change with it. But it seems those pushed and pushing the most are those touched directly by the Internet’s World Wide Web. In this article, seven executives and professionals are interviewed about their work on this new fast track. They sometimes had widely varying opinions, but they agreed on two points: the Web is rapidly forcing a restructuring of the way insurance business is done, and this will create new and perhaps more opportunities for actuaries.

Description: This is the inventory part of the report from the research project that reviewed and inventoried the range of quality and efficiency measures currently available for healthcare. The goal was to outline key areas of quality and efficiency measurement and identify future opportunities for actuaries. The inventory lists the resources and provides brief descriptions of their services with links.