Description: Providing ways to master the art of soft skills and embracing agility to propel actuarial success in today's market.

Description: In today’s market of post-pandemic consolidation and org chart streamlining, we’ve observed significant changes to actuarial career development and advancement opportunities. But, those changes aren’t occurring in equal measures across the arc of the actuarial career. Our focus is on the impact felt by experienced reinsurance actuaries.

Description: As the insurance industry continues to evolve due to a pandemic and rapidly changing economic and regulatory conditions, the role of data scientists and actuaries has become increasingly important. In an interview with the Atidot data science and actuarial team, we discuss what it is like to work at an InsurTech, how data scientists and actuaries can collaborate, and look at some concrete technical examples of where the innovation is having an impact. This article explores what collaboration can look like and how the role of data science and actuary may evolve in the InsurTech industry in the future.

Description: Actuary Dave Dillon describes his role volunteering his time as a teacher in higher education, including the rewards and challenges that teaching offers. He discusses the importance of being attentive to his audience’s pre-existing knowledge and adapting his presentations accordingly. His work as a teacher typically encompasses three distinct domains: 1) acquainting young students with the actuarial profession, 2) educating non-actuaries about public policy issues related to health insurance (including the Affordable Care Act), and 3) instructing current actuaries on advanced methodologies and principles within the field. Recently he taught a health insurance course for actuarial science graduate students at Georgia State University and lectured at Boise State University’s master's program in Population & Health Systems Management. In every teaching and mentoring opportunity, actuaries can contribute to the expansion and prosperity of the profession and are encouraged to pursue these endeavors.

Description: Dovel Technologies started as a two-person company, and by the time we sold to Private Equity in late 2019, Dovel had more than 1,200 people on its payroll. In this article, the authors (and cofounders of Dovel) describe two concepts that helped Dovel grow that actuaries can apply to help grow their firms.

Description: Christine Hofbeck began her actuarial career in retirement consulting, but after a few decades, a few practice areas, a bestselling book and a stint on a reality television show, she found herself in the world of reinsurance. Reinsurance News talked with her to learn more about her background, her advice to other actuaries, and her outlook on the future of the profession.

Description: Interview with Sara Teppema showing her career journey and leadership philosophy.

Description: A compilation of reader responses is presented to a real life situation posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision. This issue’s case study involved a career decision by a near FSA.

Description: We discuss a high-level overview with practical steps on how to be a great manager. We describe 14 real-life traits of a truly impactful manager that can be used to successfully guide a team that includes staff who are at any level of their career. The results should help create a dynamic, empowered and engaged team

Description: A real life situation is posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision, and readers are invited to submit their responses to "What Would You Do?" This issue’s case study involved deciding whether or not to take an actuarial job that didn't seem that interesting, in order to work for a dynamic boss.

Description: This article focusses on the results of a June 2020 survey by the Leadership and Development Section of the SOA on working remotely as an actuary. The article presents the questions and responses of the survey, and commentary on how to successfully navigate the remote work environment as an actuary - from the perspective of both a current organizational leader, and as a future organizational leader.

Description: Read the March 2020 issue of Actuary of the Future, published by the Actuary of the Future Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Article describes how to write effective model documentation

Description: : Read the May 2019 issue of Actuary of the Future, published by the Actuary of the Future Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: July 2017 issue of The Stepping Stone by Leadership & Development Section. practical information for actuaries, trends that impact section, section activities

Description: Men and women have different leadership skills. But working alongside men, women can effectively leverage their leadership strengths to bolster their careers.

Description: Article highlighting upcoming Health Section events

Description: This article is an interview with an actuarial leader.

Description: The appeal of the actuarial profession to women.

Description: The financial sector should provide financial security and allocate capital well. As its preeminent professionals actuaries have particular responsibilities.

Description: Read the November 2016 issue of The Actuary of the Future published by the Actuary of the Future Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Have you recently considered volunteering within the actuarial profession? If so, becoming a “friend” of the Smaller Insurance Company Section is a great way to start. This article explains what you can expect from your volunteer experience.

Description: Metadata for entire issue

Description: Thoughts from Chair of the Investment Section Council

Description: February issue of The Stepping Stone

Description: The February/March 2016 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: No matter what you do, you are in sales in some way. The word, "sales" or "selling" brings up negative connotations for many people. It may be helpful to think of it as "influence". Whether you're a sales professional, coach, consultant or executive - there are key stakeholders in your world you need to influence. To persuade successfully and non-manipulatively, it's important to understand five key principles of influence. Principle #3 is covered here.

Description: The Stepping Stone issue 60, November 2015

Description: The October/November 2015 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: Executive Coach Marcel Schwantes demonstrated that applying daily practices of Servant Leadership is really the best way to engage workers to perform at a high level, which will improve the bottom line. Here Schwantes returns to kick-off a six part series that delves deep into the best practices of what a servant leader is, and does.

Description: Professional development opportunities from the Society of Actuaries.

Description: Fourth installment in an ongoing series of articles adapted from Michael Carroll's "Awake at Work", applying Buddhist principles to the challenges faced by actuaries. This installment examines the often chaotic work circumstances faced by actuaries and encourages the reader to see such situations as opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Description: SOA executive director’s column, research on Asia insurance opportunities, e-courses, recent research and experience studies, and professional development opportunities.

Description: The August/September 2014 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: The December 2013/January 2014 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: Interview with Peter Schaefer, CEO of Hannover Life Reassurance Company of America.

Description: The April/May 2013 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: Cassie He and Linda Liu, two actuarial students invite Dave Pelletier, an actuary with 38-year experience to share with us his career experience and his insightful views on the future of the actuarial profession.

Description: Overview of a recent visit to silicon valley and how the learnings from this trip can be applied in an insurance setting.

Description: The author identifies miscommunication challenges that may exist in the workplace, including misunderstandings and communication mishaps, assumption of motive, and relational tension, and suggests clarifying conversation as a way to address these challenges.

Description: A review of the book, You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader, by Mark Sanborn. Throughout the book, you may need to rethink your concept of what a leader is. In addition to the concepts provided, Sanborn also provides leadership action points at the end of each section.

Description: Feature article discussing the personality traits that lend themselves to board membership and how actuaries may better fit the mold.

Description: An article that explains the importance of lifelong learning--education shouldn't stop once you've attained your FSA.

Description: Recently, the Reinsurance Section’s research team completed a number of excellent reports. This article briefly summarizes the research reports completed in the recent past, those in the pipeline, and looks ahead to new possible research projects.

Description: This overview study note for the Society of Actuaries Spring 2012 Financial Economic Theory and Engineering [FETE] exam is intended to provide candidates with an approach for organizing the course of reading for studying the various sections of the course.

Description: Contemporary ERM has moved from an event-based view of risk to a hierarchical, systems-based approach. In order to operationalize such an approach, a methodology is proposed in this paper that draws on phylogenetic approaches that have been successfully developed for biological evolution. The technique and process provide an insight into the lineage, pace and impact of external conditions on the evolution of risks. They also provide a unique and rational classification of risk in an enterprise that can be used to optimize risk management resources. An example of a fictitious insurance company is used to illustrate the approach. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

Description: A new reason for the inherent instability of the insurance business can be found in the literature of anthropology. The theory of plural rationalities, also known as Cultural Theory of Risk or simply Cultural Theory, posits that the world is populated by people with four fundamentally different attitudes toward risk. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

Description: Teaching enterprise risk management ERM in higher educational institutions as a mainstream subject is emerging. Risk management is traditionally taught in disciplinary silos without considering the multidimensional aspects of risk necessary to steer the entire business. This study identifies and focuses on the essential elements to develop a curriculum of ERM from a multidisciplinary perspective. The purpose of this article is to outline the contents of an ERM unit for academic business degrees. The article includes the author’s view and experience in designing and delivering an ERM unit for a postgraduate finance and risk management degree at his current academic affiliation. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

Description: This is the Introductory Study Note for the Society of Actuaries Group and Health-Company/Sponsor Perspective examination for Spring 2012 that will be given on Friday, April 27th, from 8:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.

Description: This is the Introductory Study Note for the Society of Actuaries Advanced Finance/Enterprise Risk Management examination for Spring 2012 that will be given on Friday, April 27th, from 8:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.

Description: This is an in-depth look at the root causes of the subprime mortgage crisis and ways actuaries can eliminate the problems. From the Actuary Magazine, April/May 2010 – Volume 7 Issue 2.

Description: This series of articles provides an in-depth look at the activities of the SOA in 2009.

Description: Column describing the events of a recent Product Development Symposium 2009.

Description: In this article, the author talks about being an actuary on the island of Cyprus.

Description: Feature article discussing the SOA’s competency framework and how it provides direction for professional development.

Description: In the copula literature there are many bivariate distribution families but very few higher dimensional ones. Moreover, most of these are difficult to work with. Some of the bivariate families can be extended to more dimensions but in general the construction of distribution functions with more than two variables is a difficult problem. This paper introduces a construction method that is straightforward to implement and can produce multivariate distribution functions of any dimension.

Description: An overview of the various track topics and sessions in the 9th Annual ILTCI Conference.

Description: To provide guidance to the actuarial leaderships globally and provide an evolutionary view of the educational requirements - learning objectives and/or content - for the profession in the field of Enterprise Risk Management.

Description: This paper represents a brief progress report on research, being sponsored by the Casualty Actuarial Society CAS and the Society of Actuaries SOA, in the area of modeling of economic series. In particular, research is being undertaken to provide a foundation for the actuarial community’s modeling of a variety of economic variables, including interest rates, equity returns, inflation, unemployment rates, and real estate price levels. The specific objectives of this research are to provide a summary of the literature in the area of economic scenario modeling, identify data sources and methodologies in this area useful to the actuarial profession, and produce working software for economic modeling, including appropriate documentation, to be made available to the general actuarial community in order to allow actuaries to use and build upon this research.

Description: This document is a list of acronyms used by the SOA.

Description: This article describes how to help the client see that the pain of not having your product or service is greater than the pain of parting with his or her hard-earned dollars.

Description: This article examines the dynamic environment of the health care system in the United States and the challenges facing the health actuary.

Description: This is an interview with Ken Guthrie, the Society of Actuaries Senior Director of Education, regarding the new structure of the Education Department.

Description: Discussion of Toastmasters International and how the organization can help actuaries develop better communication skills

Description: This is the agenda for the 40th Annual Actuarial Research Conference held in Mexico City, Mexico, August 11-13, 2005.

Description: This presentation is a lecture, session number 8L, from the 2004 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 14-15 in San Antonio, TX. The speakers discuss the increased competition in the financial services industry for risk-management roles, decreased influence of actuaries in the insurance world, increased criticism of actuarial techniques in the media and press e.g., pensions, and how the actuarial profession is reacting. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 2.

Description: Noted author and speaker talks about risk and the nature of risk, drawing from his extensive knowledge and experience in economics and finance. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 1GS of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: From a panel discussion session at the annual meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Chicago, Illinois, October 15-18, 2000 The panelists discussed recent trends in actuarial employment including: · Telecommuting · Actuarial consulting via the Internet · Actuaries working in banks and other financial institutions · Other opportunities such as reinsurance brokers, recruiters, and life agency employees

Description: There appears to be many similarities between enterprise risk management techniques and the theory underlying the unified valuation system UVS. What are the challenges of each, and can the methods learn from each other? From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 2: Toronto Spring Meeting.June 20–22, 2001, Session 58PD.

Description: Actuaries are trained to measure and manage risks, for example, mortality, morbidity, interest rate, and asset default risks. However, the range of risks to which companies are exposed is wider than is sometimes considered. This complex array of risks needs to be managed holistically in concert and not in isolation. The actuary is increasingly called upon to assist in this process and needs a broader perspective and more powerful toolkit. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 26, No. 3: Chicago Annual Meeting, October 15-18, 2000, Session 54PD.

Description: In this session from the June 2000 San Diego meeting of the Society of Actuaries , information was provided about the Professional Development - PD - requirement of the new examination system and the role of the advisor.

Description: From a session at a meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Las Vegas, NV May 22-24, 2000 The American Academy of Actuaries had put together an ad hoc task force charged with developing a long-term strategic approach for marketing the profession to future users of actuarial services and to strategically position and strengthen the profession. This session provided an update on the progress of the task force.

Description: This is a presidential address to the Society of Actuaries by Howard J. Bolnick.

Description: Presenters discuss worldwide issues and trends in which actuaries may be involved and the implications of these issues and trends on the actuarial profession worldwide. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 3.