Description: The demand for outside actuarial expertise continues to exist, driving demand for independent actuarial consultants. We will hear from experienced actuarial entrepreneurs on why they chose this career, the pluses and minuses of this career, and what to consider to improve the odds of success as a consultant.

Description: Traditionally the SOA formulates pedagogic excellence in terms of the Marzano Taxonomy. For example, the "analysis level" consisting of generalization, specification, classification, contrast, matching, and error identification, is considered superior to the "retrieval level" consisting of rote memorization such as recognition, recall, and using. In this presentation, we first show that pedagogic excellence can be equivalently, but more simply, formulated in terms of executive function and goal-setting. Here executive function refers to problems requiring multiple mental modalities - such as, formal, verbal, computational, and graphical - for their solution. Goal-setting refers to the skillful breakup of a complex problem into a sequence of subgoals each of which is clearly formulated, challenging, but achievable timely. Light examples from the literature illustrate these concepts. Five "challenging FM problems": reinvestment, refinancing, multiple rate/deposit problems, pricing deferred bonds using a term structure, and obscure loan problems, illustrate the following fundamental techniques of goal-setting and executive function: i) a fellowship approach to teaching preliminary exam material, ii) using subgoals to give difficult homework, iii) alternating between different mental modalities to achieve elegant brevity in solutions, iv) goal-setting reflecting familiar vs. new, and v) skillful definition of unit subgoals.

Description: How do actuaries look at the vast arrays of data, digest it all, perform research and analysis, and then turn it into recommend courses of action? This sessions will take a walk through historical US mortality population patterns, use examples to identify current and future trends, and highlight the importance of analytics and data visualization. You’ll see firsthand some of the observations that are uncovered by peeling back the layers of mortality trends and understand how actuaries can enhance their message with strong data communication skills.

Description: What is the future of the Actuarial Profession and the Insurance Industry? Is it possible that the Actuarial Profession will become more empowered by adopting emerging technologies?