Description: A discussion of the work of the Low Interest Rate Environment Team, a new group of the Smaller Insurance Company Section.

Description: The LTC Section chairperson announces the new council roster, and discusses the goals of branding the profession, building community, supporting education needs, and commitment to reserach projects.

Description: New Chairperson’s Corner

Description: Several years ago, the concept of a marketing actuary was in vogue. Many job titles were changed to reflect this new concept, and some new jobs were created. But the question is, did the job really change?

Description: A look at how the female actuary is portrayed in fiction and whether it is a true portrayal.

Description: This piece is on Risk normalization and looks to draw upon underlying ideas as to why in some cases, risks are under or over analyzed from an individual perspective in society. This piece is intended to make the reader think about what risks they partake in on a daily basis that may have been 'numbed' in some sense by societal normalization fo these risk. Conversely, readers also may be questioned with what risks have overplayed by society, in particular risks that have been over inflated by media and other driving factors.

Description: This article starts with the increasing attention that FP&A receives due to the implementation of new financial regimes and emphasizes the collaborative nature of FP&A. It then describes the roles that actuaries play in FP&A, the new demands for actuaries that we are observing, and suggests some best practices that we are seeing across the clients. This article targets to point out the new demands from FP&A on actuaries and provide some advice on how actuaries can do to meet these demands.

Description: This article gives a formula for reversing failure into success

Description: A compilation of reader responses is presented to a real life situation. This issue’s case study involved an actuary trying to add to staff, who encounters questionable behavior by a prominent actuarial recruiter. What the actuary actually did is shared after the compiled responses.

Description: Phil Gold reviews the effect of the competency framework on various stages of inception and development of the AXIS Actuarial System.