Description: An article summarizing the SOA Asia-Pacific Annual Symposium held June 12 - 13, 2024.

Description: It highlights key initiatives and leadership changes within the SOA Education and Research (E&R) Section in year 2025.

Description: In the spring of 2019, Dr. Cai started to serve as the Actuarial Science Program coordinator at Salisbury University, a medium-sized public teaching school in Maryland. At that time, the program was small, with only two faculty members who focused on both statistics and actuarial science, with approximately 10 students. During the next five years, the program did make some achievements in curriculum development, student exam preparation, job placement, and recognition, but Dr. Cai continued to have a dream to make the program unique. Dr. Cai believed that the skill sets students learned, even from a small program, could enable them to compete with anyone on a global basis. In spring 2024, Dr. Cai advised a group of exceptional actuarial students to participate in the 2024 Society of Actuaries (SOA) Student Research Case Study Challenge (SRCSC), and the team won third place – —behind two teams from the University of New South Wales, Australia. This article is the story of the journey.

Description: Chairperson's welcome to the RS and thoughts about our future.

Description: This essay explores the role that the emerging defined contribution retirement system may be playing in the growth of wealth inequality in the United States. The current system leaves many Americans with little or no retirement savings. Those with higher accumulation levels appear to invest proportionally more in equities, which may have an exponential effect of balances over long time periods. The author hypothesizes that willingness to take investment risk involves the relationship between the amount an investor has accumulated and what she/he needs in order to cover basic costs of living. This is one reason that investors with greater accumulation levels may be able to earn higher rates of return. The essay concludes by suggesting that the U.S. defined contribution system should include all workers and provide additional fiduciary guidance. Examples reforms, both in the U.S. and other countries, are provided.

Description: Technology In Microinsurance This literature review provides insights on emerging technologies that ... the actuarial profession within the space of microinsurance for the purpose of establishing a frame of ... Description: This literature review provides insights on emerging technologies that interact with the actuarial profession within the space of microinsurance for the purpose of establishing a frame of reference for actuaries to use in their work. Furthermore, it intends to spark readers’ interest in, and create a vision for, how microinsurance and its associated technologies may impact the actuarial industry in the future.

Description: Servant Leadership is a leadership philosophy that focuses on organizational success through serving and enriching the lives of the employees. As employees become engaged the organization becomes more vibrant, sustainable and successful. Four primary principles are discussed: Create an Environment for Employee Growth; Provide Employees What the Need to Thrive; Remove Obstacles to Employee Achievement; Help Employees Reach Organizational and Personal Goals. Trust, creativity, shared vision, listening, job skills and personal attention lift employees up, creating high quality, engaged employees that help drive organizational success and create a pool from which the next generation of leaders for the company will emerge.

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 an informal job performance appraisal gone wrong.

Description: Keynote Speaker: J.D. Kleinke, Author and Medical Economist J.D. Kleinke has been instrumental in the creation of four health care information organizations; has served on the Boards of several health care companies; and spent many years advising both sides of the political aisle on non-partisan, practical approaches to health policy and legislation.

Description: This paper delves in the four pillars that support the professional exercise of an actuarial mathematician: operating, teaching, consulting and researching.