Description: This interview with Andrés Villegas, an Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney, explores his journey from Colombia to Australia, his research on mortality modeling, and his contributions like the R package StMoMo. He discusses the importance of mentorship, industry-academia collaboration, and the role of actuaries in addressing global issues such as population aging and climate risk.

Description: As a newly elected SOA Reinsurance Section Chair for 2025, Yiru (Eve) Sun described the Section's plan to better bridge the gap between insurers and reinsurers, to expand research initiatives and presentation priorities, and to enhance the growth of the Section and the future Community. This year the Section will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Reinsurance Newsletter with a retrospective on industry developments, continue the “Reinsurance Point of View ReView Short Video Series”, conduct industry surveys, and host more virtual and in-person networking events.

Description: Emerging technologies like GenAI will be more disruptive than past technological developments, such as spreadsheets, low-code data and dashboarding tools, and cloud computing. This article will explore how how we can lead ourselves, our teams, and our organizations to thrive within a defined modern value proposition, using one of two archetype roles: actuaries as business partners or actuaries as developers.

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: Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, is plagued with poverty, political unrest, and natural disasters. The latest disaster was a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck the town of Les Cayes and surrounding communities on August 14, 2021. Only three days later tropical storm Grace brought devastating flooding to the very same region along the southern peninsula of Haiti. Over 2,200 were killed and many thousands more injured, homeless, or missing. Food and drinking water were scarce. Relief from the capital in Port-au-Prince was limited due to structural damages to bridges and landslides on roads. Outside aid took days to arrive. Spontaneously, Pierre-moise Louis of Jérémie Bakery sprang into action. He donated his entire stock of konparèts (a dry biscuit baked from breadfruit flour) to affected families in the area. With additional support from Trees That Feed Foundation, over 80,000 meals were provided by local Haitians to victims of the disaster. Since its inception in 2008, Trees That Feed Foundation has received financial and operational support from my fellow actuaries in several countries.

Description: A story about a mother/actuary’s journey of discovering her work-life balance through entrepreneurship.

Description: A description of a new award for outstanding educators in actuarial science.

Description: Feature article discussing how workflow breakdowns happen and how to remedy and avoid the situation.