Chairperson’s Corner: 2022 Welcome and Strategic Themes

By Manisha Dias

NewsDirect, May 2022

On behalf of the entire Marketing and Distribution Section Council, thank you for being a member in 2022. We are excited to kick off 2022 content, building on our successful year of programming in 2021.

Stepping into this year, our new section council has been hard at work reflecting on a relevant and powerful content focus for 2022. Now, coming out of a January strategic planning meeting, we are moving forward with a single centralized theme for content and educational focus for the section: Emerging Trends in Product and Distribution.

Our intent is to capture a theme that is broad enough to fit the expertise of our section leadership and a breadth of topics of interest to our membership. Within this theme, we see four tie-in sub-themes:

• Distribution Landscape: Includes the fundamental concepts of understanding go-to-market distribution as well as more topical areas such as new models of distribution, evolution of marketing approaches over time, and analytical approaches to managing a go-to-market strategy.
• Product Landscape: Building on fundamental distribution concepts, product design, and management concepts focused on catering to specific distribution models or target consumers. Topical examples may include how products are re-engineered from one market to serve the distribution and consumer needs of another, or how products are adapted over time within the same market.
• Modernization: Exploring how innovation, technology, or new market participants are changing conventional approaches to better serve other stakeholders and the end consumer in an ever-changing marketplace.
• Regulatory and Environmental: Monitoring moving external forces that affect how market participants interact and distribute product to consumers. This may include legal, geopolitical, economic, or social changes (either at a localized or globalized level) that change how products are designed, marketed, or distributed.

As we explore this theme in 2022, our hope is to provide a diverse array of content through all channels, building on our success over the past two years in providing webcasts, podcasts, newsletter articles, and videos for our membership. These content pieces may be high level, touching on concepts across markets, or granular and specific to events occurring in a specific segment or channel.

In addition, we invite all members of the section (or those considering) the option of volunteering to contribute content (as a writer, speaker, podcast interviewee, etc.) on topic areas they have experience in, find particularly interesting, and feel is important for actuaries and other professionals to learn about. Our intent is to provide rich, vibrant content for our membership rooted in both detail and insight—something that comes best from those who work in the area of practice or market they write or speak about!

Finally, on behalf of the section council I would like to thank you for joining or continuing your membership in the Marketing and Distribution Section, as your dues and membership enable us to promote research, content, and webcasts in the area of marketing for not only your benefit, but the benefit of all actuaries who have access to our content.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the newsletter editors, or the respective authors’ employers.

Manisha Dias, FSA, FCIA, CERA, is the chair of the Marketing & Distribution Section Council. She is vice president, Strategic Partnerships at SCOR Life & Health. She can be contacted at mdias@scor.com.