Chairperson's Corner
By Todd Tauzer
Retirement Section News, January 2022
Every year, the incoming chairperson of the Society of Actuaries’ (SOA) Retirement Section Council is asked to start the year off by authoring a “Chairperson’s Corner” for Retirement Section News (RSN). It is an opportunity to introduce the current council’s members, highlight the inherent value of professional volunteering, and offer some perspective from the new chair. This year, I would like to lead our discussion on more of a “meta” path and take some stock of where we are and where we are headed as a council. But first, I would be remiss if I did not earnestly thank our immediate Past Chair, Grace Barbieri, who fearlessly led this council through the heart of COVID with initiative and resolve. The council would not have moved forward without her persistent efforts. Grace is now taking on a new role within the council as social media coordinator, which I will discuss a bit more soon. But first, the basics!
To learn more about the Retirement Section, its council members, and the resources it provides, please check out:
https://www.soa.org/sections/retirement/
On the (strong) value of volunteering, I highly recommend this article on page three from past chair Deb Tully:
Beyond the basics, I would like to spend the remainder of my time briefly on our council itself—both its structure and trajectory going forward.
Our Retirement Section Council
Even as a member of our council, I must admit I initially had very little understanding of what exactly the Retirement Section Council does beyond helping produce RSN and a handful of webinars annually. So, allow me to offer a brief overview.
The council consists of nine members, each serving three years with three rolling off and three new members coming on each year, and is supported by the SOA’s amazing Engagement Specialist Jane Lesch and Senior Practice Research Actuary Steve Siegel. The council oversees the Communications Team, the Continuing Education Team, the Research Team, and Special Interest Committees. These teams and committees consist of council members, additional volunteers, and even SOA staff members.
The Communications Team coordinates the articles and production of RSN, produces the annual Retirement Forum, develops podcasts that can be found on the website above, maintains that website, and even manages our SOA Retirement Section LinkedIn page, found here. We anticipate being more active on LinkedIn with our new social media coordinator, and I encourage you to join our page.
The Continuing Education Team is best known for organizing about six webinars a year on retirement topics, but also builds content for the SOA ImpACT annual meeting and other specialty seminars.
The Research Team, true to its name, identifies and oversees research initiatives, connects to the Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program and their great content, and receives funding from both the SOA directly and the Retirement Section. Recent retirement research resources can be found here.
Finally, Special Interest Committees include the DC Initiative, which has picked up speed (and members) and we expect to see sharp content from them soon. We also have commissioned a research project oversight group on teasing out exactly what employees and retirees really want in retirement. Look for more information on that toward the end of 2022.
Hopefully laying out the anatomy of the council is informative on its own, but information is not my primary motivation here. We want our members to know exactly how we operate so that you can not only look for our content, but also let us know what you find valuable (or not), what you wished the Retirement Section provided, and how we could make the content more accessible and engaging. Essentially, we want to become a more effective council. To that end, we intend to release a short member survey early in 2022. Please look out for this survey and consider what we can do to make the section more intriguing and useful, including how our new social media coordinator can make our content more easily available.
I look forward to being your Retirement Section Council chairperson this year, and hope we can gather some momentum beyond the challenging environment we find ourselves in.
Todd Tauzer, FSA, CERA, FCA, MAAA, is vice president and the National Public Sector Retirement Practice Leader at Segal. He can be contacted at ttauzer@segalco.com.