The Actuary November 2014 by Redactive Media Group

NOVEMBER 2014 theactuary.com

Interview: Trevor Llanwarne

The magazine of the actuarial profession

Reﬂections of a government actuary

Longevity Looking on the bright side of life

The Actuary

MIS-ESTIMATING MORTALITY

Solvency II What’s your mindset for modelling?

Careers NEDs and the ﬁght against ﬁnancial crime

Parametric models for life insurance data

November 2014

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Appointments

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NOVEMBER 2014

Contents

“As actuaries we often have to derive mortality bases from portfolio experience data, but how are we certain of the results?”

28 UP FRONT 9

SIAS events

10 IFoA news 14 People/society news

OPINION 5

Editorial Kelvin Chamunorwa reports back on a busy week of eclectic actuarial engagements

Letters Concerns on data crunching, hitting the headlines, and actuaries changing lightbulbs

President’s comment Nick Salter on the debates in which the profession should engage

Soapbox There are high expections of a retired standard of living that the UK’s resources cannot provide, says Icki Iqbal

MORE CONTENT ONLINE Additional content can be found at www.theactuary.com

COVER: OLIVIER BURSTON / IKON

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FEATURES

AT THE BACK

16 Interview: Trevor Llanwarne

34 Puzzles

Peter Tompkins speaks to the former UK Government Actuary

20 Life: Key skills for life David Hughes and Chris O’Brien outline the IFoA’s working party’s ﬁndings into the changes in the role of the life actuary

Try the latest cryptic crossword and Mensa puzzles

37 Student Jessica Elkin asks whether life in an Orwellian dystopia could mean an end to ﬂawed actuarial data

38 Actuary of the future Thomas Smith of AIG

22 Life: I’m not dead yet Emma McWilliam and Richard Purcell urge individuals to look on the bright side when planning retirement needs

26 Careers: On board with fraud In the second in his series, Colin Czapiewski looks at ﬁnancial crime and the issues of which to be aware

28 Modelling: Top 10 fallacies Most actuaries are at risk of some form of bias in their modelling work. Michael Ortmann explores the common pitfalls

33 Spotlight: Africa calling Marjorie Ngwenya reports on the Lord Mayor of London’s trip to Africa, and the launch of the CAA qualiﬁcation

ONLINE Solvency II: Building the reporting platform The regulatory regime expected to govern the capital adequacy of EU insurers is fast approaching. Insurers need to consider the systems implications carefully, says Madhu Senthil Thanikasalam

Review: SIAS Jubilee Lecture 2014 Mark Dainty reports on this year’s lecture given by Steve Webb MP, minister of state for pensions, and Steve Groves, CEO of Partnership

For daily news reports, visit: www.theactuary.com/news

WRITERS OF THE MONTH Emma McWilliam and Richard Purcell win a £50 book token for their feature on longevity, courtesy of SIAS

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

27/10/2014 15:25

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Opinion Editorial theactuary.com

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Social diligence Kelvin Chamunorwa reports back on an eclectic mix of gatherings of actuaries with common interests

Richard Purcell, life, health and care Richard Schneider, life, Solvency II, mortality/longevity, modelling and software Helen Lau, GI, reinsurance, environment, careers Gemma Gregson, pensions, GI People/society news editor Yvonne Wan social@theactuary.com Student page editor Jessica Elkin student@theactuary.com Arts page arts@theactuary.com Profession news editor Alison Jiggins +44 (0)20 7632 2172 alison.jiggins@actuaries.org.uk SIAS representative Titas Bakanauskas Editorial advisory panel Peter Tompkins (chairman), Naomi Burger, David Campbell, Matthew Edwards, Martin Lunnon, Sherdin Omar, Richard Purcell, Nick Silver, Andrew Smith

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Subscriptions For subscriptions from outside the actuarial profession, UK: £90 per annum/£8.50 per copy. Europe: £110 per annum, rest of the world: £130 per annum. Contact: Alison Jiggins, The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Staple Inn, High Holborn, London WC1V 7QT. T +44 (0)20 7632 2100 E alison.jiggins@actuaries.org.uk Students on actuarial science courses may join and they will receive The Actuary as part of their membership. Apply to: Membership Department, The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Maclaurin House, 18 Dublin Street, Edinburgh EH1 3PP. T +44 (0)131 240 1325 E membership@actuaries.org.uk Changes of address should inform the membership department as above. For delivery queries, contact: Rachel Young E rachel.young@redactive.co.uk Published by the Staple Inn Actuarial Society The editor, The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and Staple Inn Actuarial Society are not responsible for the opinions put forward in The Actuary. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owners. While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the content, the publisher and its contributors accept no responsibility for any material contained herein. Important information for contributors to The Actuary By submitting content for publication you confirm that: (a) You (and/or other named contributors) are the sole author(s) of the content submitted; (b) The content you submit is original and has not previously been published (unless you specifically advise us to the contrary); (c) You haven’t previously licensed the use of the content you submit; (d) So far as you are aware, the content submitted will not infringe any third-party rights, be defamatory or in any way illegal.

There has been a hive of activity recently in a number of member groups in the actuarial profession. I took time to attend events hosted by some of them and I write this after a busy but pleasant week engrossed in actuarial matters including evening talks and dinners, amid marking September exam scripts. One such event was held by Southern African Actuarial ConneXions, a member interest group whose guest speaker was Matt Lilley, CEO of Prudential Africa. He spoke about the insurer’s recent entry to Africa and delved into why he thought the agent and bancassurance distribution models that have brought growth in Asia could be replicated in its new market (page 15). It was an insightful talk. In my view, distribution via mobile phones will soon emerge alongside these traditional channels, as technology develops to capture consumer behaviour digitally and as predictive analytics advance. Africa and Asia currently have the highest usage of mobile money accounts in the world – in some countries it even exceeds the number of bank accounts. Another highlight of the week was a dinner with the Worshipful Company of Actuaries; an evening steeped in tradition and etiquette. I couldn’t escape actuarial exams though, as three exam prizes were awarded to Holly Hook, Louise Hunter and Richard Cohen – coincidentally, all friends with whom I have had the pleasure of working. The loving cup ceremony after the meal was particularly memorable. The actions to take as the cup comes to you seemed simple: you rise, you bow; you raise the lid in your right hand with a ﬂourish and wait while they drink and wipe the rim with the cloth; then replace the lid and take the cup by its handles with a bow; you turn to the next person and so on. My ﬁrst attempt did not go as smoothly as planned – fortunately, the actuaries either side of me at the table were both very forgiving. At The Actuary, we also welcomed a new recruit, Gemma Gregson, ending our search for a new features editor. Gemma’s arrival also signalled the culmination of my own busy week of actuarial hospitality.

“In my view, distribution via mobile phones will soon emerge alongside traditional channels”

Kelvin Chamunorwa Editor

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November 2014 • THE ACTUARY 5 www.theactuary.com

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Opinion Letters to the editor editor@theactuary.com

Data crunching

Making ‘sensationalist’ headlines make sense The headline ‘Retirement age could go up by six months every year’ in The Actuary news story online was potentially misleading (bit.ly/1FMbagO), as was its subheading: ‘The retirement age could rise by an average of six months a year, encouraging older people to stay in work longer, under new government plans’. The headlines in the wider media followed a similar line, but I had hoped The Actuary would have been less sensationalist. A casual reader might think that the UK government was planning to raise either the state pension age or the age at which people could take their retirement beneﬁts. They might think it was raising these ages to encourage people to work longer. This is not what the government has said at all, and not what the main story in either The Actuary or The Telegraph actually described. Looking at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report quoted in the story, the DWP appears to me merely to be publishing an indicator of the ages at which older people actually withdraw from the labour market and become economically inactive. DWP’s wider policy is to encourage people to work later in response to demographic ageing and ensuring pensions sustainability. This is not new. DWP said, “An increase in the average age of withdrawal of more than around 0.5 years would demonstrate an improvement” and “meaningful change”, which seems an uncontroversial fact to me. Separate legislation already requires a regular review of state pension age, having regard to life expectancy. The government has already announced that it is considering raising the age at which people can take their occupational and personal pensions to 10 years before state pension age. Glyn Bradley 14 October Editor’s response: Thanks for your contribution to The Actuary, Glyn. We appreciate that the headline could have been misleading to some – it was not our intention to imply changes to either state pension age or the minimum age at which people can take their retirement benefits. We did not see the need to make that distinction in the headline, which needed to be succinct. I agree with you that the DWP aim highlighted in the article is not new – the news was the publication of the DWP business plan earlier that week.

MORE LETTERS ONLINE More letters are available online at www.theactuary.com/opinion

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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Regarding Paul Waterhouse’s letter ‘Dangers of more data’ (The Actuary, October 2014), as of last week, many years after my ﬁrst stint at university, I am back at University College London studying machine learning. I think I still have a little while to go before I am suﬃciently expert to enter the fray, but one thing that has impressed me is the structured approach to problem solving. While what I have seen so far does not explicitly cover Paul’s concerns, it is not too hard to imagine an updated understanding of the Actuarial Control Cycle including

both machine learning ideas and the broader issues that Paul mentions. Well, at least, that’s what I think after one week. One person who articulates clearly the machine learning approach is Professor Yaser Abu-Mostafa. The ﬁrst two lectures in his series (‘The Learning Problem’ and ‘Is Learning Feasible?’) are well worth a listen (bit.ly/10rwyYH). And now I have to dash – as my assignment deadline is next Tuesday. Who said that a student’s life is easy! Alan Chalk 2 October

Actuaries and light bulbs How many large group healthcare actuaries does it take to change a light bulb? The same number as last year, times a trend factor. How many small group healthcare actuaries does it take to change a light bulb? Ten: one to screw the light bulb and nine to interpret the health reform regulations on light bulbs. How many management actuaries does it take to change a light bulb?

20: one to screw the light bulb and 19 to have a staﬀ meeting on it. How many casualty actuaries does it take to change a light bulb? None, the light bulbs are all broken. How many pensions actuaries does it take to change a light bulb? None, they can make an assumption that the light bulb changes itself. Tony Batory 15 October

The editor welcomes readers’ letters but reserves the right to edit them for publication. Please email editor@theactuary.com. The deadline for receiving letters for the December issue is 19 November 2014.

ISTOCK

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›

Opinion President’s comment

Nick Salter is the president of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

NICK SALTER

Riding the highs and the lows Life, on occasions, can be a rollercoaster ride; you are out of control, subject to all sorts of unexpected forces, and never quite sure what is coming next. Don’t get me wrong, I am quite partial to a rollercoaster ride. The initial fear that gets replaced with excitement, then the thrill and ﬁnally the smile at the end that suggests ‘I want to go again’. If you follow the media it can often resemble a rollercoaster, and last month I found myself riding it as I scanned through my news alerts. The initial fear and dread came as I read the blog from the BBC’s economics editor, Robert Peston, which said that the recent UK Labour Party Conference had “only a little more oomph than a convention of actuaries”. But that feeling of dread was soon replaced with excitement as I read Reuters, who highlighted our GIRO conference in their diary as one of the top economic events to watch. Excitement was soon followed by a smile when it became apparent that the Reuters’ point had not been lost on others in the media and the money markets, who were glued to our conference guest speaker, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and what he might say. The pound strengthened against most major currencies in the lead up to the governor’s speech. I don’t know about Mr Peston, but to me that felt like quite a bit of ‘oomph’ for a convention of actuaries.

Changing times I guess it is a sign of how the IFoA is changing, and more broadly how the perception of our profession is changing, that we can attract such quality speakers to our conferences. Opinion formers with ‘oomph’ from beyond our traditional ﬁelds who recognise actuaries, not just for what we are doing today, but for what we can do in the future. So it was reassuring to hear the governor say at the conference that, by including our profession in the new regulatory regime, he recognises the importance of our skills and the range of our contribution. A point reinforced when he stressed the need to consult with actuaries as he develops his

Picking the right debates with which to engage is key to our growing reputation, says Nick Salter “senior manager regime” in the UK. Pleasingly, he also seemed receptive to the idea that actuaries have a lot to offer outside our traditional areas; one of my key ambitions for our profession, and something that I plan to follow up with him when I can. If any of you have ever been engaged in public policy debates, you will know that this too can feel like being on a rollercoaster. The fear and dread sets in as the request for a response to a government consultation drops into the inbox, with a turn around time that many budget airlines would be proud of. Fear and dread turns to excitement as hours of toil and conference calls lead to the production of a unique and distinct contribution to a public policy debate, which, in turn, is then passed to the IFoA’s Public Affairs and Consultation Committee for final sign-off. Excitement turns to a smile when the call comes in from the originating Whitehall department asking to meet with representatives of the IFoA to further explore the contribution we have submitted. My experience of theme parks is that the

biggest smiles are achieved by choosing the right rollercoasters to ride. Similarly with the IFoA’s contribution to the public policy debate, we will only really achieve the most smiles if we pick the right debates with which to engage. Working alongside our volunteers on the Practice Boards, we have identiﬁed the key public policy priorities for the IFoA, where we will look to engage and inform public policy debate.

Key focus

“The perception of our profession is changing, that we can attract such quality speakers to our conferences”

By focusing on the ageing population, resource and the environment, and the future of investment and regulatory policies, we are concentrating on areas which are crossing our actuarial

practice interests. Where there are economic and social challenges for policymakers, actuarial expertise, knowledge and experience can often bring signiﬁcant value to the debate. So we’ve chosen our rollercoaster rides, and now look forward to the smiles that will follow. Maybe even Mr Peston may change his view of our profession? a

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

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›

Opinion Soapbox

ICKI IQBAL

Learners, earners and burners Our lives come in three stages: ● ‘Learners’ are children or trainee adults. Healthcare and primary and secondary education are free. Tertiary education has to be paid for, if necessary through student loans. Taxation and social security policy redresses the balance. ● ‘Earners’ are adults who are not burners. They contribute to society by growing the gross domestic product. Most of the time they will be gainfully employed, but not always. ● ‘Burners’ are people of an age when society thinks that they do not have to continue activities that are economically beneﬁcial. Their needs are shelter, food, companionship and recreation for the body and mind; and medical care in old age. We can’t tell in advance how much is required of each and what form they would take. Worse, they now expect to live longer and care costs are an unanticipated sixth item on the list. The UK as a whole has an expectation of a standard of living that its resources cannot deliver. So we need a review. A holistic approach would be to assume that each cohort should take out no more than it has put in. In other words, what you can draw on in retirement would be deﬁned by: what you made while working, less what you cost when growing up. This is a longitudinal approach straddling several parliaments. It is the correct approach but unlikely to be implemented. So we look for other solutions.

Getting the balance right We have in the UK established the principle that healthcare should be free at the point of delivery. Despite challenges imposed by rising costs, this principle has been maintained. We have also established a system of incentives to encourage people to make advance provision for retirement so that the elderly don’t become a burden on the state. This too has come under scrutiny. Where should long-term care lie in the spectrum ranging from free at the point of delivery to pay as you consume? It seems to me that in terms of its nature it is closer to the UK National Health Service (NHS) than pension provision and must therefore be free at the point of delivery. The question then is how is the cost paid for? I think a practical solution would be to say

People in the UK have expectations of a retired standard of living that the nation’s resources cannot provide, says Icki Iqbal that national insurance (NI) contributions, which at present cease on retirement, should continue right up to death. They would be deducted from income – such as your pension and earnings – but not investment income. The Blue Book (published by the Office of National Statistics) states that the average income of pensioners in 2012/13 was £477 a week, of which pensions and earnings accounted for £371. The Blue Book defines pensioners as those over 65, not all of whom would have retired. Assuming that all of the ‘earnings’ are attributable to those not yet retired, the figure reduces to £338 a week. If 7m of the 8.7m listed in The Blue Book as pensioners are genuine, the aggregate income attributable to pensioners is £123bn. If they were to pay NI contributions at the current employee rate, 12% of the income in excess of the Lower Earnings Limit (LEL), currently £111 a week, this would generate revenue of £9.9bn pa. That is in excess of the figure of £9bn that Kate Barker, chair of the independent Commission on the Future of Health and Social Care, and a distinguished economist, estimates as the annual cost of long-term care for those ‘critically in need’ but well short of the £14bn she estimates would be needed by 2025 if extended to those with ‘substantial needs’.

Of course, 12% of earnings above LEL would be a painful additional cost to the pensioner. We can try to ﬁnd ways of reducing it, but the principle that they should pay must be maintained if it is to be free at the point of need.

Preparing for longevity Suppose we start by saying that those already retired should only pay 6%, but this is increased in half-percentage point steps from 2016 so that those retiring in 2027 would pay 12%. The Treasury could finance the shortfall by tightening up the rules on pensions. The government thinks people should be free to decide in what form they take benefits under a pension policy. I would contend that a certain minimum level should be taken as an annuity to protect against longevity. Tax relief should be limited to contributions below a specified limit, set to support a target pension of £18,000 a year, say. The Centre for Policy Studies estimated that tax relief on pension contributions cost the Treasury £26bn in 2010/11 so there’s enough headroom to fund the care shortfall. There are several issues of detail, but these can be addressed once the principles are accepted.

“A holistic approach would be to assume that each cohort should take out no more than it has put in”

Icki Iqbal is a retired actuary

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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EARLY 2015

Call for volunteers to help inner-city school pupils

CHARITY EVENT

Would you like to help young inner-city school pupils to develop essential skills that are invaluable in the working world and transfer your knowledge of the actuarial profession? Well read on... One of the aims of the charity subcommittee of SIAS is to support school pupils by increasing awareness of the actuarial profession while aiding their development and progression into the world of work. SIAS has partnered with The Brokerage Citylink to provide “introduction to being an actuary” sessions to sixth-form students from inner-city London schools. The Brokerage Citylink is an independent charity providing young people in London with a pathway of opportunities into employment. Their vision is that all young Londoners, regardless of background, will have the understanding, skills and confidence to make the most of the career opportunities in the City. By working together we can support their aims while helping to promote the actuarial profession and the benefits that a job as an actuary can present. We ran sessions at five schools earlier this year and received fantastic feedback. Following the success of these sessions, we would like to run similar workshops in more schools early next year. We had a large number of volunteers helping out at the sessions. They were responsible for presenting to students on their experiences, both in work and at university. This was an excellent opportunity for actuaries to hone their presentation skills at the same time as giving something back to the community. If you are interested in helping out at one of the upcoming workshops please email Katie and Natanya at charity@sias.org.uk.

FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER

Annual SIAS Dinner Honourable Artillery Company Armoury House, City Road London EC1Y 2BQ

SOCIAL EVENT

The Annual nnual SIAS S Dinner is happening ning at a The HAC and ticketss are ccurrently urrently on sale. Email social@ social@sias.org.uk @sias.org.uk if you are inte interested. erested.

PAINT THE TOWN RED AT OUR 2014

6.30pm

ANNUAL DINNER

2015

Talks programme Register your ideas

MORE EVENTS ONLINE For details of events, visit www.sias.org.uk

SAM KESTEVEN / SAM PEACH

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PROGRAMME RAMM ME

SIAS iss organising organnising the line-up of programme amme talks for 2015; if you wish to present nt a paper paaper or topic please contact the team am at programme@sias.org.uk. p

SIAS IS ON TWITTER! Follow us on @SIAScommittee for latest news on meetings, socials and more!

SIAS IS ON FACEBOOK! Check out the SIAS Facebook page for photos from the latest social events

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

27/10/2014 16:37

News IFoA NEWS UPDATES FROM THE ACTUARIAL PROFESSION

Upfront Global support for mortality event

Opinion CEO’s comment Derek Cribb talks about CAA exemptions available to current IFoA students

CAA oﬀers new path for students Derek Cribb is the chief executive of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

DEREK CRIBB

This month I want to congratulate

everyone who sat and passed the entry test, Module 0, in the firstever Certified Actuarial Analyst (CAA) exam session in August. It’s fantastic to see so much support from ‘early adopter’ candidates and employers for the CAA, the IFoA’s first new qualification and membership category in a generation. The range of backgrounds of those taking the exam even at this early stage demonstrates the sheer diversity and breadth of appeal of the CAA. For example, Grainne Burke works in Ireland for a large insurance company as a business support analyst. She sees the CAA as helping her to progress to a managerial role, thus advancing her career. Compare this to Moses Chege, who works as a life and investment consultant in Kenya, who is being sponsored through the CAA by his employers to improve his skills to help him, as an IFoA member, to stand out from his peers. Candidates in over 20 countries sat the exam and we fully expect this geographical spread to increase in the forthcoming exam sessions. We recognise that there may be some Fellowship students whose career aspirations are better served by the CAA, who therefore would have pursued the CAA had it been available when they commenced their studies. In recognition of this, I am pleased to say that on 3 November we will have opened an exemptions window of 15 months, during which students on the Fellowship pathway can use passes in relevant Fellowship exams to gain exemptions from individual CAA exams and transfer across to the CAA pathway as a student actuarial analyst (SAA). Fellowship students with all relevant exam passes can transfer to the membership grade of CAA at any time, provided they meet the work-based skills and professionalism requirements. I am very much looking forward to welcoming new and existing members onto the analyst pathway. By diversifying our offering, the IFoA is ensuring that it is continuing to meet the needs of modern financial organisations by equipping staff with relevant qualifications and the benefits of IFoA membership. More information about the CAA, including profiles of candidates and details about exemptions, are available on the IFoA website: www.actuaries. org.uk/becoming-actuary/caa For further information about the CAA, please get in touch at CAA@actuaries.org.uk

The International Mortality and Longevity Symposium 2014 attracted not only actuaries but global health researchers, statisticians, epidemiologists, gerontologists, policymakers and social scientists from around the world to Birmingham’s Aston University. Topics included big health data; prevention and mortality; forecasting models; medical advances and conceptualisation of ageing; cause-of-death modelling; the Continuous Mortality Investigation and the Actuarial Research Centre (ARC); social and economic inequalities and longevity; and obesity. PhD students, including two from ARC, presented their latest ﬁndings during breakfast meetings. Dinner speaker Sir Harry Burns, former chief medical oﬃcer for Scotland and now professor of global public health at the University of Strathclyde, discussed the economic and psychosocial causes of chronic poor health, and made a compelling case for directing public resources at the promotion of societal wellbeing rather than the mitigation of symptoms. Conference abstracts will be available to download on the IFoA website shortly.

Exam results imminent The results for the core technical (CT) series of exams sat in the September 2014 session will be published on 28 November. The ﬁnal series exam results, for the core applications (CA1), specialist technical (ST) and specialist applications (SA) subjects, will be published on 12 December. Following this, a list of students completing the exams required for Fellowship, and of students now eligible for the Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA) qualiﬁcation, will be published in The Times in early January.

eBook service expanded Members now have access to over 100 eBooks following further investment in the Athens eLibrary. The EBSCO eBook resource allows titles to be downloaded to tablets, eReaders and mobile phones. Titles cover actuarial practice, economics, ﬁnance and exam-related reading. For an Athens password, email libraries@actuaries.org.uk

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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27/10/2014 15:45

Movers and shakers up the game at GIRO Never before has our general insurance convention played host to such a star-spangled collection of glitterati. The movers and shakers of financial services were out in force as actuaries strove to innovate and diversify (the themes for 2014) in one of the fastest evolving sectors of professional practice. More than 700 faces looked on in expectation as the First Minister of Wales opened the convention at the Celtic Manor Hotel, Newport. Innovation featured strongly in the hot-topic session, which included the annual sprint to hear the presenter of choice before 200 other delegates chose all the available places – would it be Google or the Monte Carlo Rendezvous? But every breakout session presented an equally difficult choice – ‘Periodical payment disorder’, ‘The good actuarial report’, ‘The fast close process’, ‘Cyber risk insurance’, ‘Actuaries climate index’ and ‘The practising ruin working party’ to name but a few. The highlight of the gathering was indisputably the frank and revealing presentation from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England. He shared his thoughts on the imminence of interest rate rises. Perhaps more surprising though was the revelation that, given the growing importance and influence of

actuaries in the running of insurers, the Bank may in due course consider including the most senior actuaries in its ‘ﬁt and proper’ regime. The tempo of challenge and change was maintained with a thought-provoking presentation on the psychology of today’s workplace and meritocracies from author and Radio 4 regular, Alain de Botton. Lloyd’s ﬁrst female chief executive in nearly 400 years, Inga Beale, painted a picture of fast evolution among the syndicates and business processes in insurance. Jayne-Anne Ghadia, chief executive

at Virgin Money, informed us of the importance that any Richard Branson outlet places on the customer. Throughout, this stellar line-up of senior ﬁgures kept us up-to-speed with key events in the market – and, before one assumes that they were forgotten, the phrases Solvency II, IMAP and ORSA did make the occasional guest appearance. Overall, it was a triumph for organiser-in-chief, Vishal Desai. Watch this space for next year’s eagerlyawaited conference.

SoNIA growing fast as third birthday approaches In very recent years, the actuarial community in Northern Ireland has grown considerably in strength and numbers. The launch of the actuarial science and risk management degree in 2007 at Queen’s University Belfast has signiﬁcantly heightened awareness and interest in the profession, as well as increasing appetites for an actuarial career in Northern Ireland. It became clear that our own regional society was both necessary and appropriate and, in 2012, the Society of Northern Ireland Actuaries (SoNIA) was launched to provide training and professional development for local actuaries and actuarial students. SoNIA was initially set up and arranged through Queen’s University Belfast and it maintains strong ties with the university. The committee set up to run SoNIA includes both student and lecturer representatives from the actuarial science and risk management course as well as representatives from many of the actuarial ﬁrms operating in Northern Ireland. Our membership base does, for the most part, work or study in and around Belfast, with pension consultancies being the major player at the moment. However, we are drawn towards all things actuarial, and our past

events have covered a wide range of diverse and interesting topics. Aims and objectives The main objective of SoNIA is to create a platform for actuaries and actuarial students to develop professionally, widen their knowledge of current actuarial issues and, overall, get to know one another thereby creating a close-knit and supportive actuarial community. To encourage the participation of our own ‘actuaries of the future’ we oﬀer free membership to students on the actuarial science and risk management course at Queen’s and in doing so provide a link between university learning and day-to-day actuarial work and professional responsibilities (particularly useful for students seeking work placements and future employment). A representative of SoNIA is always present at the Student Consultative Forum (SCF) meetings to ensure the views of our members are heard. We would encourage our colleagues from the UK, Ireland and further aﬁeld to get in touch with a SoNIA committee member if you happen to be in the area when we have an event planned – we would be delighted to invite you along.

Events SoNIA holds events ﬁve or six times each year, oﬀering members an opportunity to discuss and debate the latest issues in the delivery of actuarial services. Recent events have covered a wide range of topics, including the ‘Implications of the Scottish independence referendum’ and ‘Budget 2014 – what next for pensions?’. Springboard for development SoNIA has proved to be an excellent platform for discussion and debate on current issues in the profession and to strengthen the local actuarial community, not to mention providing a chance for our members to get quality continuing professional development locally. The IFoA and, in particular, regions manager Tess Joyce continue to be an invaluable source of support for SoNIA, keeping us up to date with the operations of similar regional actuarial societies and by providing a platform to market SoNIA. We will be marking the beginning of our fourth year with a sessional research event led by the IFoA at Queen’s University Belfast in January 2015. For further details, visit: bit.ly/1oUcaog

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News IFoA NEWS UPDATES FROM THE IFOA

Jagger honoured at Autumn Lecture Professor Carol Jagger, AXA Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing at Newcastle University’s Institute of Health & Society, delivered the IFoA’s Autumn Lecture to a full house of actuaries, scientists and policymakers at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on 1 October. She presented a range of unique, published and unpublished research on the eﬀects of old age. Multi-morbidity is the norm for the very old, with multiple conditions and diseases contributing to disability, including high rates of hypertension, osteoarthritis, cataracts and atherosclerosis. Over their lifetime, men enjoy a longer disability-free period, and experience relatively faster decline, requiring a shorter phase of intermittent care, while women are more likely to live longer and experience extended periods requiring intermittent and then regular care, together with lengthier

periods of cognitive impairment. While life-expectancy inequalities between men and women are reducing, disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) inequalities are not. A particular challenge is that DFLE also varies widely across ethnicities, with Pakistani and Bangladeshi men and women in England experiencing a much shorter DFLE than average. Lifestyle and regional factors also contribute to variance in DFLE. The north-east and west of England vary considerably from London and the south. Jagger also highlighted the eﬀect of these on carers. For men, two years are spent needing daily or constant help. For women, this ﬁgure is three years. Often the care is provided by children who are themselves in their early 60s with poor health. However, Jagger stressed that most old age is not spent dependant or physically or cognitively impaired.

On the whole, the course of old age disability was predictable, with public policymakers aware of the issues. However, elderly care and wellbeing still presents unmet challenges. IFoA president Nick Salter was extremely pleased to present both Jagger and Sir Philip Mawer, former chair of the Professional Regulation Executive Committee, with Honorary Fellowship of the IFoA at the lecture. The lecture will be made available on the IFoA website shortly.

Volunteering in Ghana: knowledge and culture exchange followed by lunch with crocodiles. The perspective that I have gained isn’t necessarily the one I would have had I travelled to Ghana just as a tourist.

By Shilpi Nanda, Munich Reinsurance Co During early August, I enjoyed a week in Ghana, where I was trying to live up to the responsibility of delivering CT5 (Life contingencies) lectures to postgraduate students at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. This was part of a volunteering initiative set up jointly by the Worshipful Company of Actuaries and the IFoA to further actuarial science in Ghana. It is supported by Munich Re. Close to the date of travel I suffered from typical actuarial exam pangs as I was reminded how hard CT5 was. Having completed the journey, the feelings are now replaced by fulfilment and gratitude. My time in Ghana has been extremely rewarding and I wanted to share some of my experiences. KNUST campus, Kumasi Away from the oppressive traffic of Ghana’s second largest city, I spent two brutally long nine-hour sessions with the university students of Kumasi. Exhausting as it was, I was quite overwhelmed by the hard work, will and dedication of the students, who came from backgrounds as diverse as cocoa farming to insurance sales. Some of them had travelled nearly eight hours to make it for a 07:00 class. It was very humbling to weigh their challenges against the relative luxury of actuarial students in the UK, most of whom enjoy full study support and access to a wide range of materials from ActEd. It was also my first teaching

experience and I learnt teaching in a classroom is a lot more complex than regurgitating prepared notes. I had to supplement the material with practical examples of insurance products and issues to help students have a wider understanding of insurance. Cultural exchange and travels One of the aims of this volunteering initiative is to give volunteers a cultural experience in return for their knowledge exchange. The university staﬀ organised several outings between teaching responsibilities and explained at length about their country, their culture and the challenges Ghana is facing at the moment. Trips ranged from horseriding along the banks of Lake Bostumtwe to visiting the Kakum National Park, where we walked along suspension bridges through the forest

Closing chapter: Accra Campus I repeated my lectures to a group of nearly 40 students at Accra, many of whom are already employed by insurance companies. They were a very dedicated and engaging group of students and challenged me throughout with insightful questions on the subject. Some of them will have attempted the IFOA’s exams in September or will be sitting them next year in April, and we are all hoping that there will be good news. The feedback from the students has been very positive, but the trip wasn’t without its challenges. The Ebola crisis exploded in West Africa and a fellow volunteer who was scheduled to travel with me had to cancel. The physical challenges of teaching continuously for nine hours on consecutive days took their toll. There was a silver lining though. The university tested out an online system for delivering lectures with my fellow volunteer, which was a great success. This has opened up new possibilities for this teaching initiative. All this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Munich Re and colleagues who encouraged me and covered for me during my absence. If you are interested in teaching actuarial science in Ghana, please contact neil.hilary@actuaries.org.uk

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IFoA policy priorities: making our research count As members of a chartered profession, actuaries have a core obligation to serve the public interest. But what does this mean? ‘Public interest’ is not a clearly defined concept and there are number of ways we try to support members to fulfil this duty. As a regulated profession, it is critical that we engage on regulatory issues and build strong relationships with regulators and other actuarial associations issuing rules or standards of practice. We respond to consultations and meet regularly with key regulators – and our actuarial colleagues internationally – in an effort to inform regulatory policy so that actuaries can carry out their work in the public interest. More recently, we have developed some key public policy priority themes on which the IFoA can proactively engage, using actuarial expertise to inform policy development: 1. Ageing population; 2. Future of investment policy; 3. Resource and environment issues. These key policy priorities: ● represent significant economic and social challenges for policymakers at the domestic and international level; ● are long-term issues that transcend the duration of a parliamentary term; ● are areas where there are different perspectives on how the policy dilemma might be resolved;

● are of cross-practice interest; and ● vitally, are issues on which actuarial expertise

can add significant value, and where opportunities exist for the actuarial profession to provide an impartial, evidence-based contribution to the policymaking process. To arrive at these themes we have had significant input from all of the practice area boards and, as we develop our work streams within them, we will continue this consultative approach. Our next step is to ensure that the valuable outputs of our vibrant working party community are drawn upon, examining how our member-led research can help to inform public policy and to raise the profile of the profession. Through a process of continued dialogue and input from the boards, we will produce a series of policy briefings that will outline the key policy challenges and consider how actuarial expertise might inform the debate. We already have clear evidence to demonstrate the impact we can have when we derive our policy positions from research findings. The Pensions and Long Term Care Working Party was established to develop intellectual capital that would support the IFoA in building a narrative and engaging in the debate on long-term care. Following the publication of its report, we have met key civil servants to discuss the

findings, and our external engagement programme is ongoing. We want to build on this momentum and bring actuarial analysis to debates such as the future of retirement income provision, risks of procyclicality and understanding the effect of climatic events. We hope that our public-policy priorities demonstrate an important way in which actuarial expertise can be deployed outside our usual frame of reference – reflecting our diverse skill set and driving thought leadership in the public interest. If you would like to get involved, please contact IFoA’s head of policy, Amy Tarr. Email: amy.tarr@actuaries.org.uk

Sessional research event The Cass Business School and Hymans Robertson research team will present their work on a methodology for assessing the basis risk arising from the use of population level mortality indices for managing the longevity risk in pension beneﬁts or annuitant liabilities. The work is part-funded by the IFoA and the Life & Longevity Markets Association and is being overseen by the Longevity Basis Risk Working Group. The full results will be presented at an IFoA sessional meeting at Staple Inn Hall, London, on 8 December.

EVENTS AND CONFERENCES Make your mark at Momentum If you have recently qualified or are about to qualify as an actuary then Momentum is the conference for you. Providing insightful discussions and plenary sessions, alongside excellent networking opportunities, there will also be one hour of continuing professional development available at the end of the conference. Taking place at Edinburgh International Centre from 3-5 December, this event is highly recommended for those of you wishing to meet fellow actuaries from different specialisms. Visit the events section of our website to find out more: bit.ly/1CXRW5e

Revisions to the UK Corporate Governance Code – Raising the bar on risk management: how prepared are UK companies? 24 November, Staple Inn Hall, London In September 2014, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) issued an updated version of its UK Corporate Governance Code. The revised code will apply to accounting periods beginning on or after 1 October 2014. The IFoA is conducting a survey of UK listed companies to gain an understanding of the eﬀects of the updated code and wishes to present its ﬁndings and provide a unique opportunity for interested

parties to come together to discuss the impact of the changes. To be a part of this discussion, book your place online: bit.ly/Zu1sOR

Masterclasses: invest in yourself The IFoA is introducing a series of ﬁve Masterclass events taking place from November 2014 to January 2015. Masterclasses are live events, created by experts in the ﬁeld to help actuaries achieve success in all areas of business. These bespoke modules focus on developing essential skills for business professionals that are not always covered in formal training. Unsure if they are for you? Why not attend the introductory

Masterclass on ‘Personal impact’, which will improve your professional interactions and influence. The four advanced communication classes cover the following topics over a half-day period: ‘Influencing others’, ‘Difficult conversations’, ‘Public speaking/presenting’ and ‘Motivating and inspiring others’. Attend one session or attend them all, you decide how progressive you feel your personal development requirements are. The IFoA is offering a discount for those who attend all four of the half-day modules. Read more about these classes or book yourself a place at: bit.ly/1nebajk

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News People & Society

If you have any newsworthy items for these pages please email social@theactuary.com

From actuary to children’s author After the birth of her first son, actuaryturned-writer Alex English decided to hone her fiction skills at a ‘writing for children’ class at City Literary Institute in London. A homework assignment, a favourite childhood book and an inspirational visit to the Natural History Museum resulted in the idea for her debut picture book Yuck said the Yak – a conversation of just over 100 words between a small boy called Alfie and a yak. “I’ve always loved writing stories and fooling around with words,” she says. “Picture books are a real passion of mine – there is so much opportunity for wordplay and humour. When I was a child, my favourite book was The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr. I love the idea of a huge wild animal turning

Martin Miles installed as Master of WCA

up at the front door uninvited. I think Judith’s tiger had better manners than my yak though!” Illustrations for the book were lovingly hand designed by Emma Levey giving an enticing textural quality to the yak. Alex is a volunteer for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and is married with two sons, Freddie (2) and George (6 months). She grew up in Hampshire and now lives in Reigate, Surrey. Alex is a former features editor of The Actuary. Her second book, Pirates Don’t Drive Diggers, will be published by Maverick in spring 2015.

For more information, please contact Kimara Nye – kim@maverick-arts.co.uk

New WCA Master Martin Miles (right) with the chief guest, the Right Honorable Michael Fallon MP

Martin Miles was installed as the 36th Master of the Worshipful Company of Actuaries (WCA) at Drapers Hall on 8 July 2014. The Company’s chief guest at the dinner was the Right Honorable Michael Fallon MP. Martin said “I felt immensely honoured to become the Master of the Company and I will do my best to maintain the very high standards that previous masters have set, none more so than my immediate predecessor, Charles Cowling. Charles did an enormous amount within the Company and in the City generally. And he remains the most talked about of all the 109 livery company masters of his year group, having completed his remarkable ‘10 in 10’ (10 Lake District marathons in 10 days), and raising over £70,000 for charity in the process. He was only the 79th person ever to complete 10 in 10... 79 idiots I have heard it whispered!”

Jame Joseph James Sylvester Sylve (3 Septem September 1814 – 15 March 1897) 3 September Septem 2014 marked the 200th anniversary annivers of the birth of James Josep Sylvester, an eminent Joseph mat mathematician. He was an actu actuary of Equity & Law and wass inst instrumental in founding the Inst Institute of Actuaries in 1848, hold the position of viceholding pres president for ﬁve years.

Births: Congratulations to Alex (Allianz, GI) and Clare Craig (LCP, Pensions) on the birth of their son, James Anthony Craig, on 11 September 2014.

Sarah Bennett (Medscheme) and husband David are pleased to announce the arrival of the latest addition to their family, Rachel Helen Bennett, born on 4 September in Cape Town.

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Venturing into Africa On 13 October, members from The SAAX Group were joined by CASS students to hear from Matt Lilley, CEO Africa for Prudential, about their ambitions in Africa; their recent acquisitions and plans for the future. It was an excellent opportunity to hear ﬁrst-hand from an industry leader driving strategy and growth across the African continent. For Matt’s presentation please see our website (www.saaxgroup.org). Matt touched in particular on the Asian markets before sharing Prudential’s strategy of replicating their agency model in Africa. They have seen success in emerging markets exhibiting low insurance penetration where they have a large proportion of the existing market share. It’s about being a serious player in a market before it grows.

Matt was candid that Prudential’s success is built off a strong distribution strategy relying on agents on the ground. Their strong performance is a direct result of being able to modify their distribution strategy appropriately into one that is scalable. They have learnt from their mistakes, transferring successful practices from one market to another. Identifying which markets to get involved in is the starting point and Matt shared several metrics looked at to compare opportunities. Initial markets identified as attractive include Ghana and Kenya. In both countries, Prudential has bought small existing companies with the intention of growing significantly in the future. The evening concluded with drinks, snacks and a spot of networking.

Dicey quiz for Irish students By Bronagh Traynor The Student Society of Actuaries in Ireland’s annual Student Table Quiz took place in Dicey’s Garden Bar. The teams of four were tested on their general knowledge with over 80 questions in a wide range of topic areas such as geography, movies, sport, famous people and a specialist Father Ted round. A number of teams competed strongly for first place over the course of the night with the lead changing hands a number of times as the rounds progressed. After a tightly fought seventh round, the quiz ended all tied. A tense tie-breaker competition was needed to separate the joint top two teams, ‘Turkish & Parade 2’ and ‘Hoof hearted’. The two teams battled it out with a final closest-numberwins question to find the ultimate winner. The tie-break question was a tough one:

“What was the estimated additional revenue generated by the Gathering Ireland initiative in 2013 to the nearest million?” It was Turkish & Parade 2 who guessed closest and claimed the victory on the night. The team members were presented with a €25 One4All voucher each to spend in a variety of retail outlets and a prize was also given to the runners-up for their eﬀorts. A box of chocolates was awarded to the team with the best team name – ‘CACI is Deloitted to have Aegon its face’. Other prizes on the night included quiz books and bottles of wine. Congratulations to all 20 teams for taking part in a challenging quiz, and making the night such a success. For those of you curious to know, the answer to the tie-break question is €170 million.

Thumbs up for SIAS jubilee lecture By Mark Dainty Steve Webb is a great public speaker – and this is quite apart from the content of his excellent presentation. He is certainly someone to look up to and learn from on a soft skills perspective, which we, as actuaries, are working so hard to develop. He had no slides, no notes and possibly a tough crowd. Yet he was engaging, clear and concise with some lovely light-hearted moments to deﬂect away from the reality that

he and the government have “put a bomb under the annuity market”. Then came Steve Groves, CEO of Partnership, an organisation affected so significantly by the previous speaker that their share price had plummeted by 60% in a day... this was about to get spicy! To find out more about possibly the most impressive SIAS presentation I’ve attended, go to:

www.theactuary.com

Phiatus award Andrew O’Brien was the winner of the 2014 Phiatus award for completing 12 marathons in 12 months and raising over £10,000 for the ISIS Foundation. Pictured here is Martin Miles (left) presenting Andrew O’Brien with the Phiatus Silver Salver last month. Andrew will keep the Salver until the next winner is announced. For details on the ISIS Foundation, visit

www.isisgroup.org

Marathoner needed The Company of Actuaries Charitable Trust (CACT) has secured a place in the London Marathon on 25 April 2015 for an enthusiastic runner who will use it to seek sponsorship for CACT. The candidate will have: ● A desire to raise money for CACT (which supports mathematical education); ● The ambition to run the London Marathon; ● Friends and colleagues willing to sponsor them; and ● No important client or business meetings on 27 April 2015. If you are interested, please email the Trustees of CACT c/o

alan.smith@firstactuarial.co.uk

Hole in one On 31 July 2014, Andrew Benke, Robert Ross and Gordon Sharp represented the Actuaries Company in the Ray Jeﬀs Charity Golf Day. They did well, coming sixth out of the 19 livery company teams competing. But hero of the day was Gordon who won the “nearest the pin” competition, and followed that up with a hole in one at the 17th! This was the ﬁrst hole in one in the competition’s 15-year history. Well done, Gordon, and thank you for the generous contribution you made to the charity of the day to mark your achievement.

We would be delighted to hear from you if you have any newsworthy items for these pages. Please contact Yvonne Wan at social@theactuary.com

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On my agenda features@theactuary.com

Government engagement Trevor Llanwarne was, until recently, the Government Actuary in the UK. Following his six-year tenure, he spoke to Peter Tompkins as he reﬂected on this latest phase of his extensive career

I met Trevor over a very long

breakfast to talk about his achievements and challenges in public service, and it soon became clear that he is very proud to be an actuary. The highlights for Trevor in his career have been the three leaps of qualifying as a Fellow, being admitted as a partner by Price Waterhouse, and his appointment from the private sector to be the government actuary in 2008. Reflecting on what he had done previously, Trevor drew attention to his imaginative creation of a successful innovative hybrid Small Self-Administered Pension Scheme (SSAS) product at Sun Life, wisely planning the investment of the profits from a large business sale right at the bottom of the stock market in 2003, and derisking of defined benefit pension plan liabilities ahead of the pack at the turn of the century. During his time at the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) he discharged his professional advice carefully, often with very little publicity, knowing that his role was to advise and allow officials and ministers to take the ultimate decisions – and deal with the public reactions. He was at pains to point out that his work involved analysing and providing options, whilst making it clear where the responsibility lay. One area of special concern was the policy on selection of discount rate for valuing public-sector pensions. His work in government led him to think a great deal about the social economics of inter-generational fairness in striking suitable rates for planning future pensions and contribution levels.

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He was proud to have developed the department and in his view significantly increased influence in government. He believed in focusing on leadership and minimising ‘management’, doing away with micro-management and ‘command and control’, too often beloved by professional service organisations. Trevor comes across as a politically savvy adviser – that is political with a small ‘p’. Sometimes it is important to release statutory information into the public domain where it belongs without attendant publicity, especially where poorly informed journalists might get hold of the wrong end of the stick. Areas he had to be careful with included the quinquennial review of the National Insurance Fund, which is not a fund like an ordinary pension fund, but more a payment mechanism between contributions from employees and pensions to the retired. The long-term actuarial consequences of the ‘triple lock’ – paying pensioners increases which are the best of prices, wage inflation or at least 2.5% per annum – are significant but very difficult to get across to the public at large, as well as having been politically sensitive to the coalition government. Astonishingly, we learn that there are over 300 references to the government actuary in legislation, although many come down to the automatic production of actuarial factors. Trevor was a scheme actuary to just one privatised government agency pension scheme, but in practice was actuary to pension arrangements with liabilities exceeding £1 trillion. Most of these were unfunded liabilities, though the former coal industry schemes operate under special legislation where significant invested funds do have returns that impact on public finances. In practice, there might have been on average one significant report to complete every week during his six years in office, which is quite a workload when one considers the bunching together of the major public-sector pension schemes with identical valuation dates.

MANUEL VASQUEZ

27/10/2014 15:52

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On my agenda features@theactuary.com

Commenting on the professionalism inherent in his role, Trevor drew attention to the contracting-out rebate review, where the reduction in National Insurance for those contracted-out is calculated. The legislation does not require a recommendation from the government actuary. “Making recommendations requires political and social policy considerations as well as technical analysis”, he said. Adding that his approach in his work “has generally been to set out the options but stress that a social policy steer from ministers is needed to reach the proper conclusions”. During his tenure, staff numbers in GAD grew significantly – unlike almost all other government departments – and income doubled. This was despite some strategic decisions made to pull out of international insurance regulatory work, which no longer fitted in with a department which had been short of its UK regulatory work to the FSA. The GAD is still well known for some of its more modest roles – such as checking that the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment (ERNIE) randomly selects premium bond winners, or setting the regular limits for income drawdown from personal pension products. But the core of the work is pensions and social security advice to government. Trevor proudly explained how they had retained the Scottish Public Pensions Authority, and won back the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme . Trevor’s goal when taking on the appointment was to improve the reputation of GAD, which he felt would also have a knock-on benefit of improving the reputation of actuaries more generally. GAD and the profession more widely had a reputation that had been badly tarnished in the wake of Equitable Life. The confidence of his civil service colleagues had to be renewed. Trevor wanted to be seen as the government actuary not just the government’s pensions actuary. During his time in office he had been working on non-pensions issues, such as risk management, looking at informing government on flood risk, or the risks associated with nuclear decommissioning. Another area of sensitivity is that

“Unless more realism comes into our pricing then the market will allow others to take more of our space” 18

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of litigation risk in the National Health Service (NHS), where GAD recently won a competitive tender to work for the NHS Litigation Authority. Trevor’s time overlapped almost precisely with the global financial crisis, also giving him the chance to provide actuarial assistance on the loss reserving and valuations of ‘toxic assets’ held by the Asset Protection Agency. There is real opportunity for growth in the use of actuarial skills, he believes, but he cautions that some of these opportunities are also for mathematicians more generally. His own contribution to creating that prospect is built around his intention to devote time now in pursuit of the understanding of strategic risk, of which we should hear more over the coming year. We finish our discussion on the future of the profession, where he lays down four challenges. ● Increase our diversity by encouraging quality mathematicians to join our profession. He is of the view that there could be a parallel process to qualify as a Fellow as a high-quality mathematician. He also believes that the later exam subjects – which could be linked to enhanced Practising Certificates instead – can be a barrier to the people we want to bring into the fold. ● Overhaul the concept of the profession as a learned society by focusing on better quality research and its promulgation. ● Support the Financial Reporting Council in a principles-based approach to the Actuaries Code. ● Collaboration with other bodies, including the mathematical societies. Trevor is himself engaged in work with five learned mathematical societies to find ways in which they can work together in the interest of society’s use of mathematics as a whole. With the London Mathematical Society’s 150th anniversary coming up, he sees this as an opportunity for the societies to do more. There is the sense that Trevor is not going to put down his pen so easily. He is excited about his work on strategic risk and the mathematical societies, but he is also contemplating some non-executive roles that can make use of his skills. Is Trevor now optimistic for the profession? Not entirely – he is concerned that one unaddressed issue is that actuaries are overpaid for non-reserved role work relative to other equally good mathematical modellers, of whom there are many today. Unless more realism comes into our pricing then the market will allow others to take more of our space. A focus on more diverse membership is, he believes, the way to drive up quality and professionalism throughout industry and commerce, while equalising that price. We look forward to hearing about the next phase of Trevor’s career – and seeing how his predictions work out. a Peter Tompkins is a former colleague of Trevor’s and chairs The Actuary’s Editorial Advisory Panel

MANUEL VASQUEZ

27/10/2014 15:52

Appointments

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Life Careers features@theactuary.com

Key skills for

Life In 20 years, the roles of life actuaries have altered vastly, reflecting changes in regulations, technical methods and the life insurance market itself. Chris O’Brien and David Hughes outline the investigation by the IFoA working party to ask what the future holds Anyone qualifying as an actuary today and entering the life insurance industry is likely to encounter a whole different set of career opportunities and challenges compared with their counterparts 20 years ago. Using a combination of analysis of senior roles in life offices, a questionnaire and interviews with senior personnel, the working party has recently completed a review of the changing environment for life actuaries. How are skills requirements evolving as a result? Is the seat on the executive board still within reach? And what effect has the emergence of broader risk functions had on wider actuarial involvement in

Figure 1: Relative importance of key skills for the actuarial function holder role Analytical Critical thinking Written communication Leadership Strategic thinking Verbal communication Decision-making People motivation Willingness to take on responsibility Presentation Learning Negotiation 0

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0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.2

SHUTTERSTOCK

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CHRIS O’BRIEN (left) is a senior associate at the Centre for Risk, Banking and Financial Services, Nottingham University Business School. DAVID HUGHES (right) is a senior ﬁnancial risk manager at Phoenix Group

running life insurance businesses? The data analysis examined all life oﬃces writing long-term insurance business at end-2012. The survey was sent to the actuarial function holder (AFH) in each life oﬃce (or another senior actuary where the AFH was appointed externally) and we carried out 11 interviews, including some non-actuaries.

Necessary skills The evidence from the questionnaire survey is that analytical, critical and strategic thinking skills are regarded as highly important for actuaries (see Figure 1). But there was also widespread agreement among interviewees that actuaries have developed new technical skills in areas including financial economics, stochastic modelling and financial projections. Written and verbal communication are also rated as particularly important skills, with interviewees commenting on the importance of communication in providing technical support for business concerns. Leadership skills are naturally a requirement for senior roles, though the difference between management and leadership skills needs to be clearly understood. Actuaries’ contributions extend beyond the actuarial function. The questionnaire results showed that, in the majority of life offices’ finance and risk functions, actuaries have a significant representation. They also play a part in other functions, and making a contribution in several areas is consistent with a reputation for having a good understanding of the industry, demonstrating that their financial skills can be employed in a number of applications. It does appear, as a number of interviewees commented, that at a senior level actuaries are perceived as more siloed, with an increased

Figure 2: Mean composition of life company boards 7

Non-executive director, non-actuary

Executive director, non-actuary

Non-executive director, actuary

Executive director, actuary

1 0 1990

2013

focus on quantitative skills at the expense of business and management skills. But analysis of senior roles shows that 23% of life company chief executives are actuaries, implying that some actuaries have been capable of acquiring both technical and general management skills.

Seniority of actuaries The importance of actuaries for the management of life offices is clear – many are directors and the regulator has specified roles that are reserved for actuaries. Our questionnaire respondents spend most of their time with their senior management group, again indicating the importance of actuaries’ contribution. And non-actuary interviewees were complimentary: for example, asked if actuaries provided support in making financial sense of the future, one said, “Absolutely yes, vital within life offices”. However, actuaries are now less commonly found as executive directors. Comparing the 93 life companies in 2013 with a sample from 1990, we found that the representation of actuaries on the board has increased slightly. However, this hides an important change. The number of executive actuaries on the board has reduced and actuaries as non-executives has increased (see Figure 2). This may reflect the way in which, in the past, actuaries were often found in positions such as head of marketing, IT or customer services, whereas such functions are now headed by their own specialists. One further finding that is worthy of note is the limited number of actuaries working as chief financial officers (CFOs). Several interviewees suggested this role was more suited to generalists, a view corroborated by a CFO actuary who indicated that for those wishing to develop into the area it was beneficial to initiate such a move early in one’s career. More positively, several interviewees commented that actuaries had an important role to play in risk management, a sentiment reflected in the survey with 15 of 23 life office chief risk officers (CROs) who are actuaries.

Actuaries in reserved roles We found that around 30% of AFHs and with-profits actuaries are consultants, which is higher than the 20% figure of appointed actuaries who were consultants in around 1990. It may be that independence is more highly valued than it was. Excluding AFHs who are external appointments, the 13% of internal AFHs who are directors is much lower than the 47% of appointed actuaries who were directors in 1992: this may help AFHs from appearing conflicted.

Looking ahead So what do these findings mean for the future roles of actuaries in life insurance companies? The Working Party has put forward four areas where it sees increased opportunities. ● Risk management – actuaries already play an important part here, however the risk function is likely to develop much further under the impetus of Solvency II. There is also a need to develop the skills to operate in roles that go beyond risk measurement. The CRO in particular is in a general management role and actuaries are well equipped to continue the development of risk functions as the roles go beyond risk measurement to meet the requirements of multiple stakeholders. ● Financial analysis and management under Solvency II and International Financial Reporting Standards – actuaries are helping to establish these new regimes. They are also well placed to help life offices analyse, understand and communicate the results given their good understanding of the business, which one non-actuary interviewee said was a strength of actuaries. Two CFO non-actuaries commented that accountants may not fully appreciate the drivers of business, while actuaries are strong on intellect and knowledge of the industry. ● “Big data” – some life offices are experimenting with the myriad of data sources available, particularly in pricing, but it is not yet ‘business as usual’. There are issues such as understanding, collecting and structuring the new sources of data and recognising ‘behavioural’ issues, with which actuaries are less familiar. Although there will be competition from other professionals, actuaries can expect opportunities from applying their skills here. ● Product development – some interviewees felt this was a topical area where actuaries could add value. With knowledge of the industry (and lessons learned from past mis-selling), and understanding the financial drivers of the business, the Working Party felt this was an area in which actuaries could increase their impact in the future. Based on its findings, the working party believes that the outlook for those who accept the challenges and opportunities will be fulfilling and rewarding. Such achievements, as noted by many actuaries interviewed, are likely to come from actuaries’ own personal motivation and skills: beyond the professional qualification, it is an actuary’s personal responsibility to develop his or her career. a Working party: Chris O’Brien (chair), David Hughes, Gerry Gallagher, Rob Green, Fulin Liang, Scott Robinson, Paul Simmons and Annie Tay

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

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Life Longevity features@theactuary.com

‘I’m not

yet’ Emma McWilliam and Richard Purcell urge individuals to look on the bright side of death to overcome hurdles and personalise their life expectancies When five comedians in their 70s can fill the O2, a clear but subtle message is given amidst the comedy – it’s positive to be old and even though they are “one down, five to go”, the remaining group is still living life to the full. And perhaps the longevity of Monty Python and their unique style of comedy can provide some inspiration when it comes to the topic of life expectancy. Communicating longevity can be as complex or simple as you make it. Certainly Monty Python’s line “I’m not dead yet” is an effective way. But no one wants to think about his or her own death and this makes engaging on life expectancies a challenge. With financial responsibility gradually shifting to individuals, against a backdrop of fewer financial advisers, life expectancy is something we all need to get to grips with –

Perception versus reality

whether for ﬁnancially protecting family or planning for retirement. Actuaries have a key role to play in working out how to communicate life expectancy to the wider population. So we should try to bring longevity to the fore.

Perception is another hurdle to overcome. A recent ‘Reality Cheque’ survey conducted by Hymans Robertson showed that individuals underestimate life expectancy at retirement by some five to eight years on average (Figure 2, right). This is possibly a function of personal anchor points, the inability to conceptualise living in old age, and the media reporting ‘period’ rather than ‘cohort’ life expectancies (the former not allowing for future mortality improvements). As expected, the perception gap has been shown to close as individuals consider life expectancy at older ages. This requires us to take different approaches for different age groups.

Flaw of averages It won’t be a surprise that very few individuals die exactly in line with their own expected lifespan. And life expectancy cannot be viewed as static as it creeps up the longer one lives. Not only should individuals understand the full range of possibilities, but also reassess their projected life expectancies at regular intervals. It helps to visualise the possibilities for long life, as illustrated for healthy, wealthy males and females in Figure 1 (below).

Anchoring and framing Personal anchor points may play a useful role when it comes to thinking about and shifting the

Figure 1: Age at death for 100 men and 100 women retiring at 65

101

103

105

107

109

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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EMMA MCWILLIAM (left) is a senior insurance

consultant at Hymans Robertson and editor of Longevity Risk, published by RiskBooks RICHARD PURCELL is head of technical marketing at PruProtect with Vitality

Figure 2: Perception gap: average underestimation of life expectancy as exercise, alcohol intake and smoking. ● Career: showing life expectancy relative to

retirement age and state retirement age. ● Where you live: showing regional or

club vita estimation vs perception

5years .2

7years .8

boundaries of an individual’s perception. For example, ‘What is the oldest age you have known someone to live to?’ may prove more insightful than ‘What age did your grandparents live to?’. Framing questions in terms of when people will ‘live to’ rather than ‘die by’ can also give a nudge towards a more realistic estimate. Indeed, Columbia Business School research has shown that people predicted life expectancies around seven to nine years higher when questioned in the ‘live-to’ category. Also, positively envisaging living in retirement seems to open up thinking to outcomes around living longer. Yet, while such questions help the shift towards a more realistic range of outcomes, longevity is still potentially underestimated, as lifespan increases over time.

positively encouraged to save more, work longer or plan for a more austere retirement.

Ranges and risk appetite We should help people understand the full range of likely outcomes. For example, a ‘90% probability you will live to be between age 70 and 90’ or ‘10% chance you will outlive your savings’, may help the individual to conceptualise possible retirement outcomes. Understanding an individual’s or a couple’s appetite for risk is then the next step to deciding how much they need to save and which retirement products to choose. For example, to be 100% certain not to outlive wealth, a form of annuity may be appropriate, whereas a higherrisk appetite may indicate income drawdown.

The ‘meaning of life’ ‘Nudge nudge’ Could taking a diﬀerent approach to presenting lifespan help encourage better decisions? We could present an individual’s ‘implied age’ based on their own lifestyle factors. This approach is used by a number of insurers around the world that use the Vitality programme to promote and reward healthier living. So, an individual who does not undertake enough exercise may have an implied age of 33 when they are actually only 30 years of age. This shows the impact of lifestyle on longevity at an individual level. In a similar way to the TV programme 10 Years Younger, this approach gives people the impetus to change their lifestyle for the better. Similarly, we could encourage people to adapt their plans for retirement by showing them the potential risks that exist. If someone can see that their funds will run out by the time they are 78, but their life expectancy is 85, they may be

The common ‘currency’ for discussing life expectancy and potential ranges should be one that is well understood by the audience. Communicating to boards and investors on longevity can come to life when presented in terms of, say, the financial impact on capital and embedded value. However, just as boards do not plan in terms of becoming insolvent, neither do individuals want to think in terms of their own death. So, try another entry point… in terms of ‘the meaning of life’. Surveys of the most important things in life invariably rank family, health, career, where you live and money among the top five. Engagement is likely to be higher if the life currency is in terms of say: ● Family: showing life expectancies in terms of the expected number of birthdays, or other important family events such as future holidays. ● Health and lifestyle: showing how life expectancy is affected by lifestyle factors such

postcode-based life expectancies to give a more meaningful benchmark than national averages. In personalising life expectancies and making them relevant in the context of ﬁnancial planning, you have to make sure it does not turn into ‘the Spanish inquisition’ sketch. A simple and rewarding process of engagement that entices individuals to disclose further information to better reﬁne life expectancy estimations is the best outcome for all. Indeed, the risks are minimised and rewards are highest for individuals who can grasp longevity in terms of everyday activities, such as buying a lottery ticket. For example, the odds of an average 65 year old living to 100 are higher than the odds of getting three numbers on a single UK lottery ticket! It is only at this stage that individuals are able to envisage their life in retirement and push the limits of planning to think positively about future life milestones.

And now for something completely different... In the world of Monty Python, they looked at “how to build certain interesting things”. In the world of pensions, Steve Webb, the minister of state for pensions, has committed to delivering a guarantee of guidance to fulfil our retirement needs, with longevity considerations being a core element. The challenge will be building interesting and engaging ways to communicate longevity to the masses in a personalised way. Infographic dashboards – picture-based communications – on life expectancy are some of the most fun ways to receive this information. Such methods are emerging in the UK but are common practice for some providers in other parts of the world, such as in the US and Australia. In our view, the most successful communications are likely to be those that are tangible and relevant, encourage conceptualisation of the range of possible outcomes and look on the more positive side of life. These three ingredients will enable and actively encourage individuals to make informed decisions and take ownership around planning for protection and retirement needs. So, for the benefit of all generations, we call upon actuaries to play their role centre stage to help communicate life expectancies. And just like “five to go”, the motto “always look on the bright side of life” will benefit everyone. a

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY 23 www.theactuary.com

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ICRFS-ELRF™ A.M. Best Schedule P 2013 Insureware’s ICRFS-ELRF™software is now available from A.M. Best pre-loaded with Best’s Schedule P data. The combination of A.M. Best data with the specialized software from Insureware adds value by facilitating effortless access to information in a structured database and providing statistical tools for performing loss reserve analysis at various levels of segmentation.

ICRFS-ELRF™ A.M. Best Schedule P 2013 delivers Structured access to A.M. Best Schedule P data - Gross and Net • Fast offline access to Schedule P long-tail liability lines and derived financial metrics, including individual companies and industry groupings • Critical financial information (pre-calculated for each triangle group on Net data) at your fingertips including: o Reserves Held; o %IBNR; o Total Loss Ratio; and o Survival Ratio. • Sort companies by any metric or combination of metrics • Create classification variables as needed • Net and Gross data are provided in triangle format (along with any premium/exposure vectors) • Analyse companies singly or jointly • Calculate any aggregation of companies • All available Schedule P triangles including: o Paid losses; Select any subcategories o Case Reserve Estimates; IBNR) o Incurred Losses (not including BULK and IBNR); o Bulk and IBNR; o Number of Claims Reported; and o Number of Claims Closed. • Additional triangles (where they can be calculated): o Reserves Held (CRE + BULK and IBNR); and o Ultimates Held (Incurred Losses including BULK and IBNR).

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Analytical tools including the Mack method and the bootstrap technique Two modeling frameworks are included: the Extended Link Ratio Family (ELRF) and Link Ratio Techniques (LRT). The ELRF module formulates link ratio methods as regression estimators and extends them. • Methods include: o Mack (regression formulation of volume weighted average, chain ladder); o Exclusion of whole periods or individual points from estimations; o Murphy; o Bornhuetter-Ferguson; and o Much more! Within an interactive, intuitive, graphical interface. • Comprehensive diagnostic tests to validate that assumptions made by link ratio and related methods are carried by the data - including the bootstrap technique.

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The ICRFS-ELRF™ A.M. Best Schedule P 2013 application is available to all BestLink subscribers at no additional charge beyond the cost of purchasing the loss reserve data from A.M. Best. The pre-loaded data includes both Net (20x10 and 10x10) and Gross (10x10) arrays. For more information on Best’s Schedule P please contact A.M. Best. A.M. Best Company, Inc. sales@ambest.com +1 908-439-2200 Extension: 5311

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Careers Non-executive directorship features@theactuary.com

In the second of our series of articles on the role of an actuary as a non-executive director, Colin Czapiewski looks at ﬁnancial crime and highlights the issues of which to be aware

ON BOARD WITH FRAUD When I started out as an actuary many years ago, we were just beginning to use computers as part of our daily routine. We also had to be aware of some aspects of regulation, although not to the extent we do today. Regulation is now of immense importance, with an increasing need to be aware of factors that affect the financial industry and our role within it. Such regulation may be specific to a particular task, and hence usually to a specific individual or group operating in an area of the business. However, increasingly it is far more generalised, in the form of an holistic approach to the governance of a firm. The responsibility to comply with regulation falls on the board of directors. Boards of financial companies, particularly

insurance companies, often retain an actuary, and, these days, non-executive directors (NEDs) are also held to account for the actions of their management team, so a lack of knowledge is not accepted as an excuse. As well as general governance of the various aspects of the running of a company, there are also speciﬁc responsibilities related to wider regulatory areas. Particular attention must be paid to those that used to fall under the Financial Services Authority (FSA) but are now the responsibility of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the UK. ‘Financial crime’ falls within this wide range of activities of which we need to be fully aware. Fraud, bribery, corruption, money laundering,

international sanction busting and other forms of misconduct have increased to such an extent that they are having a significant impact on the global financial industry. Financial crime used to be prevalent in the banking and investment industries. However, following restrictions in those areas of business, insurance is now a more frequent target. Some activities are perpetrated on an individual level, for example through fraudulent claims, while others are at a corporate level through money laundering and Ponzi schemes. This targeting of the insurance industry is leaving actuaries increasingly exposed. Regulatory authorities are fully aware of the increasing cost of financial crime. To date, they have clearly placed the responsibility onto the

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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“Diligent members of the board should be able to identify fraud through their detailed understanding of the activities of management” Not only is financial crime committed from outside companies, but all too often there are examples given where companies have internally committed fraud to deceive those investing. It is worth considering the various aspects of financial crime, particularly through the eyes of an actuary as an NED of an insurance company. Such events are rare, so easy to overlook. However, financial crime can be very costly.

Fraud Sometimes fraud may involve the executive management of a company. This could be performed explicitly through deliberate under-reserving of technical provisions, the exclusion of some claim payment amounts, or a similar understatement of liabilities. Alternatively, this might be performed by selecting a low value for the claims incurred but not reported (IBNR) amount. Some forms of insurance lend themselves to this more than others. The insight of NEDs is enhanced by external auditors performing their statutory role, and supplemented by the internal auditors performing their rolling internal audit plan, which would have been accepted and then authorised by the board. Diligent members of the board should be able to identify some fraud through their detailed understanding of the activities of management, their direct relationship with the internal and external auditors, and their role in challenging management. More importantly, NEDs are responsible for the controls in place to identify and resist such fraud, putting appropriate measures in place. boards of companies. With actuaries more involved in executive and non-executive roles, we need to be aware of what to look out for, and how to deal with the problems. The split of the FSA into the FCA and the PRA in the UK seems to have accelerated the pressure on boards from a regulatory perspective. Lloyd’s of London has encouraged those running managing agencies to be more alert to ﬁnancial crime. Awareness has grown but there is still a long way to go. In insurance markets worldwide, following the regulation introduced into other parts of the ﬁnancial industry, the large amounts involved encourage misconduct and there are extraordinary means whereby deception and fraud are perpetrated.

CORBIS

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International sanctions When a country takes actions that are not ratiﬁed by other countries – either internal or external actions – some countries may decide to invoke sanctions. These may take the form of restrictions on imports and exports, for example. Insurance is often used as a means to deprive the country of the ability to trade or perform, and as an incentive to reform. Of course, one country may enforce such sanctions and others may not. It is relatively easy for the board members to be aware of such measures, and they need to ensure that the activities of the company are compliant. They also need to rely on executive management to perform the necessary tasks, albeit assisted by both internal and external auditors in their roles.

Bribery and corruption In some parts of the world, bribery and corruption are almost a way of life. Yet in many countries a dim view is taken of such activities, and they are criminal oﬀences. Bribery and corruption can be disguised in many ways, such as enhanced commissions, prices charged that are out of line with third party payments, as well as the passing of funds for special services rendered. Most of these actions do not come to light, but NEDs have the responsibility to ensure appropriate controls are in place.

Money laundering Criminal funds can be difficult to pass through into an honest business environment. In the past, property purchase and sale was an obvious way to ‘clean’ funds. However, with the banking reforms, international exchange of information, and other regulatory national and international agreements, it is becoming very difficult for such activities to continue. Rather than finding new methods within the more heavily regulated traditional areas, the insurance and reinsurance sectors can allow for potential opportunities to launder funds. As many such policies are for relatively small sums assured and premiums, the aim is to use a larger number of small policies, and fewer large policies. This is a real test of the controls in place. Considerable guidance has been provided to insurers by the supervisory authorities in order that they can identify such money laundering activities. Our actuarial training does not provide us with the knowledge and skills to perform all roles as an NED. Experience, broad reading and other forms of self-education are key to performing this role to a high standard. However, the experienced actuary often has the appropriate background and mindset to ask the correct questions and determine what action to take in certain circumstances. a

COLIN CZAPIEWSKI

is an independent actuarial, insurance and risk management consultant

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

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Modelling Bias features@theactuary.com

TOP 10

FORECASTING FALLACIES

Whether they realise it or not, most actuaries are at risk of some form of bias in their modelling work. Michael Ortmann explores the most common pitfalls impartial modelling. What happens if the company is not able to aﬀord the solvency capital that the risk actuary deems necessary? Not surprisingly, the dangers for the profession invoked by authority bias are part of the IFoA’s professionalism courses.

“You have been biased!” − what an unpleasant rebuke for an actuary. Yet, this characterisation may not be too far-fetched. Exhibiting some form of bias is all too human, but hardly any quantitative analyst would admit to it. Risk analysis and risk modelling have become a core competence of actuaries. In particular, actuaries make numerous predictions about the future with respect to pensioners’ longevity, mortality and morbidity incidence rates and solvency capital requirements to name but a few. On the other hand, the traps an actuary can easily fall into give rise to particular concern.

Inc e n t i ve s

It is unheard of for any capital actuary to have been ﬁred for inaccurate projections of the future. In general, there is no reward – and no reprimand either – for forecasts duly conducted, unless there is gross negligence at work. On the contrary, remuneration and bonuses are based on enhancing the risk framework by building

8 internal Solvency II models, applying state-of-the-art statistical techniques and encompassing ever more risks. In other words, eﬀort matters. The incentive bias refers to the misalignment of incentives and desired outcomes.

Who’s in charge?

Problems can arise if the actuary has a superior who asserts undue pressure and influence over the actuary’s work. Sadly, unquestioning acceptance of authority implies fatally simplified thinking. This bias refers to being overly submissive to authority so it affects the actuary’s

Tellin g st ories

Whatever the outcome of a forecast, the actuary’s superiors need a story to buy into it. A convincing story that explains projected results and renders them plausible is vital. In fact, it is often seen by some as more important than the forecast itself. The actuary puts results into a commercial context. The story bias refers to the tendency to be more easily convinced by a narrative than numbers. In an extreme scenario, management may buy into a capital requirement ﬁgure that is not robust, simply because there is a convincing story to support it.

projected results against previous forecasts and market benchmarks. The anchor bias postulates that we always relate new results to past established results. In fact, an actuary has to come up with a good reason to overwrite anything key stakeholders have bought into previously. As a consequence, past mistakes that have nested are very diﬃcult to correct.

D oe s the answe r look r ight?

Undoubtedly, for any stochastic forecast for example, there is an abundance of parameters that the actuary in

Anchoring to the past A seasoned Solvency II actuary carefully weighs up

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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DR MICHAEL ORTMANN

is professor of mathematics at Beuth University Berlin

charge needs to set carefully. Most practical actuaries would concur that modelling is a mix of art and science. Quite often, in a process of tinkering and twiddling with the assumptions, the actuary arrives at a projection that looks reasonable. This tendency is called outcome bias. Thus, the actuary risks judging a model on the basis of its results. Not surprisingly, the best guess as well as likely outcomes will comply with mainstream forecasts.

W here’s my d a t a?

When data is scarce, capital model actuaries risk making incorrect assumptions with reference to the applicability of the normal distribution, stochastic independence, correlation matrices, the Black-Scholes formula, and so on. Likewise, actuaries tend to use data that is readily available in order to evaluate certain risks where data is scarce, such as operational risk, for instance. As a consequence, results have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Any insights gained from such a model exhibit the availability bias.

Lo t s o f e ffor t , mu s t b e r i g h t !

Actuarial models are becoming ever more sophisticated. The complexity bias refers to the tendency to overly appreciate the labour that has gone into a forecast model. Most tend to believe less in simple plausibility calculations than in complex computations that have required a good deal of mental eﬀort, such as internal models for Solvency II. Interestingly, some academic research has revealed that during an acute crisis, ﬁnancial markets behave like a single factor model, as all assets become co-monotonic. Stress scenario models do not necessarily need to be complex per se.

BRETT RYDER

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But the model’s been back-tested!

W i th h i n dsigh t …

Comprehensive mortality forecasting, in particular, entails a number of different back-testing exercises. These tests have in common that model parameters are calibrated in order to forecast the past based on previous experience. If the model works fine for a number of such ex-post evaluations, we deduce by induction that it will always work. Such reasoning is called induction bias. There is, however, no underlying law of cause and effect in actuarial science as there is in natural science. A forecast based on induction can only work if things stay as they are. The implied stationarity of the model has an innocuous but vital consequence – a stationary model tends towards its equilibrium and will always predict this stable equilibrium.

The most well-known forecasting pitfall relates to hindsight bias. Actuaries analyse and model historic data with a view to forecasting the future. A fundamental assumption is that past experience is a reliable basis for predicting future experience. But there is inherent uncertainty in so doing, since the future may be affected by events that have never before been witnessed, such as the financial crisis that unfolded in 2007. In retrospect, its development over the following years is compelling and logical. There is a heap of experts who can fully explain the whole story from beginning to end – with the benefit of hindsight. However, at no point in time did anybody correctly forecast the subsequent course of global economics. Thus, it must be a misperception to feel knowledgeable about what has gone on. Such an error in reasoning makes us believe that we are better at projecting the future than we actually are.

I’ ll t ake t h is dat aset , ple ase

The most important drawback of all is called confirmation bias. This phenomenon refers to the tendency to actively select and overemphasise evidence that supports the aspired results. Likewise, the actuary may ignore and under-emphasise any data that point to the contrary. To be more specific, a reasonable Solvency II actuary usually tries to render a capital forecast plausible by arriving at about the same figure in different ways. By so doing, the actuary actively searches for confirming evidence. On the other hand, an actuary does not usually take the trouble to falsify a satisfactory modelling outcome. As such, there is a risk of disconfirming evidence being discarded.

Know your unconscious! In a nutshell, a bias inveigles an actuary into favouring a particular forecast over any alternative projected result. The model outcome may be no more than a common sense conclusion. Erroneous beliefs in a seemingly objective model may seriously aﬀect an actuary’s impartial judgement. Unconscious attitudes play an important role in this respect. Implicit fallacies may result in overconﬁdence and selfdelusion. Therefore, it is crucially important to be aware of potential errors in reasoning. a

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY 29 www.theactuary.com

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Risk Mortality features@theactuary.com

Risks of mis-estimating

mortality As actuaries we often have to derive mortality bases from portfolio experience data, but how certain are we of the results? Stephen Richards presents a method of quantifying this risk have to decide on a basis for current mortality rates. Furthermore, both parties want to understand the mis-estimation risk surrounding the basis, and thus the potential financial impact. The scheme has n = 14,802 living pensioners and also has 2,265 records for past deaths observed over the period 2007–2012. The two parties have slightly different rationales in wanting to understand the mis-estimation risk. The scheme wants to know the financial impact to judge if it is worth paying the insurer’s premium to remove the risk. In contrast, the insurer wants to know if its pricing margin covers the risk of mis-estimation based on the scheme’s recent experience. In particular, the insurer (or reinsurer) Table 1 Parameter estimates for minimally acceptable financial model will have to hold regulatory Parameter Estimate Standard Significance capital for mis-estimation error risk if the longevity swap is agreed. 0.148 0.005 *** Age ( )

Actuaries commonly derive mortality bases from portfolio experience data for valuation and risk quantiﬁcation purposes. However, this is also required for pricing block transfers, such as longevity swaps, reinsurance treaties and bulk annuities. In each case it is useful to know two things: (i) what uncertainty surrounds the mortality basis, and (ii) what ﬁnancial impact this uncertainty has. Both of these questions come under the heading of mis-estimation risk. As an example, a UK pension scheme is considering a longevity swap. The scheme and insurer have agreed a basis for future mortality improvements, but both parties

Gender.M ( male ) Intercept (

)

0.479

0.060

***

-14.731

0.491

***

Makeham ( )

-5.420

0.154

***

Mid-size pension ( Mid-size pension )

-0.180

0.078

Large pension ( Large pension )

-0.313

0.108

Time ( )

-0.046

0.016

Modelling current mortality There are many ways to analyse mortality, but one of the better approaches is to use survival models for individual lives. This involves a parametric model for the force of mortality, which makes the

best use of all available information. The model ﬁtted here is the time-varying version of the Makeham-Perks law:

where is the force of mortality at age and calendar time . The oﬀset of -2000 to the calendar time keeps the other parameters well-scaled. Parameters , , and are estimated by the method of maximum likelihood. At a very simple level we can allow for the fact that not all individuals are identical by giving each person their own personal value of , , deﬁned as follows:

where, for example, male is the change in mortality from being male and male is an indicator variable taking the value 1 when life is male and 0 otherwise. The other parameters and indicator variables are deﬁned similarly. The model is ﬁtted to the scheme’s data and the resulting parameter estimates are shown in Table 1 (left).

Source: Richards 2014 (Parameter signiﬁcance is labelled as *for 5%, ** for 1% and *** for 0.1%)

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

p30_32_nov_mortality•SEMIFINAL•CT.indd 30

OLIVIER BURSTON / IKON

27/10/2014 16:00

“There are many ways to analyse mortality, but one of the better approaches is to use survival models for individual lives. This involves a parametric model for the force of mortality, which makes the best use of information”

p30_32_nov_mortality•SEMIFINAL•CT.indd 31

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Risk Mortality features@theactuary.com

Table 2 Parameter estimates for minimally acceptable model for ﬁnancial purposes Gender M

Intercept

Makeham

Mid-size pension

Large pension

Parameter

Age

Age ( )

100%

Gender.M ( male )

23%

100%

Intercept ( 0)

-94%

-26%

100%

Makeham ( )

72%

17%

-70%

100%

Mid-size pension ( Mid-size pension )

-7%

-17%

-5%

-10%

100%

Large pension ( Large pension )

-2%

-19%

-2%

13%

100%

Time ( )

-2%

-32%

-1%

Time

Results 100%

Source: Richards 2014. (Note: Each parameter is perfectly correlated with itself, hence leading diagonal is composed of 100% values. The table is symmetric about the leading diagonal, so only the lower left values are shown.)

Correlations and concentration of risk The parameter estimates in Table 1 are shown with their standard errors. In a sense these standard errors are the beginning of understanding mis-estimation, as they tell us the degree of confidence we can have in each parameter estimate. For example, the estimate of the age parameter is 0.148 and an approximate 95% confidence interval for the true underlying value is (0.138, 0.158). At a superficial level, therefore, one might think that the standard errors are all we would need to assess mis-estimation. However, with all statistical models there are usually correlations between the parameters. Some of these correlations can be quite material, as shown in Table 2 (above), and they must be taken into account when assessing mis-estimation risk. The other aspect of mis-estimation risk is that it doesn’t affect all lives equally, and that

not all lives are of equal ﬁnancial impact. For example, the large-pension cases account for the top 10% of lives, but they account for 39.8% of the total scheme pension. Table 1 shows that such cases have markedly lower mortality, but the standard error shows that there is relatively greater uncertainty over just how much lower. Furthermore, Table 2 shows that there is a correlation of -19% between the parameters for large pension cases and males, so it is not suﬃcient to stress any one parameter in isolation.

Quantifying the risk

Log mortality

If parameters are correlated to varying degrees, how can we perform a mis-estimation assessment? We cannot simply stress each parameter by a multiple of its standard error, as this ignores correlations. This is illustrated in Figure 1 (below) for a simple Gompertz model with . If we stress the value of downwards, the best estimate of Figure 1 Log mortality with best-estimate fit (blue) and alternative fit increases, as shown by the with stressed intercept (grey) light grey line. Our solution is to use 1 the whole varianceObserved crude mortality hazard covariance matrix to 0 Fitted mortality hazard, optimal generate consistent Fitted mortality hazard with stressed intercept -1 alternative parameter groups. This not only -2 allows for the uncertainty over the parameters -3 themselves, but it also allows for their -4 correlations. There is also -5 the question of how to allow for the fact that -6 individual liabilities are 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 aﬀected to diﬀerent Age Source: Richards 2014 extents. Our solution is to

value the entire portfolio life-by-life with each alternative parameter set. We repeat this m times to generate a set, S, of alternative portfolio valuations. S describes the financial impact of parameter risk and parameter correlations, while allowing for all individual characteristics and concentrations of liability. The percentiles of S can be used to investigate the financial effect of misestimation risk, say by comparing the excess of a given percentile to the median.

For the pension scheme in question, we generated m =10,000 sets of alternative parameter values with the covariance matrix. In each case we valued the in-force liabilities with each parameter set. The 99.5th percentile of S was 3.97% higher than the median (the median of S was very close to the mean). This compares loosely to a typical insurer pricing margin of around 4%-5%. It is also possible to express mis-estimation results as a percentage of a standard table using the equivalent-annuity calculation. For this portfolio the equivalent best-estimate percentages of S2PA were 88.5% for males and 87.2% for females. Using the appropriate percentiles of S we can use the misestimation assessment to find a 95% confidence interval for these percentages. For males we get (78.7%, 99.5%) and for females we have (79.3%, 96.1%). The width of these intervals reflects the modest size of the scheme and the concentration of risk in a relatively small subset of lives. A larger portfolio would probably have a narrower confidence interval. There are many potential risk factors that affect a demographic risk like mortality and the effect of these risk factors can be estimated using a parametric statistical model. The parameters in such a model have both uncertainty around their estimates and correlations with each other. Using the variance-covariance matrix for the estimated parameters, the mis-estimation risk for a portfolio can be straightforwardly assessed using the portfolio’s own experience data. a

STEPHEN RICHARDS is a director of Longevitas, a specialist provider of software for actuaries working on mortality and longevity risk

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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27/10/2014 16:00

Qualiﬁcation Certiﬁed Actuarial Analyst features@theactuary.com

AFRICA CALLING Marjorie Ngwenya reports on the Lord Mayor of London’s trip to Africa, and the launch of the Certified Actuarial Analyst qualification Professional bodies and the private sector are well placed to assist. Our next stop was Kampala. Uganda is highly progressive and equally under-marketed. The proportion of the population financially excluded halved between 2009 and 2013, thanks to mobile money technology. The lack of professional skills holds back economic development, and the government has embarked on a financial inclusion and education programme. I met the president of the local actuarial society, who described the challenges of trying to qualify as an actuary without the support structures available in larger economies. Uganda is introducing a risk-based supervisory regime as part of harmonising insurance regulation within the East African Community. As part of this framework, each insurance firm is required to have an ‘actuary’. Qualified actuaries are in short supply in East Africa and come at a high cost, so the CAA would provide affordable actuarial skills. We then travelled to Dar Es Salaam. Tanzania has been fortunate to experience 50 years of stability, and the national elections in 2015 are awaited with bated breath. Unemployment is high, although the country has experienced an

457 Students 2 Associates 12 Fellows

21 Stude Students 0 Assoc Associates 0 Fellow Fellows

Tanzania Tanzania

Uganda

Figure 1 IFoA membership statistics – September 2014

Kenya

During September 2014, the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Fiona Woolf, CBE (pictured right), led a delegation to South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Her mission was to promote trade and relationships between them and the UK. I was part of the business delegation as a council member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA). The aim was to further the IFoA’s strategic objective to promote the actuarial profession in English-speaking Africa and to spread the word about the IFoA’s new Certified Actuarial Analyst (CAA) qualification. The growth outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is robust and increasingly broad-based with an expectation of 5%-6% pa growth over the next five years or so. Policies and institutions have improved, supporting growth. Some of these countries are attracting significant foreign direct investment – the UK is an important trading partner in those we visited. Challenges in the various economies include: inadequate access to finance, corruption, poor infrastructure, low education, high inflation, political instability and unfavourable tax regulations. I learnt that two-thirds of the SSA population is without electricity – a real stumbling block for growth. The Lord Mayor – a lawyer by training – is no stranger to the need for the advancement of education in developing economies. She was complimentary about the CAA’s applicability ility in building foundational professional skills. We began our journey in Cape Town. South Africa’s government has designed a medium-term strategic framework for the e next five years. One primary objective of this plan is to build a skilled and capable workforce to support inclusive growth. The poor quality of education available to many students limits economic mic progress. The plan focuses on primary and nd secondary education as important cornerstones. It also highlights the importance rtance of higher education and the production of skills required by the economy. The government is looking to form partnerships with industry to build these e skills.

114 4 SStudents 0 AAssociates 0 Fe Fellows

average GDP growth of 7% each year in the past decade, and this looks set to continue. Tanzania is aiming to become a middleincome country by 2025. Transport and infrastructure top government priorities, and there is a need for enhanced social services in education and health. Here, as in Uganda, the profession is young, and the proposition offered by the CAA is valuable in a context of high economic growth. Our final stop was in Nairobi, where security threats and crime remain a challenge. Kenya’s GDP growth lags behind its neighbours’ at 4.6% a year. However, in terms of human capital, Kenya ranks higher than its East African peers. There is also greater access to financial services and the M-pesa success story will be familiar. Throughout the intense and varied itinerary, networking opportunities abounded. Among those who encountered the group on its voyage were the UK prime minister’s envoys to South Africa and East Africa, representatives from the City of London, local regulators, ministers, businesspeople and fellow professionals. My personal highlight of the visit was attending Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Children of the Light premier in Cape Town and enjoying an opportunity to meet the great man. a The Certified Actuarial Analyst (CAA) T qualification is the first globally recognised q membership qualification at the technical level m for those working in actuarial support roles fo and the broader financial services sector. For a more information, visit: bit.ly/1vzAL9f m

MARJORIE NGWENYA M

i chief risk oﬃcer at is O Mutual Africa, Old b based in Johannesburg.

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

p33_nov_spotlight•SEMIFINAL•CT.indd 33

27/10/2014 16:32

At the back Coﬀee break

Nylﬁa is an actuary who solves and sets cryptic crosswords created especially for The Actuary

puzzles@theactuary.com

Puzzles

— RD SWO CROS IZE PR E PUZZL

For a chance to win a £25 Amazon voucher, please email your crossword solution to: puzzles@theactuary.com by Wednesday 19 November

—

THE COLLABORATORS Connect 4, or 5, or 6... 1

Across 9

Friend came back on account with wedding words – solvent (but radical) (9) 10 Soft item, potentially upright (5) 11 Amount of light in asylum entrance (5) 12 Maths boor is unpleasant in small chambers (9) 13, 13dn Get aforesaid expression confused when connections made in steps (3,7,2,10) 15 Treaty fitted comfortably with the audience (4) 16, 7 Actor to beckon in vain for production (5,5) 17 Scotsman joins English on Official Staff (4) 20 Group wash following filthy Sunday with sailor (5,7) 22 Structure pitched across river and valley shows combining power (9) 23 Bar legally has stocks of ales to pick from (5) 25 Gas ball located over distinct area (5) 26 Stop half way along passage? (4,5)

Down 15

Take the next step… See our full advert on page 47

1,21 US paroled dejected itinerant mathematician (4,5) 2 State of chaos in short cones we mix (3,6) 3 Tip oﬀ smarter Prince (7) 4 Dairy product made by member, one pressurising by snappy comment? (9,6) 5 Never previously done if the terms for it reassessed (3,3,5,4) 6 Piaf caused dispute over queue (7) 7 See 16 8 Pimply state brought on by stupid person with tissue (10) 13 See 13ac 14 Spinner encountered a rut in Natal game (9) 18 Expert handling a chopper (7) 19 Romance enhancer, it’s said (7) 21 See 1 24 Long needle producer (4)

towerswatson.com/careers 01737 284919 charlotte.barton@towerswatson.com Copyright © 2014 Towers Watson. All rights reserved. TW-EU-2014-40673b. October 2014 Towers Watson is represented in the UK by Towers Watson Limited.

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27/10/2014 16:34

HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES? For information on IQ testing in your area, visit www.mensa.org.uk For a chance to win a £25 Amazon voucher, email your solution to puzzle 607 to: puzzles@theactuary.com by Wednesday 19 November

—

A MENSE PRIZ E PUZZL

Digital dilemma Mensa puzzle 607

—

What number should replace the question mark (above)? TERMS AND CONDITIONS The prize will be awarded for the ﬁrst correct entry drawn at random from those received before the closing date. The winner’s name will be announced in the next edition. Please note, the puzzle editor’s decision is ﬁnal and no correspondence will be entered into. We reserve the right to feature the winner’s name in The Actuary. Your details will not be passed to any third party in connection with this draw.

Point of the puzzle Mensa puzzle 608 Add a diﬀerent letter to each of the following words then rearrange each one to give another word. The four words are all types of the same product. What are they?

6 5 2 4 7 3 9 9 2 9

NOMAD PANE

CHASE PATEN

7 8 2 9 6 4 6 3 7 3 8 4 7 5 ?

Bridge puzzle 48 Promoted You are East. Dummy is North. Game All West leads Q♠, covered by K and your Ace wins. What is your best hope for defeating this contract? Bidding W N E S 1NT(1) P 2♥(2) 4♥ P P P (1) 12-14 (2) Transfer to spades

♠ K102 ♥3 ♦ K7542 ♣ AQ43

Grid locked? Mensa puzzle 609

What number should replace the question mark in the grid?

♠ AJ9543 ♥6 ♦ 963 ♣ 852

S Bridge puzzle provided by David Lampert

Level pegging it Mensa puzzle 610 Car A and Car B set off from the same point to travel the samee journey. jouuurney rney. y Car A has a start of six minutes before car B sets off ff. If Car A travels at 70km/h and Car B ttravels at 100km/h, how many k kilometres from the starting point will the two cars draw level?

SHUTTERSTOCK

p34_35_nov_crossword_puzzles.indd 35

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

27/10/2014 16:34

puzzles@theactuary.com

F M

N D O

N E

SOLUTIONS FOR OCTOBER 2014

R O

A D W A Y

P P

You are South and hold:

The bidding has been: (a) East West 1♠ 3♠ 4♠

(b) East 1♠ 2♦

♠ 862 ♥ KJ652 ♦ Q8 ♣ Q64 West 2♣ 4♠

In each case put these leads in order of preference: (i) A spade (ii) 5♥ (iii) Q♦ (iv) 4♣ (a): You have no clue about where the strength is in any of the side suite, so playing safe is the key. My order is: 1. A spade; 2. 5♥, Q♦ and 4♣. These are all dangerous leads and more often than not will give a trick away. The 5♥ is possibly slightly less risky than the other two because the A or Q in partner’s hand will improve the combined holding signiﬁcantly. (b): This time your hearts could easily disappear on East’s diamonds or West’s clubs. My order is: 1. 5♥; 2. A spade; 3. Q♦ and 4♣. This time you hold:

♠ 9852 ♥4 ♦ AK108 ♣ 7432

The bidding has been: East West 1♠ 2♣ 3♥ 3♠ 4♠ Put these leads in order of preference:

U 14

R E L T Y

E 16

A N O

T H

O C

E N

T R A

G 26

T R E

B R A S H

E N

T 27

O P I

A R E

H E A R W Y

Flower power Mensa puzzle 603

C R

T E

T R

O R 30

S O

L O P E A

E R R A R K

—

A MENSE PRIZ E PUZZL

8 7 7 2 4 5 6 3 5 1 1 2 6 4 5 2 3 ?

—

What number should replace the question mark (right)? ANSWER Three. In each group of circles the sum of the top three numbers, divided by the bottom left circle gives the bottom right circle Congratulations to this month’s winner – Kirk Bevins

Tourist teaser Mensa puzzle 604

Rearrange each of the following to give a world-famous landmark. What are they? a) BIGHEARTED GENTLE DOG ANSWER The Golden Gate Bridge, b) SOME HOT CLUES ANSWER The Colosseum c) EASY SPEEDY HONOUR ANSWER Sydney Opera House.

Symmetrical endings Mensa puzzle 605

A button undone Mensa puzzle 606 What letter should replace the question mark?

Can you ﬁnd two words that begin with

Bridge puzzle provided by David Lampert

ANSWER Draughtboard and drunkard.

p36_nov_puzzle_solution.indd 36

L O C U

P O T

(i) A spade (ii) 4♥ (iii) A♦ (iv) 4♣ It looks as though East is 5-5 or 5-4 in spades and hearts and West has three spades. When you hold four trumps, as here, the object is to try to make declarer lose control by having to ruﬀ. Leading a strong suit might succeed, so lead A♦. It also enables you to look at Dummy. So my order is: 1. A♦; 2. 4♥; 3 A spade; 4. 4♣

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

T E

E F A

ANSWER W. In each group the bottom left is the ﬁrst letter of the alphabet containing two straight lines. The top contains three straight lines and the bottom right contains four straight lines.

and end with

A L

E N T A

Congratulations to this month’s winner – John Whiteley

B R E A T

Bridge puzzle 47 Preferential treatment

At the back Coﬀee break

F E

H M

SHUTTERSTOCK

27/10/2014 16:32

At the back Student student@theactuary.com

Student Jessica Elkin takes a tongue-incheek glimpse at life in an Orwellian dystopia and asks if this could mean an end to ﬂawed actuarial data

MONITORING THE EXPERIENCE Boys and girls, this week I will start the student

Counting processes

page with a bit of a story. A bleak, depressing sort of story, but a story nonetheless. An East Berlin secret police agent, spying on a popular writer to look for evidence of anti-socialist activity, is startled to hear the writer planning to smuggle a friend into the West under the seat of a car. He picks up the telephone to tell border control, but hesitates. Despite never having met him, he has grown fond of his subject. After a moment of deliberation, he changes his mind and replaces the receiver. “Just this once, my friend,” he murmurs. Little does he know that the writer was testing to see if his apartment was bugged, and would take the lack of repercussion as a signal that he could start illicit anti-state activity undetected. Unbeknownst to him, the agent would hear it all. I watched The Lives of Others recently, and it is a brilliant, tense, unsettling ﬁlm about the Stasi agent’s ambivalent and evolving attitude towards the subjects of his observation: the playwright and his girlfriend. It won both an Academy Award and a BAFTA, which does not surprise me because it is subtle, understated and poignant. I wholeheartedly recommend the ﬁlm to anyone, unless you hate subtitles, because it is German. It is especially disturbing to watch the tyrannical and corrupt machinations of state versus citizen because it is set in the recent past… well, the eighties, anyway.

The ﬁlm got me thinking, like most things, about actuaries. How would we fare in that same surveillance state? Think Orwellian dystopia, or Big Brother, or that disturbing programme where parents watch what their kids get up to in Magaluf. (Some may argue that we already live in a surveillance state, but that is not for me to debate today.) By the sounds of things, data records would be meticulous and detailed. As the surveyed writer in The Lives of Others notes: “The state oﬃce for

PHIL WRIGGLESWORTH

p37_nov_student•SEMIFINAL•CT.indd 37

statistics on Hans-Beimler Street counts everything, knows everything: how many pairs of shoes I buy a year (2.3); how many books I read a year (3.2); and how many students graduate with perfect marks (6,347).” This would mean that censored or flawed data would not prove to be so problematic as it is now, thus improving the daily working lives of administrators and actuaries everywhere. Additionally, it’s difficult for people to lie about their activities when they’re being watched. General insurers would certainly benefit from a system that virtually eliminated moral hazard. So far, so good. This is assuming that insurers have access to the data, of course. It could be that the government would work against them. In the East Germany depicted in the film, there is – rather creepily – no state data kept on suicides. This would not bode well for life insurers. Government actuaries would probably be instructed to suppress information on mortality, or manipulate mortality tables to make longevity improvements look better. I am sure I needn’t go into how this would contravene the Actuaries’ Code. That being said, the state could always write a new Code! How convenient.

What about us? Alas! For us students, the Student Consultative Forum (SCF) would probably be abolished, or at least it would become a process consisting of a lot of hot air with falsified reports. If you said something like, “I quite like the Great British Bake Off,” you would probably fail all of your exams as retaliation for championing the non-socialist West. Although you’d at least have an excuse. Following on from all of this, I would not be able to criticise the Establishment on this student page. The column would therefore be reduced to mere fluff – the very idea! Thankfully, this is not necessary. As usual, if there is anything in particular you would like me to explore, or if you have any comments you’d like raised at the SCF, you should drop me an email. For now we can enjoy our lovely freedom. Freedom to work, freedom to play, freedom to… study. Odd, really, isn’t it? We so take our liberty for granted that we put ourselves in chains. Still, it feels worth it when you pass. a

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY www.theactuary.com

27/10/2014 16:34

At the back Appointments

SPONSORED BY

peoplemoves@theactuary.com

Moves as a consulting actuary at Watson Wyatt/ Towers Watson for eight years. Elliott is a Fellow and a past chairman of the health and care practice board of the IFoA, and currently chairs the consultations sub-committee. Cartwright Group, has appointed Ashlin Noonan (above) as an investment consultant. She previously worked at Novare Actuaries and Consultants in Cape Town as head of asset liability modelling and strategy formulation and at KPMG as an actuarial analyst. The Actuarial Association of Europe has announced that Michael Renz (above

right) has been elected as the new AAE chairperson for the year to September 2015. Renz was chairman of the German Actuarial Association (Deutsche Aktuarvereinigung DAV) from 2009 to 2011. MetLife has appointed Sue Elliott as head of product for UK employee beneﬁts. She joins from Just Retirement, where she was head of care. Previously, she worked

Grant Thornton UK LLP has appointed Tim Roﬀ (above right) as partner and head of its actuarial and risk practice. An insurance specialist with a proven track record in providing risk management

advice, Roff also brings in-depth technical expertise in related regulatory, compliance and financial reporting matters. He joins with immediate effect, and will be based in Grant Thornton’s Finsbury Square offices in London.

general insurance, reserving.

How would your best friend describe you? Practically perfect in every way? Or maybe just dependable. Depends what mood they’re in.

What motivates you? Not letting other people down. I don’t really like failing things either.

What would be your personal motto? Be open-minded, but not so openminded that your brain falls out.

Name ﬁve dream companions to be stuck on a desert island with? Richard Gasquet for beach tennis; Avicii for parties; Bear Grylls if times got tough; Kevin Ashman (the genius from Eggheads) to solve all my problems; Michael Phelps – there’ll be a lot of water around, so he could teach me.

What’s your most ‘actuarial’ habit? Not believing what

contribution pension schemes. Berry took up the position on 1 September 2014. Aon Hewitt has announced ﬁve new partners, including actuaries Colin Haines, Daniel Peters and Sophia Singleton.

www.hfg.co.uk

THOMAS SMITH Employer and area of work: AIG –

The Pensions Regulator has appointed Fred Berry (right) to the permanent new post of lead investment consultant. Berry joins the regulator from Mercer, where he was a principal in the investments business. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the pensions and investment industry as investment consultant and pension scheme actuary, and will be supporting the regulator’s activities across defined benefit and defined

ACTUARY OF THE FUTURE people say without credible evidence behind it. Though I’ll tend to agree to keep them happy.

If you could learn one random skill, what would you learn? Lip reading. That could be so useful. Mind reading would be more useful, but I’m not sure that’s learnable yet!

Favourite Excel function? SUMPRODUCT. There’s so many possibilities!

How do you relax away from the oﬃce? If I’m not in bed there’s an outdoor pool at the gym – that’s pretty good for relaxing (weather permitting).

The novelty wears oﬀ faster than you’d think though.

Greatest risk you have ever taken? Given this is in the public domain and my mum might see, I’m not sure I can answer! If you could go back in history, who would you like to meet? Someone who lived in 1966 – I can’t imagine that ever happening again.

What’s your most treasured possession? My laptop – tablets are just nowhere near as good, whatever people say.

What are the top three things you would like to achieve in your lifetime? Top 1,000 in the world in fantasy football, visit every continent, and become ﬂuent in French.

If you ruled the world, what would you change ﬁrst? Ban tomatoes, they ruin everything.

Alternative career choice? Tube driver.

Tell us something unusual about yourself I’ve lived in a round house most of my life.

Do you know an actuary destined for greatness? You can nominate an Actuary of the Future by emailing

aotf@theactuary.com

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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Highlighting Opportunities Finding the right opportunity for you can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. HFG’s consultants specialise in matching you to the right role at the right company. Call us today to have a chat about your requirements, and to find out what opportunities are available.

General Insurance Roles Mixed GI Actuarial Role

Capital Actuary £65 – £86k Basic, London

£75 – £105k Basic, London

A Lloyd’s syndicate is looking for a nearly or newly qualified Actuary to work across pricing, reserving and capital modelling. The role will report to the Chief Actuary and this role will be required to work closely with Non Actuaries on a daily basis. Any background will be considered. For more information contact: william@hfg.co.uk REF: WG1101

A leading Lloyd’s player is seeking an Actuary to join their capital team. Working closely with the risk department this person should be passionate about capital modelling and looking for a new challenge. Previous capital experience would be beneficial but is not essential as long as there is a passion to make it work. Contact: william@hfg.co.uk REF: WG1102

General Insurance Actuary

General Insurance Manager £70 – £110k Basic, London

£80 – £110k Basic, London

A boutique consultancy is looking for a qualified Actuary to help drive their dynamic team forward. The right person can be from either a reserving or capital background and more importantly have the ability to communicate and interact with senior stakeholders across the business internally and externally. Contact: william@hfg.co.uk REF: WG1103

A leading consultancy is looking for a manager to join their Actuarial practice. This practice has a unique outlook and are developing and working on a number of exciting and varied projects. Working with a variety of clients there is the opportunity to expand your skillset and work with a range of clients. Contact: william@hfg.co.uk REF: WG1104

Part-Time GI Actuary

Capital Modelling Analyst £70k – £90k Basic, London

£45k – £65k Basic, London

This client is looking for a part-time Actuary from either a capital or reserving background. The ideal person will be qualified with a consultative approach and be confident communicating with non Actuaries. There is also scope for working from home. Contact: william@hfg.co.uk REF: WG1105

A London market Reinsurer are restructuring their actuarial department due to a new controlled growth plan. This position sits in the capital team and reports directly in to the Head of Capital. The successful candidate is likely to come from another Lloyd’s Syndicate in a similar role. Good progression with the core actuarial exams and experience with Igloo is highly desirable but not essential. Contact: ben@hfg.co.uk REF: BH1101

Actuarial Analyst

Personal Lines Pricing Analyst £35k – £45k Basic, London

£50k – £60k Basic, London

A rapidly expanding Lloyd’s of London managing agent is looking to appoint a part qualified actuarial analyst to cover pricing, reserving and capital. The role will require a pragmatic and enthusiastic individual looking to gain exposure to provide variety of actuarial disciplines within a small team. The successful candidate will be making good progress through the actuarial exams and have non-life actuarial experience. For more information please contact: ben@hfg.co.uk REF: BH1102

A global composite insurer are expanding their pricing team. This role will rotate across various different lines of business and has excellent exposure to senior stakeholders. The successful candidate will have experience in Motor and/or Home insurance pricing with a particular focus on system skills; Emblem, SAS and VBA. This candidate would have passed the majority of their exams and looking to qualify in 2015. For more information please contact: ben@hfg.co.uk REF: BH1103

WILLIAM GALLIMORE

RUPA PITHIYA

BEN HICKEY

Director

Contract

General Insurance

+44 (0) 207 337 8826 william@hfg.co.uk

+44 (0) 207 337 1200

+44 (0) 207 220 1106

rupa@hfg.co.uk

ben@hfg.co.uk

+44 (0) 207 337 8800

www.hfg.co.uk November 2014 • THE ACTUARY 39 www.theactuary.com

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Appointments

Your new Actuarial recruitment gateway FIND OUT MORE ON OUR WEBSITE WWW.FENASSOCIATES.COM

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A Lloydâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Syndicate is looking for an experienced Actuary with circa 10 yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; SRVW TXDOLĂžFDWLRQ H[SHULHQFH 0XVW KDYH D /OR\GĂŞV EDFNJURXQG ZLWK D VROLG 5HVHUYLQJ ELDV <RX PXVW KDYH H[FHOOHQW PDQDJHPHQW DQG FRPPXQLFDWLRQ VNLOOV

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A global consultancy, non Big-4 seeks a 1 1 TXDOLĂžHG $FWXDU\ LGHDOO\ \RXĂŞOO KDYH SULRU FRQVXOWLQJ H[SHULHQFH :RUNLQJ ZLWK D YDULHW\ RI H[FLWLQJ FOLHQWV WKHUH LV the opportunity to expand your skillset and work with both Insurance and non,QVXUDQFH FOLHQWV

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THE UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY The University of Kent is one of the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most dynamic universities, demonstrated by our strong European and international presence, our excellent research and the quality of our teaching and student experience. Kent was ranked 24th in the UK for world-leading research in the most recent RAE, a top 20 university in the 2015 Guardian University Guide and achieved a 90% satisfaction rate in the 2013 NSS.

School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science (SMSAS)

Lecturer in Actuarial Science x2 Posts

Ref: STM0489

ÂŁ32,277 - ÂŁ45,954 p.a. In addition, a market related supplement will also be payable to a qualified actuary. Salary is dependent on experience and qualifications. Applications are invited for two positions of Lecturer in Actuarial Science. These two posts will be based at our Canterbury campus and will be available from 1st January 2015 or as soon as possible thereafter. The posts are on a full time basis, but applications for one of the positions on a part time basis would be considered. A starting date before 1st January 2015 can also be considered. The successful candidates will join the Centre for Actuarial Science, Risk and Investment (CASRI), which is part of the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science (SMSAS). The Centre is well established and offers both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Actuarial Science and Finance. All our Actuarial Science programmes are accredited by the UK Actuarial Profession. CASRI has a strong international reputation and in terms of the range of our courses and the number of actuaries employed is one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest university actuarial departments. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to the Schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teaching activities in Actuarial Science and Finance. The positions will also provide opportunities for consultancy and enterprise activities. An excellent package including relocation costs is offered. Informal enquiries may be made to Professor Malcolm Brown, Director of Actuarial Science Tel: + 44 (0) 1227 823508 (direct line) or E-mail: M.S.Brown@kent.ac.uk. Informal visits to the School are welcomed. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons. However, as female candidates are currently under-represented within the Centre, we would particularly welcome applications from females. All appointments will be made on merit. Further information is available from our website http://www.kent.ac.uk/jobs Minicom users please telephone 01227 824145. Closing date for completed applications: 23 November 2014. Interviews are expected to be held on: 7 January 2015.

THE ACTUARY â&#x20AC;˘ November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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London : Chicago : Hong Kong : Singapore : Shanghai

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Senior Pricing Analyst - London Actuarial Pricing Manager (GI) - London Â&#x2026; Â&#x2026; %HQHÂżWV F Â&#x2026; %HQHÂżWV My client, one of the leading global insurers, is looking to recruit a talented and ambitious Senior Actuarial Analyst to join their team. You will provide case pricing for large risks within International Liability, together with the development and support of pricing models, portfolio analysis/ segmentation and interaction with the business planning process. Reporting directly to a senior manager, this is a great opportunity, which will give exciting development opportunities as well as exposure to a wide variety of work. Previous pricing experience â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ideally London Market - is required. You will have made good progress through the actuarial exams and great communication skills in addition to actuarial and statistical pricing skills. Contact phu.ngoc@ipsgroup.co.uk +44 207 481 8686

A leading insurance company is looking to hire a Manager to become a key member of the actuarial team. The main remit of the role is pricing optimisation within the Retail business and to deliver support in areas such as Planning and Performance. Main focus will be on the UK & Ireland business. The company is looking for a fully TXDOLÂżHG DFWXDU\ ZLWK H[SHULHQFH LQ SULFLQJ PDQDJHPHQW as well as proven managerial skills. Good knowledge of GLM (Emblem, Radar) is required. This is an exceptional opportunity to build a rewarding career in a prestigious employer.

Contact phu.ngoc@ipsgroup.co.uk +44 207 481 8686

Executive Analyst - London Pensions Buyout & Longevity Specialist - London Â&#x2026; Â&#x2026; %HQHÂżWV Upper Quartile Salary +Bonus & Benefits Package Working with a top Syndicate at Lloydâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s this position will sit in close contact with the COO of the London Market business and you will be tasked with project work IRFXVVHG RQ LPSURYLQJ RSHUDWLRQDO HIÂżFLHQF\ DFURVV WKH business. Our client is seeking someone who is MBA TXDOLÂżHG DQG KDV SUHYLRXV H[SHULHQFH ZLWKLQ WKH ÂżQDQFLDO services industry (e.g. as an Actuary or actuarial analyst) who can operate in a fast paced environment and can deliver on challenging projects. A highly visible role with excellent opportunities for progression. Contact mark.knight@ipsgroup.co.uk +44 207 481 8111

7KLV VXFFHVVIXO DGYLVRU\ ÂżUP DGYLVHV SHQVLRQ IXQG trustees and sponsors with market leading advice and implementation services on ways to reduce or remove pensions risk. This might result in a buy-in or buyout, a longevity swap or other hedging solutions. This specialist team is looking to hire an experienced adviser who has a proven track record of advising trustees and sponsors along the derisking journey and completing transactions. &DQGLGDWHV DUH OLNHO\ WR EH TXDOLÂżHG DFWXDULHV ZKR KDYH ZRUNHG IRU HLWKHU DQRWKHU DGYLVRU\ ÂżUP DV D OHDG DGYLVHU or potentially for a provider as a deal principal. Contact anthony.chitnis@ipsgroup.co.uk +44 207 481 8686

/RQGRQ 2IÂżFH IPS Group, Bevis Marks House, 24 Bevis Marks, London EC3A 7JB 7HOHSKRQH 020 7481 8686 Email: actuarial@ipsgroup.co.uk September 2013 â&#x20AC;˘ THE ACTUARY 41 www.theactuary.com

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Appointments We are a recruitment consultancy with a difference Bringing Talent Together

Head of Unit Linked Investment Strategy Location: London

Salary: £110-130k

The role will involve working closely with the CIO and the Head of Investment Strategy. The role will be responsible for management of the existing unit linked investment portfolio of a major UK life Insurer. Alongside that there will be a focus on the development of a new range of funds to be launched in 2015. The role would suit a senior investment professional currently working within an insurance group, a DC investment consultant with strong investment knowledge or a DC/ Insurance investment strategist from a Fund Management group.

Contact Rob Bulpitt

Ian Povey

rob.bulpitt@eamesconsulting.com

Ian.povey@eamesconsulting.com

Head of Actuarial, Insurance Pensions Risk Management 020 7092 3237 Of¿ce Number +44 (0)20 7092 3200

Pensions & Investments | Non-Life | Life & Health

theactuaryjobs.com is the oﬃcial job board for SIAS and The Actuarial Profession. To register for our Jobs by email service simply go to theactuaryjobs.com

theactuaryjobs.com 42

UK | Europe | Asia Paci¿c

Actuarial, Pensions & Insurance Risk Management 020 7092 3265

For current opportunities please visit www.eamesconsulting.com

www.eamesconsulting.com

Your specialist actuarial recruiter in the UK, Mainland Europe, and Asia-Pacific, with dedicated sector specific consultants covering; Non-Life Life Pensions and Investments For a confidential career discussion please contact us on +44 (0)207 332 5870 or actuarial@mansionhouse.co.uk

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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www.theactuaryjobs.com

Life Insurance Roles CFO London, up to £180,000 per annum – Exclusive This fantastic opportunity will give a qualified Life Actuary the chance to become CFO of a life mutual. This is a key appointment and fundamental to the future direction and possible succession planning of the business. Within a fairly short time frame, this individual will be required to obtain confidence of the UK board, UK regulator and with the correct positioning, allow them to continue on the trail of organic and acquisitional growth. This is a high profile position that requires gravitas, confidence, technical expertise and sound judgement. You will have to be able to balance the commercial objectives of the company with those of the policyholders and the regulatory requirements of the new regime. For more information contact: sophia@hfg.co.uk REF: SC1101

Actuarial Advisor

Reporting Actuary London, £35,000 - £50,000 per annum

A boutique advisory firm is looking for student actuaries with a Life insurance background. You will gain a unique insight into the Life insurance market and be involved in the technical work and also relationship management with clients. Given the impending S2 deadline, this role will give you distinctive exposure and career development. Contact: sophia@hfg.co.uk REF: SC1102

London, £55,000 - £70,000 per annum A leading life insurer is looking for a nearly/newly qualified actuary to join their growing team. You will be involved in key decisions across the business and responsible for the quarterly and yearly valuations along with mentoring a team of students. This role is ideal for someone who wants to take that step up and take more responsibility. For more information contact: sophia@hfg.co.uk REF: SC1103

Contract Roles Economic Capital Actuarial Analyst

Solvency II Contractor

London, £600 - £800 per day, 6 months

West of England, £1,000 - £1,500 per day, up to 12 months This leading non-life insurer requires an S2 actuary with internal model and regulatory interpretation experience. This is a role where you will be expected to advise, develop and implement S2, across the whole business. To be successful recent S2 regulatory experience & practical application is required. Contact: rupa@hfg.co.uk REF: RP1101

A leading composite insurer is looking for a nearly/newly qualified EC analyst. The role will include reviewing the company’s business units & reviewing EC submissions from the various entities of group. Strong working knowledge of S2, the reporting process, wider actuarial and analytical skills are required. Contact: georgeb@hfg.co.uk REF: GB1101

2 x Pricing Contractors

SAT Actuary

London, competitive, 12 month FTC

London, £750 - £950 per day, 6 months

Two fantastic opportunities have risen with a valuable client that is looking for someone to assist with maternity cover. Firstly they are looking for a qualified actuary with commercial pricing experience to work with underwriters and get involved with individual risk pricing. They are also looking for a junior candidate looking to move into a pricing role. For the senior role, you must have commercial pricing experience and for the junior role, someone with reserving and capital experience will be considered. Contact: rupa@hfg.co.uk REF: RP1102

An industry leading life insurance company is looking for a fully qualified actuary to aid the continued development of their internal model. Offering excellent exposure, thorough knowledge of S2 requirements and deliverables (with particular reference to the Internal Model Approval Process) is essential. This contract will involve liaising with a number of teams and senior stakeholders so strong communication skills would be beneficial. For more information contact: georgeb@hfg.co.uk REF: GB1102

Capital Contractors

Proxy Modeller South West England, £700 - £900 per day, 6 months

London, - £700 - £900 per day, 6 months This leading insurer is looking for a contractor for an initial 6 month period (subject to extension) to work within their actuarial team. You will be involved across the business pre-dominantly within capital modelling and be exposed to validation, parameterisation work. You will also be exposed to other teams and be expected to assist in ad-hoc risk, reserving and pricing work. Contact: rupa@hfg.co.uk REF: RP1103

A leading life insurer is looking for a nearly/newly qualified actuarial contractor for their Proxy team in Bristol. Specific experience working on Proxy models and wider knowledge of actuarial model functions are essential. Strong analytical and statistical skills will be beneficial as well as excellent communication skills, as this role will be liaising with senior stakeholders. Contact: georgeb@hfg.co.uk REF: GB1103

Risk Roles Risk & Capital Actuary

Senior Financial Risk Manager London, up to £130,000 basic

London, £45,000 - £55,000 basic

A leading life insurer is looking for a qualified actuary to join their risk team. The role will have deputised responsibility for team management, framework oversight and providing effective challenge to management. This will be a succession role with intention of the candidate moving into a head of financial risk role within 24 months. The ideal candidate will be ambitious and have good risk management experience. For more information contact: james@hfg.co.uk REF: JK1101

An opportunity for an actuarial student to join a top five Lloyd’s insurer in their risk and capital team. The ideal candidate will come from a capital modelling or validation background and be looking to diversify their experience by working within the second line of defence. The successful candidate will have a consultative personality and be making good progress through the actuarial exams. For more information contact: erin@hfg.co.uk REF: EO1101

SOPHIA CROSSMAN

JAMES KITT

ERIN O’DONNELL

Life Insurance

Risk Management

+44 (0) 207 337 1207

+44 (0) 207 337 1202

sophia@hfg.co.uk

james@hfg.co.uk

erin@hfg.co.uk

+ (0)207 337 8800

p43_ACT.11.14.indd 43

www.hfg.co.uk

actuarialteam@hfg.co.uk

September 2013 • THE ACTUARY 43 www.theactuary.com

28/10/2014 12:13

Appointments

A large, global insurer is looking for a Senior Casualty Pricing Analyst to sit in the InternaƟonal Markets division, interacƟng directly with Underwriters on the InternaƟonal Liability side. This person will be responsible for individual large account pricing, building pricing models and analysing porƞolio performance.

My client, one of the world’s leading organisaƟons of independent assurance, tax and advisory Įrms currently has immediate openings for QualiĮed Actuaries at Manager and Senior Manager Levels (4 within Life and 1 within Risk).

Actuarial Contract OpportuniƟes – Various locaƟons… Darwin Rhodes are a leading actuarial recruitment agency within the contractor market. We have a specialist team of agents represenƟng our clients who require the services of an experienced independent part or qualiĮed actuary.

Ideally someone who is making good progress through exams or who is newly qualiĮed, this person will have strong London market pricing experience and preferably within large accounts.

The client is embarking on an iniƟal growth phase providing technical delivery soluƟons complimenƟng Solvency II, longevity, credit, modelling, Įnancial processes requirements. Client is not your tradiƟonal audit based consulƟng Įrm and now is the Ɵme to join and work closely with the senior leading Partner.

If you are a contractor available for a new assignment, a client with an interim vacancy or a candidate looking for some honest professional advice, then please get in touch

For more informaƟon please contact Victoria Cruickshank 0207 621 3785 v.cruickshank@darwinrhodes.com

For more informaƟon please contact Clinton Poore 0207 621 3774 c.poore@darwinrhodes.com

For more informaƟon please contact Adam Goodwin 0207 621 3785 a.goodwin@darwinrhodes.com

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For your chance to win a prize, please submit all answers to London@darwinrhodes.com CongratulaƟons to last months prize winner, MarƟn Smith

VP - Business Development, asia

Corporate Actuary Singapore, SGD 170k – SGD 200k + bonus

Hong Kong, HKD 2.4m base + bonus A highly commercial actuary is sought by this global firm as they develop their prospects in Asia. The role is challenging, technical and at the forefront of the business, working with key stakeholders on complex transactions. It is essential that you are business development focused, can travel regionally and are confident working with the Senior Executive. Contact clare@hfg.com.sg REF: CB1101

This high growth insurer is searching to hire a talented qualified actuary to oversee all reserving activities for the APAC region and also liaise heavily with the pricing and capital management departments on specific projects. The successful candidate will possess strong non-life experience and superb stakeholder management skills. Contact jason@hfg.com.sg REF: JS1101

Life Pricing Actuary

Regional Corporate Actuary - Asia

Hong Kong, Salary dependant on experience

Singapore, SGD 80k – 200k base + bonus

A well-known reinsurer is looking to hire pricing actuaries at the nearly, newly and post qualified level in Hong Kong. It is an excellent opportunity to get into the reinsurance industry and work at a regional level. The ideal candidate must have strong technical skills and solid understanding of the Asia Market. Asian language skills are desirable. Contact tong@hfg.co.uk REF: TY1101

Exceptional opportunity to join the regional corporate team of this fast growing and highly successful MNC. You will be partnering with the business units to guide, advise and provide technical expertise across IFRS, Solvency 2 and region-wide valuation. This is a fantastic stepping stone for a progressive actuary looking to accelerate their career. Contact graeme@hfg.com.sg REF: GB1101

Cat Specialist

Reinsurance Pricing

Beijing/Hong Kong, Salary dependant on location

New role for a Senior Catastrophe analyst to be based in either Hong Kong or Beijing. The ideal candidate will be client facing, is proven in this field and has the ability to develop Cat risk solutions. You will be reporting to the Singapore office and interact with teams in the region. It is important that you can speak Chinese. Contact tong@hfg.co.uk REF: TY1102

Jason Sykes Clare Bethell Graeme Braidwood Tong Yu

Managing Director Director Senior Consultant Consultant

Singapore, SGD 200k – 220k base + bonus

A respected international reinsurer requires a qualified life actuary to join their regional financial reinsurance team. With in-depth insurance market experience and a commercial understanding of capital solutions, you will have a track record of managing clients and solving problems. An excellent opportunity to extend your market knowledge. Contact graeme@hfg.com.sg REF: GB1102

EA Reg: R1333193 EA Reg: R1434590 EA Reg: R1434568

www.hfg.com.sg +65 6829 7153 EA Licence Number: 14C7034

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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www.theactuaryjobs.com

Careers in Catlin’s top-rated ERM team No matter your start point, a career in Catlin’s Enterprise Risk Management function– one of the largest in the market and assessed ‘Very Strong’ by S&P– means the opportunity to grow professionally in pace with our own continuing growth and ambitions. Join Catlin’s existing capital team of 15 actuaries and students and you will be engaged in a variety of work including production, interpretation and presentation of Capital Model outputs with the opportunity for model development and early responsibility through TVK\SL V^ULYZOPW (Z WHY[ VM ,94 `V\ ^V\SK NHPU H M\SS \UKLYZ[HUKPUN VM [OL KP]LYZL YPZR WYVÄSL VM H Z\JJLZZM\S PUZ\YHUJL I\ZPULZZ The team has exposure to a wide range of model uses including reinsurance purchasing, business planning, capital allocation and optimisation, capital management, risk appetite monitoring, risk ranking and ORSA. To be successful, you will have demonstrated excellent academic and exam performance alongside strong technical and JVTT\UPJH[PVU ZRPSSZ @V\ ^PSS IL H^HYL VM WYVMLZZPVUHS HUK [LJOUPJHS KL]LSVWTLU[Z PU [OL NLULYHS PUZ\YHUJL ÄLSK HUK ^V\SK PKLHSS` OH]L IL[^LLU [^V HUK Ä]L `LHYZ VM UVU SPML L_WLYPLUJL ;LJOUPJHS TVKLS KL]LSVWTLU[ experience is desirable but not essential. To discuss further, please contact Peter Hetherington in Catlin HR on 020 7743 8449 or send an email to peter.hetherington@catlin.com.

Our client, a major UK savings, pensions, annuity and asset management group, is establishing a reinsurance company in Bermuda as part of their internaƟonal growth strategy.

Chief Business Development Oĸcer Bermuda

The Chief Business Development Oĸce in Bermuda will be responsible for extending the business to include non-UK and third party life reinsurance business. Responsible for delivering agreed targets across territories and proĮt lines, the successful individual will build and maintain strong relaƟonships with UK teams as well as with key customers, stakeholders, partners and third parƟes. The Chief Business Development Oĸcer will also contribute to the strategic direcƟon and business planning of the company as well as ensuring all markeƟng and promoƟonal acƟviƟes are conducted to the highest professional standards. The successful candidate will be a qualiĮed actuary with a strong track record of success in delivering market proposiƟons, delivering soluƟons for clients and achievement of growth targets. They will possess signiĮcant experience of the deal cycle within bulk annuity business or of managing similarly complex transacƟons through to compleƟon as well as knowledge/understanding of the pricing drivers and metrics applicable to life insurance products. In addiƟon, superior communicaƟon skills and ability to build and maintain business relaƟonships at all levels are essenƟal. This posiƟon is an exciƟng and unusual opportunity to be part of a growing start-up company within the secure environment of an internaƟonal organisaƟon. Whilst the role will be based in Bermuda, the successful individual will be expected to travel as necessary to the UK, USA and other countries. AƩracƟve remuneraƟon packages will be oīered including relocaƟon assistance.

To apply please send your resume to bdajobs@experƟse.bm or apply online at www.BermudaJobs.com by 30th November 2014. All enquiries will be dealt with in strict conĮdence.

November 2014 • THE ACTUARY 45 www.theactuary.com

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Appointments Capital Actuary & Director London, Executive Level Package

The Capital Actuary will play a key role in the management of the Ƥ Ǥ Working closely with the Executive, this individual will be looking at possible transactions, strategies and regulatory developments in order Ǥ Solvency II regime this individual will need to be close to the developing regulatory regime and undertake a capital optimisation plan that Ƥ Ǥ The individual will need to be technically strong and a strong communicator who is comfortable assessing and managing the Ǥ ǡ risk considerations will all need to be monitored and considered while looking to secure transactions that will more the balance sheet in a Ǥ

Visit us at LIFE conference Stand A3

For more information please contact Mark Dainty on: mark@hfg.co.uk

MARK DAINTY Director +44 (0) 207 337 8826 mark@hfg.co.uk

www.hfg.co.uk | +44 (0) 207 337 8800

CAREERS PACIFIC LIFE RE Our Business Paci½c Life Re is a team of experts working with clients in the UK, Ireland and Asia, specialising in risks associated with Life, Critical Illness, Income Protection, Hospital Cash, Underwritten Annuities and Longevity products, with a life retrocession business in North America. We have established ourselves as one of the leading life reinsurers in the UK and Ireland, having reinsured some of the largest pension scheme transactions in the market to date and having maintained a top 3 market share of new business in Protection for a number of years. In Asia we are rapidly growing our business and we are looking to establish Paci½c Life Re as a signi½cant player throughout the region. We have the support and backing of a parent company that’s been around for over 145 years and with a mutual holding company as our ultimate parent, we are not constrained by short-term thinking or excessive focus on quarterly earnings; therefore allowing us to be free to pursue the right course for our clients and our business.

“…We have the support and backing of a parent company that’s been around for over 145 years” Who we are looking for We are seeking high calibre professionals to join our teams in the UK and Singapore in areas such as Pricing, Sales and Marketing. Successful candidates will be quali½ed Actuaries with experience in life insurance, life reinsurance or life consultancy. You will demonstrate excellent technical and interpersonal skills and a ¾exible, open-minded approach towards taking on new challenges. An ability to work both independently and within teams will also be extremely important as will an eye for detail. Your Opportunities You will be a valued member of a team which strives to deliver exceptional levels of client service in a vibrant and fast-paced working environment. We offer substantial opportunities to develop your existing skills and learn new ones within a young and innovative culture which encourages cross-disciplinary working and personal autonomy. We believe in giving our people the freedom they need to perform and innovate. It’s a crucial part of our culture and helps to keep us fresh and inventive.

For further information, or to apply, please forward your CV and covering letter to our exclusively retained consultant Despo Mouyis, Senior Consultant Life Actuarial, at The Emerald Group on despo.mouyis@emerald-group.com. www.paci¼clifere.com Paci½c Life Re Limited (No. 825110) is registered in England and Wales and has its registered of½ce at Tower Bridge House, St Katharine’s Way, London, E1W 1BA. Paci½c Life Re Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulatory Authority in the United Kingdom (Reference Number 202620). London · Hong Kong · Sydney · Frankfurt · Basingstoke

THE ACTUARY • November 2014 www.theactuary.com

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Appointments

Take the next step… …with a career at Towers Watson, Bristol We’re looking for talented qualified and part qualified actuaries to work as part of our growing pensions team in Bristol. We enjoy the benefits of a small office feel, with around 50 associates based at Temple Quay, but with the resources, client base and opportunities of a global organisation. The Bristol office is a great place to work, with associates rating the opportunities for professional development through involvement in a wide variety of projects as excellent in our recent associate survey. The office also rates highly for its team work, people management and communication confirming that Towers Watson provides the support needed to master new challenges. To find out more, please get in touch with Charlotte Barton for a confidential, no obligation discussion on 01737 284919 or email charlotte.barton@towerswatson.com Please also get in touch if you’d like to hear about actuarial opportunities in other locations.

Benefits Risk and Financial Services Talent and Rewards towerswatson.com Copyright © 2014 Towers Watson. All rights reserved. TW-EU-2014-40673a. October 2014. Towers Watson is represented in the UK by Towers Watson Limited.

/company/towerswatson 4

@towerswatsonjob

/towerswatsoncareersemea

THE ACTUARY • May 2013 www.theactuary.com

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Appointments NON- LI FE RI SK REINSURANCE PRICING - SPECIALTY LINES

SYNDICATE CAPITAL MODELLER

£ excellent package

up to £100k + bonus + benefits

NON-LIFE LONDON

STAR2140

SENIOR MANAGER - CAPITAL MODELLING £ excellent + bonus + benefits STAR2173

NON-LIFE LONDON

STAR1851

World-leading reinsurance firm has a fantastic opportunity for a qualified non-life actuary with specialty lines reinsurance pricing experience to make an impact within a dynamic and cutting-edge team.

Lloyd’s Syndicate has a unique opportunity for a talented capital modeller to provide cutting-edge support for the ongoing development of the Group’s ReMetrica-based calculation kernel.

Our client is seeking a qualified non-life actuary to lead the delivery of a wide range of capital modelling and capital management solutions. This is a fantastic opportunity to take your career to the next level.

NON-LIFE CONSULTANCY

HEAD OF PRICING

COMMERCIAL ACTUARY

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

£ excellent package

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

NON-LIFE GREATER LONDON / SOUTH EAST STAR2162

NON-LIFE SOUTH EAST

Leading global consultancy is seeking a part-qualified or qualified non-life actuary to join its team. You will have reserving, risk or capital experience, along with strong leadership skills.

Major insurer is seeking a qualified GI actuary to lead a personal lines pricing team. Please contact us for more details of this exciting opportunity. Fixed Term Contract: up to 12 months.

Global insurer and financial services company seeks a qualified non-life actuary to lead the actuarial input into the commercial lines of business, including quarterly reserving, pricing and business planning.

HEAD OF NON-LIFE FINANCIAL RISK

RESERVING - PROPERTY AND CASUALTY

PRICING ANALYST

NON-LIFE LONDON

STAR2063

£ excellent + bonus + benefits NON-LIFE RISK FLEXIBLE

up to £80k + bonus + benefits STAR2047

NON-LIFE SOUTH WEST

STAR2070

up to £60k, depending on experience STAR2073

NON-LIFE SOUTH WEST

STAR2074

Leading insurer has an unrivalled opportunity for a qualified non-life expert to lead the constructive challenge and oversight of the GI business to ensure all its risks are managed in accordance with policies and risk appetite.

Our client has an exciting opportunity for a partqualified or qualified actuary with GI Solvency II reserving experience to develop market-leading technical provisions methodologies and provide key actuarial business planning insights.

Our client is looking for a part-qualified actuary with commercial pricing experience to strengthen its actuarial pricing team, deriving appropriate technical premiums and underwriting analytics to support the UK business.

PRICING & RESERVING ACTUARY

MODEL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

MODEL USE MANAGER

up to £80k + bonus + benefits

up to £70k + bonus + benefits

NON-LIFE SOUTH EAST

STAR2187

NON-LIFE MANCHESTER

STAR2155

NON-LIFE MANCHESTER

STAR2154

High-calibre actuary sought to join a global leader in the non-life market. You will lead a team in the provision of technical pricing and reserving advice across the home and motor portfolio.

A technical, hands-on role requiring a non-life actuary with existing capital modelling experience, ideally within Igloo. The successful candidate will be given line management responsiblity.

Take this opportunity to embed the capital model in a leading general insurance business. You will be heavily involved in reinsurance strategy and business transformation.

GI RESERVING EXECUTIVE

ACTUARIAL PRICING - NON-LIFE

RESERVING ACTUARY

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

up to £50k + bonus + benefits

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

NON-LIFE MIDLANDS

STAR2028

NON-LIFE MIDLANDS

STAR1946

NON-LIFE MIDLANDS

STAR2188

Leading financial services firm has a unique opportunity for a part-qualified or qualified actuary to provide support and solutions to the GI business on a range of pricing projects.

An excellent opportunity for a qualified non-life actuary to take the lead on a range of reserving projects for a leading GI business. Strong communication and influencing skills required.

SENIOR MANAGER - RESERVING

MANAGER - TECHNICAL PROVISIONS

SENIOR PRICING ANALYST

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

Our client has an exciting opportunity for a partqualified or qualified non-life actuary to provide support, solutions, recommendations and advice to the GI business on a range of reserving and other financial projects.

STARVACANCIES NON-LIFE LEEDS

STAR2143

Seeking a non-life expert to ensure the GI businesses are adequately reserved by developing and implementing appropriate processes and methodologies for the Claims Control Cycle.

STAR2141

Our client is seeking a talented individual to be responsible for fulfilling statutory and regulatory responsibilities in respect to GI Technical Provisions, including developing and implementing best practice.

NON-LIFE LEEDS

STAR2186

Our client seeks candidates with GI pricing experience to join its customer pricing team. You will lead pricing projects based on knowledge of demand modelling and optimisation gained within a personal lines setting.

Antony Buxton FIA Anton

Lance Randles MBA La

Paul C Cook

Joanne Young Joa

MANAGING DIRECTOR MANAG

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AS

SENIOR CONSULTANT

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR OPER

THE ACTUARY • October 2014 www.theactuary.com M +44 7766 414 560 E antony.buxton@staractuarial.com

p48-49_ACT.11.14.indd 48

NON-LIFE LEEDS

M +44 7889 007 861 E lance.randles@staractuarial.com

M +44 7740 285 139 E paul.cook@staractuarial.com

M +44 7739 345 946 E joanne.young@staractuarial.com

28/10/2014 12:33

LI FE www.theactuaryjobs.com

RI SK PENSI ONS I NVESTM ENT

£ excellent + bonus + benefits LIFE INVESTMENT LONDON

STAR2120

ALM CONSULTANT

MULTI-ASSET ALM LDI MODELLER

£ competitive + bonus + benefits

£ depends on experience

LIFE INVESTMENT LONDON

STAR2179

LIFE INVESTMENT EDINBURGH

STAR2151

Leading firm seeks exceptional life actuary, ideally with reinsurance and investment experience. Please contact us for more information on this unique role.

This leading consultancy is seeking to add part-qualified or qualified life actuaries with strong communication skills and ALM experience to its growing team.

Our client is seeking a talented individual with experience in asset-liability modelling to provide mathematical and modelling expertise to support risk management and optimisation of portfolios.

ASSET-LIABILITY MANAGEMENT ACTUARY

VALUATION MODELLING EXPERT

ACTUARIAL ANALYSIS MANAGER

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

LIFE INVESTMENT LONDON & SOUTH COAST STAR2156

LIFE SOUTH COAST

Leading insurer seeks an ALM actuary for a wide-ranging role within its investment team. This is an excellent opportunity to become involved in, or widen your experience within, the life insurance investment space.

Our client has an exciting opportunity for an insurance specialist to provide dedicated modelling expertise to the wider valuation team through advice and support on all aspects of the valuation models.

Fantastic opportunity for an actuarial leader with strong technical and management skills to take up a key role in a growing and successful insurance business.

CONSOLIDATION TEAM ACTUARY

RISK ACTUARY

MULTI-ASSET RISK MANAGER

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

£ depends on experience

LIFE SOUTH COAST

STAR2157

£ excellent + bonus + benefits STAR2048

LIFE RISK SOUTH COAST

STAR2079

LIFE SOUTH COAST

STAR1756

LIFE RISK EDINBURGH

STAR2152

As Consolidation Team Actuary you will be responsible for production of Solvency II results on Internal Model and Standard Formula bases and reconciliation of these results to ICA and other relevant metrics.

Seeking a qualified life actuary and risk expert to deliver recommendations and solutions to business problems. Flexibility in approach and strong communication skills required.

Our client has an exceptional opportunity for a risk expert to provide mathematical and programming expertise to support risk management, enhance existing tools and assist in new initiatives.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

LIFETIME VALUE

MOVE TO LIFE

£ dependent upon experience

£ excellent + benefits

LIFE SOUTH WEST

STAR2169

LIFE SOUTH WEST

STAR2168

LIFE SOUTH WEST

STAR2184

One of the country’s fastest growing firms is looking for high-calibre life actuaries with a broad skill set to build on its international expansion.

Are you a commercially-minded and technically-adept part-qualified actuary? You could be well-placed to apply your expertise within our client’s growing business.

SENIOR CORPORATE ACTUARY

LONDON PRICING

CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

up to £60k, depending on experience

LIFE SOUTH EAST

STAR2182

Our client is seeking to hire a qualified actuary to manage and be responsible for the daily operations of its reporting team. Significant industry experience is required, along with proven team leadership skills.

LIFE LONDON

STAR2191

Market-leading insurer has an exciting opportunity for a part-qualified life actuary with pricing experience to support the production and analysis of actuarial results in its Group Protection Pricing team.

Amazing opportunity for high-calibre part-qualified and qualified pensions actuaries to move to life insurance with a leading firm. Please contact us for further information.

LIFE MIDLANDS

STAR2175

Specialist firm seeks a part-qualified life actuary to join its Capital Management team and undertake experience investigations to support changes to the actuarial assumptions. Fixed Term Contract: 12 months.

Star Actuarial Futures Ltd is an employment agency and employment business

LIFE ACTUARY - BANKING

www.staractuarial.com ANNUITIES ROLE

STRATEGIC RISK CONSULTING

INVESTMENT RISK SOLUTIONS

£ excellent + bonus + benefits

PENSIONS LONDON

STAR2115

Leading specialist insurer has an exciting opportunity for a part-qualified pensions actuary to provide support across the defined benefit solutions sales team, preparing quotation material and sales pitches.

STAR2165

Leading pensions consultancy seeks part-qualified and qualified actuaries to join a high-quality team providing project-based risk solutions to flagship corporate clients.

INVESTMENT LONDON

STAR2185

Global consultancy seeks a high-calibre qualified actuary with investment consulting experience to join its market leading team. Please contact us for more information on this role.

Louis Manson Lou

Irene Paterson FFA Ire

Peter Baker

Clare Roberts

MANAGING DIRECTOR MAN

PARTNER PAR

SENIOR CONSULTANT

M +44 7595 023 983 E louis.manson@staractuarial.com

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PENSIONS LONDON / MIDLANDS

M +44 7545 424 206 E irene.paterson@staractuarial.com

M +44 7860 602 586 E peter.baker@staractuarial.com

October 2014 • THE ACTUARY 49 www.theactuary.com M +44 7714 490 922 E clare.roberts@staractuarial.com

28/10/2014 12:33

GENERAL INSURANCE - UK London Up to £150,000

Pricing/Capital Actuaries - London Market London Paul Francis £85,000 - £130,000

An established syndicate business is looking to recruit a qualiﬁed Actuary to be responsible for the co-ordination of the full actuarial function, with a reporting line to the CFO. Lloyd’s experience is highly desirable and strong communication skills are essential.

I have been mandated with eleven new requisitions with Lloyd’s/ London market ﬁrms seeking pricing and/or capital actuaries. I am targeting candidates from senior student level upwards. These roles are full life-cycle and require ambitious, communicative individuals.

Retail Actuary Sarah Robins

Surrey £80,000 + Bonus + Beneﬁts

Catastrophe & Exposure Risk Analyst London Ross Anderson Up to £75,000 + Bonus + Beneﬁts

A vacancy has arisen for an experienced qualiﬁed Actuary within the retail team of a well-known insurer. You will work on the motor and home personal lines portfolios and will lead a small team of students and qualiﬁed actuaries. Experience of G.I. techniques is a must. Personal lines pricing experience is advantageous.

A well-known name in the market seeks an experienced catastrophe modelling professional to join their team. An excellent opportunity to develop management and technical skills whilst supplementing understanding of the Lloyd’s market and its infrastructure.

Capital Modelling Rachel Kelly

Various £35,000 - £70,000

Pricing Actuary - Personal Lines London Graham Anderson £Excellent + Bonus + Beneﬁts

Do you have strong Igloo or Remetrica skills? We are currently working on several capital & risk management opportunities within Lloyd’s syndicates, brokers and personal lines insurers. Competitive salaries and excellent career progression on offer.

Excellent opportunity for a Pricing Actuary to join a market leading G.I. business. You will be a part qualiﬁed - nearly qualiﬁed Actuary. Previous pricing model development and transactional pricing experience within the G.I. space is required.

Head of Actuarial Rob Bentham

CONTRACTS - GENERAL INSURANCE - UK Solvency II Contractors Elise Ogden

UK Wide £800 - £1,200/day

We are working with a number of clients to supply contractors for Solvency II related work. Candidates must have capital modelling, documentation or risk experience. We have a number of opportunities so please get in touch to discuss.

Pricing Actuary Elise Ogden

UK Wide £800 - £1,000/day

We have a number of contract opportunities working with personal lines insurers. We are seeking contractors with excellent SAS and EMBLEM experience to develop models for new products.

LIFE INSURANCE - UK Head of Longevity Greater London Richard Howard £100,000 - £120,000 + Bonus + Beneﬁts

Capital/Reporting Manager Hugo Chambers

My client, a market leading life insurer, is looking for a Head of Longevity to lead the development of their longevity portfolio for the UK. They are looking for a qualiﬁed Actuary with signiﬁcant experience of the longevity and annuity market.

Multiple opportunities to join a prestigious organisation seeking to grow its actuarial and risk team. My client is looking for qualiﬁed actuaries with strong reporting or capital exposure. Successful candidates will have excellent communication and relationship management skills.

Strategic Actuarial Manager Clare Nash

Longevity Actuary Natalie Lightfoot

South West £80,000 + Package

London £100,000 + Car + Package

London (City) Up to £75,000

EXCLUSIVE APPOINTMENT: I would like to speak to actuaries who are keen to progress. My client seeks a qualiﬁed Actuary to play a key role within a growing team which although technical, thought leadership is key. A background in reporting/capital is beneﬁcial.

EXCLUSIVE: My city based reinsurer is looking for a newly qualiﬁed or recently qualiﬁed Actuary to join their prestigious team. Successful candidates will have previous exposure to longevity pricing, as well as senior stakeholder engagement experience.

Senior Reporting Actuary South Coast Richard Howard Up to £75,000 + Car + Bonus + Beneﬁts

Financial Reporting Actuary North West Clare Nash £60,000 - £80,000 + Bonus + Beneﬁts

Fantastic opportunity for a Senior Reporting Manager to join this leading provider of life, pensions and investment products. As a capable leader you will take management of a team of circa six, who will be responsible for the delivery of UK actuarial valuations.

My client seeks to appoint an ambitious individual to join a dynamic team. There is some flexibility around the level - you may be nearly qualified - five years’ PQE. Demonstrable track record in reporting is key. Excellent career progression for the right candidate.

CONTRACTS - LIFE INSURANCE - UK Capital Modelling Actuary Kaylash Kukadia

South West £850 - £1,100/day

This is a specialist asset modelling role which uses the most pioneering technique available in the market. We are looking for strong Capital Modellers at qualiﬁed and PQ level.

p50-51_ACT.11.14.indd 50

EV Project Actuary Benjamin Moses

London £600 - £900/day

I am currently working with one of the world’s leading life insurers to help them establish a project team to implement EV into their business reporting structures. This is an exciting global project and one which requires PQ to qualiﬁed actuaries with a variety of skills. Please contact me for details on the project.

28/10/2014 12:34

ASIA Regional CMO Hamza Mush

Hong Kong/Singapore £££Competitive

One of our top insurance clients is seeking a highly experienced and commercial Actuary to be part of executive management as Regional CMO and be responsible for the delivery of a compelling value proposition across their Asia Paciﬁc business.

Regional CRO Hamza Mush

Hong Kong/Singapore £££Competitive

A global ﬁrm with a rapidly growing presence in Asia is seeking a fully qualiﬁed, senior and pragmatic Actuary to develop and maintain the risk appetite for their regional business and foster best practice in mitigating operational and insurance risk.

Capital Structuring Actuary Gary Rushton

Singapore £££Competitive

General Insurance – UK Paul Francis

0207 649 9469

Rob Bentham

0207 649 9351

Sarah Robins

0207 310 8552

Rachel Kelly

0207 310 8579

Ross Anderson

0207 649 9357

Graham Anderson

0207 649 9353

Contracts - G.I. - UK Elise Ogden

0207 649 9355

I am interested in speaking with non-traditional actuaries to join a highly commercial pricing team focusing on some of the most advanced work within the Asia market. Experience of ICA, ALM and Capital man regimes would be desirable.

Life Insurance - UK Clare Nash

0207 649 9350

Senior Product Strategy Actuary Philip Chau

Richard Howard

0207 649 9356

Hong Kong £££Competitive

Natalie Lightfoot

0207 310 8547

A leading multinational insurer is looking for a products Actuary with a commercial slant to oversee and analyse the long term strategy within the business. You will be involved in driving projects that have never been done in Asia before.

Hugo Chambers

0207 310 8642

Pricing Actuary Toby Weston

Benjamin Moses

0207 310 8793

Ani Pannell

+353 144 75975

Kaylash Kukadia

0207 310 8581

Hong Kong £££Competitive

High-growth MNC insurer in Hong Kong seeks a pricing expert with strong GLM and SAS. Reporting to the Chief Actuary, this person will assist their emerging market entities across the region on pricing of both personal and commercial lines.

Contracts - Life Insurance - UK/Europe

Asia Actuarial Manager Toby Weston

Malaysia £££Competitive

My client is a multinational reinsurer with a semi regional hub in KL. We are looking for a NNQ Actuary to work with the Chief Actuary on a broad range of projects supporting the group, a rare opportunity to work in reinsurance in Malaysia.

EUROPE Teamleiter Risk (M/W) Emina Biscevic

NRW £££Competitive

Gary Rushton

+852 5804 9223

Toby Weston

+852 5804 9042

Philip Chau

+852 5804 9287

Hamza Mush

+852 5804 9048

Rhoda Rivera

+852 5804 9225

France Emérique Opou

+33 1 76 77 46 30

Aktuell suche ich einen Experten Risikomanagement/Solvency II (Teamverantwortung von 5 Personen). In dieser position verantworten Sie den Aufbau und die Umsetzung der zukünftigen Solvenzanforderungen für die einzelnen Versicherungsgruppen.

Agathe Ibazizen

+33 1 76 77 46 31

2 x Account Director Actuarial Niels van Nieuwkerk

Patrick McMahon

+353 1 437 0625

Rick Davis

+353 1 685 9059

Rotterdam €100,000 - €150,000 + Beneﬁts

Our client is an international reinsurance broking specialist. The Benelux CEO seeks to recruit two senior account directors to further develop their presence in the Dutch market both in G.I. and life. EC/S2 experience and Dutch market knowledge is essential.

Life Risk Methodology Actuary Manuel Lovell

Germany Up to €80,000 + Bonus + Beneﬁts

My client is looking for an expert in developing the methodologies in order to integrate the various risk components into the stochastic models created by a separate team. You must be a strong communicator wanting to get involved with topics such as SII.

Senior Capital Model Life Actuary Alessio Montaruli

Milan, Italy €75,000+

Our client is looking for a Senior Capital Modelling Life Actuary with prophet or Algo knowledge to support their capital model framework unit with local implementation of internal model. Working language is English.

Ireland

Benelux Niels van Nieuwkerk

+31 2090 0033

Britt Ootes

+312 0290 0035

Germany Manuel Lovell

+49 89 2109 3362

Emina Biscevic

+49 89 3803 8965

Alessio Montaruli

+49 89 2109 3339

Switzerland Audrey Dresen

+41 43 508 0444

Life Actuarial Consultant - French Speaker Paris, France Emérique Opou Up to €53,000 - €55,000 + Bonus

Please contact one of the team for further information on any of the opportunities above or visit www.ojassociates.com/jobs

My client is an international consulting ﬁrm currently expanding their life actuarial practice. They are looking to recruit a young manager with an expertise in life insurance and modelling (MCEV, Capital, Solvency II). An experience of MoSes or prophet is required.

General Contact Details:

Reporting Actuary Ani Pannell

Dublin, Ireland €600 - €750/day

My client, a global insurer, seeks a nearly/newly qualiﬁed Actuary; the ideal candidate will have at least ﬁve years of actuarial experience within a life business. The successful Reporting Actuary will ideally have reported under IFRS in the past.

p50-51_ACT.11.14.indd 51

actuary@ojassociates.com

www.ojassociates.com @OJAssociates oliver-james-associates

28/10/2014 12:34

www.the-arc.co.uk

The Actuarial Recruitment Company

A fresh approach

Senior Actuary Switzerland

General Insurance CHF200K plus

Reserving Analyst Bermuda

General Insurance $Excellent

This senior role will lead the actuarial function for a Swiss based

This Bermuda based reinsurer is looking for a part qualified actuary

reinsurance operation and will have responsibilities for all reserving,

with a background in London Market reserving for a new role in a

capital and regulatory reporting within the business. The roleholder will manage a small team but liaise with and have support from actuaries elsewhere in the group. Prospective candidates will need

small actuarial team on the island. Good communication skills will be required as well as an ability to self manage workloads. Excellent

sufficient experience and qualifications to satisfy the requirements for

benefits are on offer including competitive salary, housing allowance

FINMA as well as the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Ref: ARC26262

and bonus. Ref: ARC26265

Pricing Actuary London

WANT TO SWITCH FROM LIFE CONSULTING TO GI CONSULTING?

General Insurance Circa £100K plus good benefits

This role within a medium size Lloyd’s business will lead the development of the pricing across various direct and reinsurance product lines. The role will involve individual account pricing, the development of pricing tools and the development of a pricing framework within the business. The client is ideally looking for someone with previous relevant pricing experience but strong candidates without existing pricing skills will be considered. Ref: ARC26266

London

£Competitive

Our Client is a small and friendly General Insurance consultancy based in central London. They are keen to hear from any part qualified/nearly qualified bright sparks currently working in a Life Consulting environment, ideally with 3-4 years experience and nearly qualified. The work will be varied and involve working closely with a very experienced and dynamic senior actuary. Ref: ARC26263

Call us anytime including evenings and weekends on 020 7717 9705 or email enquiries@the-arc.co.uk Andy Clark BSc FIA Roger Massey BSc MBA FIA

0781 333 7891 0781 398 9016

andy@the-arc.co.uk roger@the-arc.co.uk The Actuarial Recruitment Company is an employment agency

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