Candidate Questionnaire
Daniel S. Pribe, FSA 2001, MAAA 1995
Lumeris
Vice President and Chief Actuary St. Louis, MO
Brief description of current work:
Chief actuary at a health services organization responsible for all actuarial services including financial reporting valuation, pricing, value based contracting analyses
Primary Area of Practice:
Health
Other Areas of Practice:
Social Insurance, Predictive Analytics
Professional Background
Provide a brief description of your professional background and the type of work you have performed and explain how these experiences have uniquely prepared you as an Elected Board Member and qualify you in carrying out the strategic direction of the SOA.
This year marks my 35th year of working in an actuarial capacity primarily in the health area of practice. Those years were split between working with insurance companies, both large and small, and as a consultant partnering with clients.
I have extensive experience in working with boards of directors, senior management, and clients in strategic planning, risk analyses, product development and placement, financial forecasting and scenario testing, pricing and underwriting, and data analytics. This experience includes all lines of health individual and group businesses (e.g., Commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid).
My responsibilities have included helping to start several insurance companies, developing and managing staffs of actuaries, underwriters, and analysts, financial forecasting, reserve calculations, rate development and filings, ORSA modeling and reporting, budget development and management, being an appointed actuary, and guiding various work groups to achieve corporate objectives.
My experiences have reinforced the importance of creating organizations that are sustainable, adaptable, and foster ingenuity. The following explains my thoughts in the context of the SOA’s strategic direction:
Sustainability: the SOA must provide an educational and research framework that allows actuaries to compete and remain relevant in our changing environments. Thus, the SOA must keep providing opportunities to expand and elevate the profession.
Adaptability: the SOA must continue to review and adapt its learning pathways, for both candidates and members, with opportunities to learn new skills and learn about emerging issues and technologies.
Ingenuity: the SOA must continue to provide opportunities for members to collaborate and learn within and across areas of practice.
My professional (and volunteer) experiences have prepared me to serve the SOA membership in helping to guide our organization to be sustainable, adaptable, and apply our ingenuity to addressing broader societal issues and business opportunities.
Volunteer, Governance and Personal Experience
Describe how your volunteer, governance and personal experiences would strengthen your contributions to the SOA Board, the organization, and strategic plan execution. Please list your relevant volunteer experience. Please include the name of the organization, your role, and approximate dates.
I received the 2021 SOA President’s Award for contributions to the SOA and my volunteer work which includes:
- SOA Educational Pathways
- Serving on an SOA Board-appointed taskforce that designed the latest changes to the Associate Pathway to better prepare new actuaries for a future increasingly dominated by Data Science and the growth of AI (2020-2021)
- SOA Education and Exams
- Past General Chair (2018-2019)
- General Chair for Education and Examination (2017–2018)
- Fellowship Exam Chair (2014–2017)
- Group Health DP and CSP General Officer (2010-2014)
- Group Health CSP Chairman (2007-2010)
- Part 8 Assistant Vice-Chair and question writer/grader (2002-2007)
- Predictive Analytics grader (2019-present)
- Other Actuarial volunteer work
- ASB Health Committee Member (2020-present)
- Health Practice International Committee member (2014-present)
- Health Section Research Committee member (2009-2014)
- Actuarial Value Subcommittee member (2010-2013)
- Research Strategic Initiative Group Member(2010-2013)
- Co-authoring several articles and speaking at the International Actuarial Association meeting in 2016 and other SOA and industry meetings on topics ranging from valuation to health care reform.
My SOA volunteer roles have increased in responsibility and have helped the SOA create an educational system that adapts to competitive pressures and provides members with the resources and skills needed for the challenges we will face over the next 5-10 years or more.
The SOA must continue to meet employer’s needs, address emerging issues (e.g., climate change, high-cost biologics, changing demographics, and AI) and train future actuaries to thrive with these challenging issues and remain ‘ahead of the competition’.
My natural next step as a volunteer is to serve the SOA membership on the board and use my experience to advance the profession as the board continues to transform our educational offerings and empower the profession to remain relevant and viable.
Agility/Change
Describe a significant change that you led in the workplace or in your volunteer activities. What were the largest obstacles you overcame, and what would you have done differently to ensure greater success.
Earlier in my career, I was tasked with developing an on-line quoting tool for small group health insurance quotes. This was a new distribution system for our organization and required forming a committee that included finance, IT, legal, marketing and sales. We developed a very robust and dynamic web-based system that took into consideration several rating variables including demographics, benefit options, regions, etc. At the time, this was state-of-the-art and new to the regions we operated in. This was deployed and well received in the market and it helped increase sales for that line of business.
The major challenges were in communication. Several days prior to the planned deployment, there were major concerns from our sales area regarding potential reputational risk if the tool did not work and to our relationships with our brokers who perceived this approach as a competitor. With the help of IT, I successfully demonstrated to our senior management that the tool was ready for deployment. Additionally, I worked with marketing in developing a communication message to our brokers that this was complementary to their efforts and did not undercut them.
In hindsight, I would have worked with marketing and sales earlier and more often to develop both an internal and external communication strategy. I learned that as an actuary, one’s technical skills alone are not sufficient to win over skeptical colleagues. The ability to communicate and build trust is often more important. Increasing new actuaries’ ability to communicate clearly has been a focus of mine as a leader in the SOA’s education system.
Motivating/Influencing
Describe a time when you helped resolve a difficult situation in a professional setting. Describe the situation, the actions you took, and the outcome.
Through most of my career I have been involved rate setting and price negotiations. In one particular situation we were negotiating with a very large provider system and the two sides were at an impasse primarily due to a miscommunication between the main negotiators. I stepped in and started asking questions, prefacing my comments/questions by saying we want to get a better understanding of their position. Starting with first principles, we were able to determine their point of view on rate schedules, carve-outs and limits, the metrics that were important to them and how they determined their values, and so on. They appreciated the ‘reset’ and through this work we were able to negotiate a successful contract.
Diversity
What steps might the SOA take to improve its diversity, equity and inclusion? You can read more about current efforts by the organization at www.soa.org/programs/diversity-inclusion.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusions (DEI) is an important component of the SOA’s strategic plan. This can be seen through its DEI investment in training programs for staff and volunteers, increased funding for diversity partner organizations, and expanding its exam fee reimbursement program for students from underrepresented groups.
I strongly support these initiatives. Each of us has different experiences driven in a large part by our race, gender, economic situation, and other factors shaping our life view. The SOA must respectfully consider these different views in continuing to develop robust and strong approaches to the challenges we face.
That said, it is interesting to consider the following from the SOA’s Diversity Report:
- About a third of the SOA membership is female while over half of the US population is female
- About 20% of STEM bachelor’s degrees awarded were conferred to Black or Latino graduates yet less than 10% of ‘new entrants’ (i.e., individuals that took Exam P or Exam FM) to the SOA were Black or Latino
- Of these new entrants, the data appears to indicate that a greater proportion of Blacks and Latinos don’t continue to an ASA designation while more white candidates do.
The SOA should continue looking into what is driving these disparities. Additionally, the SOA should continue supporting the Math Motivators program and look for other opportunities focusing on high school students and even middle-school students showing that mathematics and statistics are fun and can lead to a rewarding career (as an actuary!).
International
The 2022-2024 Strategic Plan includes an objective to Accelerate International Growth. Please explain how you will help the Board accomplish this.
There are a couple of areas the SOA should focus on to accelerate their international growth objectives. The first is education. The pre-qualification technical education is roughly the same regardless of a candidate’s country of practice. The SOA should continue efforts to align the ASA curriculum with the broader international community. Next, it should continue to enhance or create innovative methods for pathways to ASA, such as the UCAP designations for universities.
The second is through collaboration with other actuarial organizations to address issues we all face. Examples include climate change, financing of high-cost specialty and biologic drugs, etc. Through this collaboration the SOA will enhance its brand.
I have extensive knowledge of the SOA’s education and examination programs through my volunteer work and I believe this knowledge will advance the SOA’s objective.
Emerging
The SOA Long-Term Growth Strategy outlines the six critical issues our research has identified as the trends changing our environment and impacting our work as actuaries. How might the Board address any of these issues to keep the SOA successful?
My work in the health arena requires the analysis of a tremendous amount of data coming from multiple sources and in formats that may vary greatly. As a result I work with a lot of highly talented data analysts, programmers, etc. that do some great analytics. However, my observation has been that actuaries are the best at taking those analytics, telling the story – typically financial - behind the numbers, and then applying them to the situation at hand. This work obviously allows for making informed decisions for future risks.
This points to one of the six critical issues, ‘the rise in data science’, but this has been observed for years. This also points to what I think is a more significant emerging issue of ‘AI Changing the Nature of Work’. While this may pose a risk for our profession, I think this also poses huge opportunity if we embrace it. Thus, I suggest that the board develop a group to explore the emergence of AI and how it will impact the actuarial profession. From there, the SOA should develop ways to educate current membership and integrate into the exam process.
Finally, I suggest the SOA create or enhance existing forums for actuaries from across different areas of practice and different countries to share experiences in the ways that they use AI or how it may impact their work.