Chairperson's Corner
By Yi Ru
Actuary of the Future, January 2022
It is the holiday season again when the smell of sweetness and happiness is lingering in the air, it is also the time when people celebrate a year’s accomplishments and look forward to the upcoming year with new goals and hopes. The pandemic continues to impact our lives in all sorts of way, but after almost two years, we all have tried to adapt ourselves, some even discover a new self or develop a new habit. When yearly meetings are held on time, even though not in-person, let us not forget about the SOA staff who have worked hard to make things happen for us to get together and continue our development online. A big thanks to all of them!
Despite that all SOA events are being held virtually, the SOA Actuary of the Future Section Council and its members have managed to achieve our goals and deliver strong content through various channels:
- Published two webcasts, two podcasts, and six issues of this newsletter.
- Had representatives and content presented at all three major meetings (Health, LAS, and ImpACT).
- Continued to have strong presence in Reddit and LinkedIn.
- Participated in events such as the Fiction Contest with judging and publishing two winning articles.
In addition, we established strong connection with other SOA professional sections, we supported Predictive Analytics and Futurism’s Hack-a-thon event; we have been taking part in the Actuarial Innovation & Technology Program, working closely on the Fostering Innovation initiative. By doing this, we hope to engage our members more and continue to deliver our promise on being the primary resource for aspiring and current actuaries.
New for 2021, we co-sponsored four networking events. It started with only two sections: Actuary of the Future and Entrepreneurial & Innovation, but the event continued to attract other councils to join and the last one held in November had a total of six councils co-sponsoring. Working from home does not mean isolation, the networking event was designed to provide an opportunity for members to meet and talk to each other even in a virtual setting and to discuss some interesting and trending topics as well, such as climate change impact on insurance, blockchain, etc. Stay tuned for more virtual networking events in 2022! Another new release in 2021 is the SOA Affiliate Membership program, it is believed that AOF will continue to support the new community, provide mentors, and guide members into discovering all possibilities in the future actuarial profession.
AOF revises its mission statement every year and we revisit our goals and explore ways to realize them. I would like to thank every council member and especially our prior chair, Eddie Smith, for such a great year in 2021. Moving on to 2022, we believe that we will carry on our mission, to continuously serve and support our members with our newsletter, webcasts, podcasts, and so many other events we generate. If you have any suggestions and/or ideas, feel free to contact me or any council member directly. You can also send an email to sections@soa.org. We look forward to hearing from you!
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries or the respective authors’ employers.
Yi Ru, FSA, CERA, is a senior assistant actuary at RGA. She can be contacted at yru@rgare.com.