Chairperson’s Corner

By Sandee Schuster

Risk Management, February 2022

The Joint Risk Management Section (JRMS) is unique among the Society of Actuaries sections as it brings together the experience and perspectives of risk management professionals from the Society of Actuaries (SOA), Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA). This collaborative effort allows the SOA, CAS and CIA to gain insight and knowledge from each other while building a strong actuarial community of risk management professionals. Risk management tends to be less country-specific than other actuarial topics, which enables the JRMS to be more global in perspective, enhancing the section’s ability to serve the needs of members in various countries worldwide.

The JRMS Council leads the efforts to build out a portfolio of benefits and continuing education opportunities for the JRMS section membership and the risk management community as a whole. This includes:

• Organizing risk management related sessions at various actuarial conferences and industry events.
• Providing webinars on current risk management topics and podcast interviews with notable individuals within the risk management community.
• Maintaining and augmenting an e-book library with links to a curated selection of relevant books and articles that is reviewed and updated on a regular basis.
• Sponsoring a variety of research initiatives, some of which are fully funded by the JRMS section budget while others are funded in concert with other sections, actuarial organization or the SOA’s Research Expanding Boundaries pool.
• Publishing periodic newsletters (such as Risk Management) and notifications of emerging topics or events.

Some JRMS resources, such as risk management related research reports, are freely available to anyone through the research pages on the SOA’s website, while others, such as our e-book library, are exclusively available to section members.

As you all know, webinars have become even more foundational to continuing education during the past 18 months. The JRMS Council has met this challenge head-on and is proud to be providing section members quality risk management webinars. In the past few months, we have brought forth several fantastic webinars that were not only well attended, but also well received! These webinars, “Hybrid Proxy Modeling” and “ERM for Smaller Companies and Emerging Markets,” are available for viewing on the SOA website. In December, we had another great webinar coming that is sure to be well attended, this time on the topic of model risk management.

The JRMS Council met in January to determine the focus and initiatives for 2022. We will update you in the next newsletter on the results of those discussions and what you can expect to see in 2022 and farther out.

Over the past few years, the SOA has been implementing a new initiative to transform and adapt the section philosophy to better meet the needs of our membership. This new agenda will change how the professional sections operate and communicate, but will not remove any of the benefits you currently receive as section members. We can expect more opportunities to interact and learn from others who have similar interests, questions or roles.

Each year, the end of October marks the transition point from one year’s leadership team to the next on the section council.

• Thank you to our outgoing section council members: Tony Dardis, Frank Reynolds, Bob Wolf and Tom Mao. You have brought significant benefits to the council and we hope you will continue to do so this year as Friends of the Council!
• A special thank you to Frank Reynolds who was our chair for the past year! During Frank’s term on the council, one of his many contributions was the great care he took to ensure that our e-library always had new offerings available to benefit our members.
• Congratulations to our incoming newly elected members of the council: Daniel Klein, Yi Yang, Jing Fritz and Chet Szczepanski. I am excited to be working with each of you over the coming year and appreciate your support of the JRMS!

Sandee Schuster, FSA, MAAA, is chair of the Joint Risk Management Section Council and works in operational risk management at USAA. She can be reached at sschuster@tds.net.