Recent years have seen a growth in the popularity of proxy modelling, with insurers increasingly using proxy techniques to model the full distribution of their balance sheet for use in capital calculations. In this talk Martin Elliot and Gavin Conn from Moody’s Analytics will look at some of the practical issues encountered when using proxy techniques as well as looking at other areas, beyond capital calculation, in which these techniques could be used.
Speaker: Alan Collins, Director and Head of Corporate Advisory Services, Spence
Having previously worked for Towers Perrin and Mercer, Alan joined Spence in 2012. Alan has been a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries since 2006 and has held formal Scheme Actuary roles since 2008. Over recent years, Alan has contributed articles to publications such as Accountancy Age and PMI magazine. Alan has also presented at a number of industry forums and has presented to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland Pensions Conference on State Pensions Reform.
This half-day seminar will take a focused look at various approaches and schools of thought pertaining to the increasingly important area of Credit Risk. It is aimed not just at experienced practitioners in this field, but those who wish to learn more about latest cutting edge developments and consider ways in which their own models and practices could be made both more robust and sophisticated.
The programme content will be of interest to AFH’s, Chief Risk Officers and their advisers. Some knowledge of the subject matter will be useful
Please note, this programme may be subject to change.
Whether you're into old school Guess Who, fast paced FIFA action, or movie-turned-lego games, anything goes. Provided it's a game. That people have actually heard of.
Assemble a troop (maximum 8 people), then send your team name and the game you will impersonate to Jon Mitchell. To avoid duplication, we will operate a first come first serve policy for the games.
A venue and the times will be confirmed shortly, for now, please email: jon.p.mitchell@uk.pwc.com to book.
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) will be delivering ‘train the trainer’ session to assist organisations run their own Professional Skills CPD events using the online video case studies developed to assist IFoA members meet the requirements under Stage 3: Professional Skills for Experienced Members.
Please note that these sessions are of interest to individuals who wish to host their own professional skills CPD sessions.
Yorkshire Actuarial Society - Quantitative Approaches to Model Uncertainty
Speaker: Andrew Smith, Deloitte
Venue: Aviva, Wellington Row, York, YO90 1WR
Many areas of actuarial work require the use of models, but we seldom have solid grounds to believe that a chosen model is the same, or even close, to the process that generated past observations. Prudence demands that we investigate possible explanations, and consider carefully the business implications of using a model that may turn out to be wrong.
If you would like to attend this event please email Malcolm Slee
Richard Purcell and Adam Noach will look at how harnessing behavioural science could be a game changer for life insurance. They will look at various behavioural theories and how they could be integrated within life insurance products to increase the value to customers and help insurers manage risk more effectively.
Refreshments will be served from 17:30 and the lecture will start promptly at 18:00. There is no need to register in advance for this meeting and non-members are welcome. There will also be live tweeting available via #SIASNov14 during the talk – please do get involved with any comments and questions for the speaker.
John Atherton is a UK qualified actuary who recently spent 5 years in China working for the joint venture of his UK company. During a period of rapid change in China and its financial services market he was involved in the full spectrum of finance and risk management performing roles of Chief Actuary, CFO and CRO as an Executive Team member. John will try to give a flavour of what it is like for a foreigner to work in this fast paced environment while trying to understand and respect the significant social and cultural differences.
Steven's presentation will highlight the fast growing trend in emerging markets, especially China, as well as potential opportunities for institutional investors. More specifically he will cover:
A high level economic outlook of emerging markets and why they should be considered as part of the opportunity set
What type of asset strategies can be implemented by institutional investors
Use China as an example/case study to highlight the key trends due to technological change and the practical implications to investors.
Following the success of last year's NWAS quiz, the self-styled "legendary quizmaster" Nigel Jones will be returning to discover who the smartest actuaries and students are in the North West.
Meet and greet will start at 18.30, with a buffet then being served to start off the quiz. There will be a maximum of six people per team and bonus points will be awarded to those wearing festive hats.
The quiz and buffet, which is being subsidised by NWAS, will cost £3 for members and £5 for non-members.
If you would like to attened this event please email Vicky Proctor
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) will be delivering ‘train the trainer’ session to assist organisations run their own Professional Skills CPD events using the online video case studies developed to assist IFoA members meet the requirements under Stage 3: Professional Skills for Experienced Members.
Please note that these sessions are of interest to individuals who wish to host their own professional skills CPD sessions.
In this session the Cass Business School - Hymans Robertson joint research team will present the results of their research into assessing longevity basis risk. The project was commissioned by the LLMA and the IFoA. More details will following shortly, you can book to attend now.
The IFoA are introducing a series of Masterclass events taking place from December 2014 - January 2015.
These Masterclasses will deepen your advanced communication skills in different contexts. They will further enhance your reputation as an effective and powerful communicator.
Great communication is all about the power to influence...and not the influence of power. Learn how to influence different people in different situations and add several more strings to your bow as a communicator. The session will cover:
Understanding different styles
Aligning preferences for how to influence
Push or pull?
Building rapport
What works best for different situations?
The Masterclass Series:
Tracy Sinclair, Professional Development trainer and facilitator will be presenting this two hour masterclass on Personal Impact as an introduction to a series of half-day masterclasses that will include:
Personal Impact, 26 November, 2 hour masterclass - find out more
Influencing Others, 9 December, morning
Difficult Conversations, 9 December, afternoon - find out more
Public Speaking/Presenting, 13 January 2015, morning - find out more
Motivating and Inspiring others, 13 January 2015, afternoon - find out more
Delegates can attend one of the sessions or all of them, depending on their development requirements. The IFoA are offering a discount for those who attend all four of the half-day modules above.
The IFoA are introducing a series of Masterclass events taking place from November 2014 - January 2015.
These Masterclasses will deepen your advanced communication skills in different contexts. They will further enhance your reputation as an effective and powerful communicator.
Difficult news can be difficult to deliver. This module teaches you how to clearly convey an important message whilst maintaining the relationship with the other person. This session will cover:
Best practice for giving positive and challenging feedback
Bet practice for receiving feedback
Planning for a challenging conversation
Tools for effective delivery of feedback.
The Masterclass Series:
Tracy Sinclair, Professional Development trainer and facilitator will be presenting this two hour masterclass on Personal Impact as an introduction to a series of half-day masterclasses that will include:
Personal Impact, 26 November, 2 hour masterclass - find out more
Influencing Others, 9 December, morning - find out more
Difficult Conversations, 9 December, afternoon
Public Speaking/Presenting, 13 January 2015, morning - find out more
Motivating and Inspiring Others, 13 January 2015, afternoon - find out more
Delegates can attend one of the sessions or all of them, depending on their development requirements. The IFoA are offering a discount for those who attend all four of the half-day modules above.
Neil Hawthorne and speakers from the Pensions Insurance Corporation (PIC) will explore the significance of the risks posed by a defined benefit pension schemes on the market value on some of the biggest companies in the UK.
PIC will report on an in-depth study carried out recently in relation to how the net surplus/deficit positions of the pension scheme affect FTSE 100 Company values. Neil will present his findings from his Imperial College Research project considering how the status of pension funding affects the share price of FTSE 350 companies as well as the impact the economic downturn has had on the market’s view of these companies.
Both speakers will then discuss the reasons for their findings and how these could be further used in a future study or to assist clients.
Who should attend
This session is of particular interest to all pension and investment actuaries who are interested in the risks posed by the pension scheme on companies and potential impact that such studies could have on market attitudes. This will provide an opportunity to understand and challenge the views and conclusions expressed by Neil and the Pensions Insurance Corporation.
Speakers to include:
Neil Hawthorne, Towers Watson
Dr. John Llewellyn, Llewellyn Consulting
Pete Richardson, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
The purpose of this workshop is to cover the major areas of UK life insurer taxation. Topics will be covered interactively, through a mixture of presentations and case studies, including:
‘I-E’ Taxation
Shareholder tax
Tax modelling and Planning
Current life insurance tax developments, including ICA+/Solvency II.
Who should attend?
This workshop is aimed at actuaries and other insurance professionals who are involved in life insurance financial reporting and are exposed to the impact of tax on financial results in both the modelling arena and from a business planning perspective. The workshop will also be of interest to senior management of life insurers who have responsibility for reviewing tax results in particular, as traditional actuarial tax modelling techniques commonly used are often significantly different to the actual tax calculation. Please note limited spaces are available for this workshop.
You will have the opportunity to listen to, and interact with, leading actuaries in the field of recovery and resolution planning, with a presentation by Nick Dexter’s working group, followed by generous time for discussion, and a drinks reception.
Resolution planning is becoming an important extension of stress testing with its own PRA Fundamental Rule. However, it is not just an actuarial topic, so this is a great chance for actuaries to involve their colleagues in their work.
The session will involve the presentation of a draft framework for developing a resolution plan, and will invite the audience to share their experiences both in this area and in dealing with crisis situations more generally.
This session will be of interest to any actuaries involved in stress testing or senior management (given it is becoming more common for regulators to want to understand the impact of significant transactions or restructuring in creating or increasing barriers to resolution)
The RRP working group
The RRP working group of the IFOA is working towards the development of a framework for actuaries and firms working to develop Recovery and Resolution Plans, by:
developing a framework to help establish a common understanding of what an insurance company recovery plan should include
considering how it should fit with other requirements such as Stress and Scenario Testing
acting as a forum for actuaries working in this area to share ideas and information
working with the PRA, FCA and FSCS as is requested by them
responding to any consultation papers that are issued on this and related subjects, typically by FSB, IAIS or PRA.
The first paper to be presented addresses three research questions:
Can the factors found in stochastic mortality-forecasting models be associated with real-world trends in health-related variables?
Does inclusion of health-related factors in models improve forecasts?
Do resulting models give better forecasts than existing stochastic mortality models?
Mortality models used for forecasting are predominantly based on the statistical properties of time series and do not generally incorporate an understanding of the forces driving secular trends. We consider whether the space spanned by the latent factor structure in mortality data can be adequately described by developments in gross domestic product, health expenditure and lifestyle-related risk factors using statistical techniques developed in macroeconomics and finance. These covariates are then shown to improve forecasts when incorporated into a Bayesian hierarchical model. Results are comparable or better than benchmark stochastic mortality models.
A relatively recent literature has developed on modelling mortality in multiple populations together. These studies are driven by two distinct motivations. The first motivation is to improve the accuracy of forecasts in smaller populations. Using robust information from mortality trends for large populations may help to give more accurate or more reasonable forecasts in smaller populations for the purposes of public financing decisions or health care planning (Li and Lee, 2005; Jarner and Kryger, 2009).
A second motivation comes from the actuarial literature. In longevity risk contracts, a fixed amount is paid based on expected mortality rates in return for a payment based on actual Realised mortality rates (a ‘q-forward’). The reference population for the purpose of pricing these products is based on the mortality experience of a given national population. However, the mortality experience of the population used in pricing the hedging instrument may differ from the population of the pension plan (Li and Hardy, 2011; Dowd et al., 2011). These papers have generated a number of statistical models linking mortality in different populations. The purpose of the second paper is to suggest a reason why these relationships exist based on an economic literature on technology and knowledge diffusion. Insights from this paper may help to improve these models and also help to deepen understanding of the processes driving international longevity trends.
The presentation for this event will be available shortly.
Chair - Mark Shimmons, President of SoNIA (Society of Northern Ireland Actuaries)
Speakers – Declan French, Lecturer Queens University Belfast and Colin O’Hare, Senior Lecturer, Monash university
17.00 - 17.30 - Registration and refreshments
17.30 - 19.00 - Programme
19.00 - 20.00 - IFoA/SoNIA drinks reception
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries is delighted to support the Society of Northern Ireland Actuaries (SoNIA) in hosting a drinks reception following this sessional meeting. The reception marks the third anniversary of SoNIA.
The Joint Forum on Actuarial Regulation (‘JFAR’) was established in 2013 by the Financial Reporting Council, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Pensions Regulator and the Prudential Regulation Authority. The JFAR is a unique collaboration between regulators to co-ordinate, within the context of its members’ objectives, the identification and analysis of public interest risks to which actuarial work is relevant.
JFAR, through a discussion paper issued by the FRC ‘Joint Forum on Actuarial Regulation: A risk perspective,’ is seeking views on its identification of risks to the public interest where actuarial work is relevant. Join this event to give your views and to provide feedback to guide the JFAR’s further analysis.
The Joint Forum on Actuarial Regulation (‘JFAR’) was established in 2013 by the Financial Reporting Council, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Pensions Regulator and the Prudential Regulation Authority. The JFAR is a unique collaboration between regulators to co-ordinate, within the context of its members’ objectives, the identification and analysis of public interest risks to which actuarial work is relevant.
JFAR, through a discussion paper issued by the FRC ‘Joint Forum on Actuarial Regulation: A risk perspective,’ is seeking views on its identification of risks to the public interest where actuarial work is relevant. Join this event to give your views and to provide feedback to guide the JFAR’s further analysis.
