SOA’s international outreach

I’m a little slow noting this, but SOA President Bradley Smith blogged about the proposal to add a property-casualty track this week. He asserts fairly clearly that the move is pointed at international concerns: For us to meet the needs of our growing member and candidate base outside the U.S. and Canada, we must offer [...]

More on the SOA’s P/C track

With the Society of Actuaries planning to launch a casualty track, the CAS responds: The CAS Board affirms that it is the intention of the CAS to remain independent while at the same time cooperating with other actuarial organizations to meet challenges to the profession. There’s more at the link, noting that the CAS: is [...]

SOA declares war on CAS

Feel free to comment on how my headline exaggerates, but first read: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) will begin offering an exam track in general (property-casualty) insurance in 2013, ensuring that the SOA is providing options covering all actuarial disciplines to earning the Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) designation. The SOA Board of [...]

CAS seeks new review of exam process

Been meaning to return to the controversy over CAS exams after my post a couple of weeks ago. But stuff kept getting in the way (like work). Now CAS President Pat Teufel has reopened the issue with this letter (re-posted at the CAS Roundtable with space for comment). Sounding, to my reading, seriously bummed about [...]

AAA’s Supreme Court brief on Obamacare – only one goof

AAA filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief on the challenges to the individual mandate in health care reform. Only one mistake that I saw, but first: Officially, the academy had no comment on whether the individual mandate is constitutional: The Academy takes no position on the constitutionality of the individual-mandate provision, or on any [...]

Looking at 2011 CAS exams – Part One

Tough year for the CAS exams. Results were wacky: The lines on the chart represent the percentage of students passing an exam in a typical year, between 35% and 45%. But this year pass rates were all over the place. Only 11% passed the advanced reserving/ERM course. More than 70% passed the introductory reserving exam. [...]

Chief Science Officer – an actuarial role?

I’ve always been concerned that casualty actuaries paint themselves into a box, in no small part because they have a decade-long education process that, among other things, requires one to memorize large swaths of P&C arcania, like the Annual Statement. The advantage: It makes casualty actuaries well-prepared for any traditional challenge they are likely to [...]

Hackers cruise too close to CAS web site

Well, that’s my takeaway from this email from the organization: All registered users of the CAS Web Site are being asked to update the passwords for account access. The CAS Web Site is hosted by an outside vendor, which also hosts the web site of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). The hacker [...]

Continuing Ed

Completed my continuing education requirements last night, listening to a CAS Webcast from the 2010 Casualty Loss Reserve Seminar. The Casualty Actuarial Society this year started to require members who perform actuarial services to annually attest that they have fulfilled the continuing ed requirements of a major actuarial organization. (Standards differ by country and, in [...]

Why health insurance subsidizes the elderly

Over at the Speaking of Actuaries blog, SOA President Brad Miller puzzles over why Obamacare has younger buyers subsidizing older ones: I discussed this with someone who works on Capitol Hill. I told him I understood the criteria for the first three but was struggling to understand the reason for the young to old age [...]