2020 NOV | ASSA Virtual Convention
In the second week of October, the 47th Convention of the Actuarial Society of South Africa took place for the first time ever on a virtual platform.
The ASSA is committed to the value of connecting and learning as a profession, and although people couldn't meet in person, gathering in a virtual space to continue learning, growing, and contributing to South Africa's recovery was a great alternative that more than 1,500 actuaries attended.
ASSA CEO Mike McDougall, in his May ASSA Update, described the situation succinctly and why it was important for the Convention to go ahead: "Many members of ASSA have been actively involved in modelling the spread of coronavirus and trying to place a value on its impact and the impact of mitigating actions. Situations, like this, where there are significant risks, significant potential costs, and limited and diverse data call out for actuarial skills..."
For this first ever Virtual Convention the ASSA has put together an exciting line-up of presentations, panel discussions and workshops, which will all be available here on actuview from 9 November.
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The Future is African: How to Avoid the Pitfalls, and Thrive Working Throughout Africa
Added 0 167 ViewsFor many years, and now exacerbated by CoViD19, the world has struggled for economic growth. Many businesses have expanded into new markets to chase the inflation-beating returns that they so desire. Africa is an attractive proposition, and there is still
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Presidential Address and Research Prizes
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IFRS 17: Decision Making within an Ambiguous and Complex Environment – Variable Fee Approach and Los
Added 0 152 ViewsInsurers are generally making good strides in readying themselves for IFRS 17. However, one of the pitfalls we believe companies need to avoid is making both design and accounting policy decisions based on what is perceived to be allowed by the standard r
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Understanding Medical Inflation and the Net Discount Rate for Medical Items on Damages Claims
Added 0 66 ViewsThe amounts of negligence claims against the South African government are projected to rise substantially soon. We argue that the medical inflation should be striped of contributions which are not related to cases, hence there is need to strip out these d
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Conversations with Actuaries: Sharing our Unique Experiences to Support Transformation
Added 0 86 ViewsTransformation was the hottest topic at the Convention last year, and this topic is likely to remain as important over the coming years. Last year I was one of the speakers in the session “Conversations with actuaries: our unique journeys to become
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Letting the Light Shine: What Actuaries and Data Scientists Can Learn from Design Thinking and the W
Added 0 90 ViewsThe lightbulb is often thought to be Edison’s most notable invention. However, it is not often understood that his real genius was understanding that it would have no impact without the electrical generation and transmission system, so he invented t
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CPD
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Model Risk in the Time of Covid-19
Added 0 91 ViewsOne could argue that in the history of the world, it has never before depended on models as much for life and death decision-making as it has during the last couple of months as a result of COVID-19. Pandemic or epidemiological models have heavily informe
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Optimising the Performance of Active Investments
Added 0 64 ViewsActive portfolios subject to tracking error constraints are the typical setup for active managers tasked with outperforming a benchmark. The risk and return relationship of such constrained portfolios is described by an ellipse in traditional mean-varianc
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Mortality Improvements in South Africa: Insights from Pensioner Mortality
Added 1 28 ViewsThe study of mortality improvements in South Africa has been complicated by data limitations: from a population perspective, the data are incomplete and misreported whereas company data often span short time periods and exhibit significant heterogeneity.
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Why Is the Haf Not the Head of the Actuarial Function?
Added 0 21 ViewsIn this paper we investigate the role of the Head of the Actuarial Function (HAF) and its implementation in the South African Insurance market, two years after the passing of the new Insurance Act in 2017. We compare the current role in South Africa to ac
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Discrimination-Free Insurance Pricing
Added 0 105 ViewsWe consider the following question: given information on individual policyholder characteristics, how can we ensure that insurance prices do not discriminate with respect to protected characteristics, such as gender? We address the issues of direct and in
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RBC Regulatory Changes
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Down The Rabbit Hole: How Much Further Is there to Fall? The NCD Trajectory for South Africa
Added 0 43 ViewsPercept and RGA have been working together with support from ASSA to produce research on the burden of non-communicable diseases in South Africa. A number of public-domain research briefs will be produced as a result. We propose to present some important
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Universal Life – A Boiling Frog Problem?
Added 0 34 ViewsUniversal Life policies dominated the market during the 1980’s and 1990’s. They introduced flexibility to the market as they replaced traditional with-profit reversionary bonus and unit linked endowment products. However this paper puts forwar
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Regulating South Africa’S Retirement Funds: The Case for Clearer Objectives
Added 0 20 ViewsThe rationale for regulating financial markets rests on a combination of their considerable complexity and their importance to society. Retirement funds are worthy of special regulatory attention because of the substantial role that they play in the lives
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Adapting FS Model Risk Management Practices for Emerging AI/ML Model Risks
Added 0 224 ViewsArtificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are evolving at lightning speed with ever increasing applications across many areas of a financial institution’s business activities. Whilst FS firms have actively pursuing maturation of their m
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Actuary on Fire (Financial Independence, Retire Early)
Added 0 31 ViewsThe goal of the FIRE movement is to replace cost of living at early retirement. FIRE won’t be possible for the majority but the goal for these members is Financial Independence (FI), i.e. to replace cost of living at retirement. Actuaries, especiall
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Don’t Leave Money on the Table. Optimise Your Capital
Added 0 28 ViewsWe’re about two years into SAM and the dust has settled with many life insurers finding a steady rhythm of submitting regulatory returns. The industry now has an opportunity to improve beyond just reporting efficiently and in this presentation we wi
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The Contribution of South Africa’S Insurers ot Systemic Risk: Thoughts for Policymakers
Added 0 17 ViewsSuch is the importance of financial markets and such is the potential impact of their failure on entities and households well outside these markets that careful regulation of these markets is called for. This regulation should be based on the foundation o
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Role of Cell Captive for Inclusive Insurance
Added 0 58 ViewsFinancial Inclusion is a key objective in building the financial services industry. Expanding access to appropriate and fair insurance products to unserved customer segments is an important part of the financial inclusion agenda. Cell captives can play a
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Actuarial Remuneration Landscape – A Recruiters Perspective
Added 0 17 ViewsSA3 has successfully conducted a salary survey amongst actuarial professionals in South Africa for the past 4 years. We aim to dig into these results from 2016 – 2019 to cover the following in our presentation:* Introduction to survey methodology an
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Should We Tax The Anti-Vax? Ethical and other Considerations of Using Vaccination History as a Ratin
Added 0 26 ViewsVaccinations are accessible, affordable, and highly effective, but vaccination coverage is lower than it should be, and hundreds of thousands of adults, who constitute the majority of the insured population, are still dying annually of vaccine-preventable
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Impact Investing in a Post Covid-19 World
Added 0 52 ViewsImpact investors have crucial roles to play in responding to the COVID-19 crisis and helping communities build resiliency across the globe. Importantly, COVID-19 has presented opportunities to adjust and maximise impact activity to respond to the needs of
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The Case for Alternative Investments for Retirement Funds in South Africa with a Particular Focus on
Added 0 16 ViewsThis presentation will consider* The current South African Macro Economic and Social Environment and Context* The influence, role and impact of Institutional Investors in this Environment* The roles and responsibilities of Actuaries in Institutional Inves
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Caught in the Perfect Storm, Do We Throw a Life Line to Current Income Protection Products or Rather
Added 0 17 ViewsIncome protection products face an uncertain future. Caught in the perfect storm of a pandemic tsunami, economic jagged rocks, leaks in the once water-tight design and a probable retrenchment flood, the future of this product as the life boat of South Afr
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Economic Indicators Influencing Lapse Experience – From an Interesting Tool to A Business Imperative
Added 0 24 ViewsLast year we used machine learning techniques to showcase a model that combines policy variables and economic data to predict lapse experience. Economic conditions in South Africa made such models an interesting addition to insurers toolboxes for business
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The Future Isn’t What it Used to Be
Added 0 15 ViewsBEYOND COVID-19: Mending fences between citizens and building bridges across old divides. The future is not what it used to be: we are not the equal, caring society we had hoped to be.• Leaders have to promote the values of dignity, inclusivity and s
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Worth More Dead Than Alive
Added 0 12 ViewsSuicide claims contribute to one of the leading claim cause categories, unnatural claims, in retail life insurance policies. The traditional approach to managing this risk is to underwrite policyholders both medically and financially and rely on a 2 year
