Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated each year from September 15 to October 15. What began as a week-long recognition in 1968 under President Lyndon B. Johnson was later expanded to a month-long celebration by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The expanded celebration provides more time to recognize and honor the significant contributions Hispanic and Latino…
Drawing on the long-term nature of life insurance operations, industry practices and corporate transformation exploration, this article focuses on interest rate risk management. It proposes robust management mechanisms and offers long-term development recommendations to serve as a reference for high-quality industry growth. THE NATURE OF LIFE INSURANCE AND THE PRIMACY OF INTEREST RATE RISK Life…
Every actuary likely remembers their first job. The supervisor hands the trainee a list of steps and often says, “Do step 1 and come back to me.” The trainee returns, the supervisor reviews, and usually sends the work back with corrections. Maybe the trainee misunderstood the direction. Maybe they did it wrong. Maybe the supervisor…
When preparing for their first jobs, one of the top considerations entry-level candidates may have is whether they want to work for an insurance company or a consulting firm. They likely consider which environment will be more interesting, which will be more demanding, which type of company culture they will like better, and which environment…
Extreme events are bad enough when they occur in isolation. A single event allows time to recover, time to rebuild, and time to plan for the next one. But when these events occur in tandem, the effects can be much, much worse than merely the sums of the losses of the individual events. They are…
I’ve known Alex Zaidlin, FSA, MAAA, for more than two decades. We both grew up in Toronto, studied Actuarial Science at the University of Toronto, and ultimately built our careers as actuaries in New York. The University of Toronto is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading universities, and its actuarial science programs are…
Actuaries are often defined by their analytical precision and technical expertise. But what happens when an actuary deliberately steps away from the numbers to embrace the unpredictability of nature? I recently sat down with Ray Shi, FSA, to learn how his pursuit of adventure has transformed not only his personal life but also his professional…
For many years, Nigeria’s insurance industry, and indeed the financial services industry, has operated in a state of uneasy equilibrium. Capital requirements, though they existed, were usually reported, and regulatory compliance was largely achieved. Yet, beneath this surface lay a more uncomfortable truth: Many insurers were structurally undercapitalized relative to the risks they carried.1 The…
At the start of the 20th century, American novelist and social reformer Upton Sinclair wrote about child labor and slaughterhouses, and American industrialist Henry Ford developed his assembly lines. Against this backdrop of industry and social concern, a few individuals began laying the groundwork for shaping government policy on what we eat. The first individual…
As an actuary in 2012, I was leading the biggest product launch of the year when I found myself in an ambulance, barely conscious. My blood pressure had dropped to 80/40. In that moment, the product launch wasn’t on my mind. Weeks later, I learned what happened back at the office. My team did not…