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…
In the early 2000s, I worked for an insurance software company with many multinational clients. Quite a few of them had subsidiaries in Asia. This gave me the opportunity to travel to Japan to prospect for new business. In 2025, my wife and I vacationed in Japan. That gave me a chance to reflect on…
On January 27, 2026, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight. Among the reasons cited was the advancement of “disruptive technologies,” including artificial intelligence (AI). While the Doomsday Clock is a symbolic measure rather than a specific risk indicator, its inclusion of AI reflects broader public concern…
Undaunted by an intergalactic case study, a student team from the University of New South Wales, Australia, exercised their creativity and determination to achieve first place in the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute’s 2026 Student Research Case Study Challenge. Team VALCS Consulting, made up of Alan Steny, Carol Zhang, Liya Ruan, Sarina Truong and…