Welcome to the May issue. At this time of seasonal transition, we explore the scope and boundaries of our changing profession.
One sign of these changes is the fact that I can no longer draw a clear distinction between many sustainability and ‘traditional’ actuarial features. In this issue, we read about the promises and pitfalls of sustainability-linked lending (p30) and an introduction to the ‘greenium’ theory (p32) under the Investment tag, about the emerging questions around social responsibility posed by the changing environmental and technological landscape (p40) under Risk, and, in the cover article, about insuring hydrogen value chains (p35) under General Insurance.
As sustainability becomes an everyday actuarial topic, so too does greenwashing. For this month’s interview (p14), Travis Elsum speaks to Fabiola Schneider from GreenWatch about the different dimensions of greenwashing, and the work that she and her colleagues do to detect and call it out.
Beyond sustainability, authors this month argue that actuaries can also have a changing role to play in other areas, such as post-retirement planning (p17 and p24) and even regulatory reform in the energy sector (p38). Our ‘World view’ article this month comes from Ukraine (p42), and offers a glimpse of the upheaval the war can cause to individual lives and – outside of the war context – the unique challenges faced by the actuarial community in the country.
I hope you enjoy the issue.
Ruolin Wang Editor [email protected]
