Every year the IFoA recognises excellence in research by awarding prizes for outstanding research papers in actuarial science or related disciplines. These awards continue the IFoA and its predecessor bodies’ tradition of awarding excellence.
Named after a former president of the Institute of Actuaries, the Peter Clark Prize is awarded for an outstanding paper presented to or published for an actuarial audience. For 2022, this went to Tim Berry and James Sharpe for their paper ‘Asset-liability modelling in the quantum era’, published in the British Actuarial Journal in July 2021 (bit.ly/BAJ_quantum_ALM).
The judging panel agreed that the paper was original, well-structured and highly relevant, being one of the first instances in which our profession has explored the potential of quantum computing. Actuaries can use the paper to start developing quantum solutions to wider financial problems.
“We are honoured and grateful that our work has been recognised in this way,” said the co-authors. “There is a long history of actuaries using quantitative methods to match assets and liabilities, since the very start of the profession. The emergence of quantum computing provides another step forward in what actuaries can do. It has been a joy applying a fascinating area of science into the actuarial field.”
The Geoffrey Heywood Prize, named after another former Institute president and originating from a bequest in his will, is awarded for excellent communication and engagement with a general actuarial audience. For 2022, this went to Samal Abdikerimova and Runhuan Feng for their paper ‘Peer-to-peer multi-risk insurance and mutual aid’, published in the European Journal of Operational Research in June 2022 (bit.ly/EJOR_p2p_aid).
The panel agreed that this well-written paper developed original actuarial techniques that are theoretically sound and practically useful. It contained a high level of clear and accurate mathematical detail and had an extensive bibliography. This paper presents several seminal results in peer-to-peer insurance and mutual aid pools, and could serve as a guideline for risk allocation for peer-to-peer insurance-focused fintech start-ups.
Both of these awards are funded by the IFoA Foundation and have prize money of £1,000 each.
In addition, Benjamin Avanzi, Greg Taylor and Melantha Wang’s paper ‘SPLICE: a synthetic paid loss and incurred cost experience simulator’, published in Annals of Actuarial Science in May 2022, was Highly Commended (bit.ly/AAS_SPLICE). This high-quality technical paper described simulation models that can be used to test estimation procedures.
