I am often asked, ‘What is the point of the IFoA?’ I usually reply that our role is to enable our members and future members to have professionally and personally rewarding careers and to feel part of a professional community that is making a difference.
As the new sessional year gets under way, it’s a pleasure to welcome Matt Saker as president, and to work with him and our leadership to continue with the strategy agreed by Council.
This month marks the turn of our sessional year, with the AGM, our change of president and new Council appointments. It’s a time for looking back and looking forward, as well as an important checkpoint, demonstrating our accountability to our members.
As we cross the halfway mark in our existing strategy, our thoughts are somewhat inevitably beginning to turn to what comes next – particularly as much of our focus so far has been to get the IFoA ‘fit’ for what follows, whether that is our culture, systems, finances and so on. Our constant aim is to create and sustain a meaningful and valuable member experience for all of you as individuals and in the profession more broadly, and in a way that enables the IFoA to grow and flourish. The best starting point for this is the feedback you have given us.
There is always a lot going on, and we must not lose sight of the importance of having IFoA members as our advocates. We set ourselves a target to have a positive net engagement score (NES) in our member survey at the end of 2022. The feedback from 2021 is being analysed as I write, but we have made good progress year-on-year. I am hopeful that we have the momentum and initiatives to get us there in 2022. The mean average feedback is good, but NES is a measure of advocacy, and we would like more of our members to have this deeply felt sentiment.
