The Chinese Actuarial Network UK (CANUK) held an open forum for longevity risk on 9 March in the America Square Conference Centre, London, attended by more than 70 actuarial professionals.
Feifei Zhang, financial risk director at Aviva UK and president of CANUK, opened the evening with an introduction of CANUK's objectives:
a) to provide a networking platform for Chinese actuaries in the UK and further afield;
b) to support Chinese actuarial professionals in the UK through educational and social events.
Joseph Lu, director of longevity risk at L&G, spoke at the forum. He described how business was booming in longevity risk, with more improvements in the life expectancy of over-65s being seen in the past 20 years than in the previous 150 years combined. He covered three broad categories of longevity-related business - individual annuities, bulk annuities and longevity swaps.
Lu suggested that in China the next 10 years would see the number of people aged 60 and over increase by about 100 million, while the number of people aged 15-39 would fall. This change in population structure would increase the burden for elderly care and affect the sustainability of China's social and economic model.
The session then moved onto genetics and insurance and trading life insurance policies in the US secondary market, with an address from Dr Billy Yu of Traymar Capital.
To conclude, Yen- Lan Chueh from Deutsche Bank joined Lu and Yu for a Q&A session facilitated by Feifei Zhang.
CANUK would like to thank the UK Actuarial Profession, Darwin Rhodes for sponsorship, Xu Pei for photography, and the volunteers who made this event possible.
To register and receive CANUK newsletters, visit the network's website: www.chineseactuary.org
The authors can be contacted via email: [email protected] and [email protected]
CANUK was launched at Staple Inn, London, on 2 December 2011.