Regional Focus series, Malcolm Slee, secretary of the Yorkshire Actuarial Society and much-travelled speaker on professionalism skills, looks at why Yorkshire continues to be such a thriving regional society
Yorkshire has had a strong actuarial base for many years and, in 1981, The Yorkshire Actuarial Society (YAS) was created to be a society for Students, Associates and Fellows. It is now a vibrant, thriving society.
The membership base is centred on the York, Leeds and Harrogate triangle and there is a good mix of members, covering mutual insurers, proprietary life and general insurers, all the major consultancies, bespoke consultancies and one man/woman bands.
The society aims to have seven or eight meetings a year, spread between York and Leeds, as well as an annual dinner where one of the IFoA's presidential team is the chief guest.
To maintain meetings at this level, the committee looks at all avenues in order to find potential speakers:
inviting YAS members to prepare a talk
inviting speakers from Life/Pensions/Risk conferences to present their papers
approaching academics who lecture at local universities
IFoA working parties
IFoA staff
speakers at other local meetings
As an example of lateral thinking, a few years ago a lecturer at York University gave a talk to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society on epidemiology. This looked a good topic for us and he duly gave YAS a talk - throwing in a few more statistics than in the original! As a result of this talk, he was then asked to present it at a Momentum conference, providing a fantastic example of not only different areas working together but
different professions.
The society is open to all members of the profession, with the added bonus of no membership fee. If you are in the area, by all means come along to one of the meetings - we'd love to see you.
Details of our events can be found on the main events page of the IFoA website or on the YAS page bit.ly/1iNPCl4