Another year of innovation

As is usual at this time of year, I like to take stock of the activities that we've undertaken at the IFoA over the past 12 months. I'm really pleased to say that it has been yet another year of innovation, which sees us moving from strength to strength. We are always working towards realising our IFoA values - community, integrity, progress - in everything that we do. I'm pleased to see that this year we are indeed making them come to life.

A perfect example of community is our conferences. This year we've undertaken the largest Life Conference we've ever had, which was a fitting accomplishment to mark its 30th anniversary. Our conferences continue to attract leading keynote speakers, including for the first time a Nobel laureate, and deliver content that is at the forefront of actuarial science for our members.

Following the great success we had with our Asia Conference in Beijing this year, we are bringing the conference to Kuala Lumpur in March 2016. Another mark of success for this conference is that a third of those attending last year were not IFoA members, which shows the strides we are making in promoting actuarial science more broadly.

In terms of integrity, our Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS) for organisations has opened to huge interest, and to date we have double the numbers of applicants that we had anticipated. I'm really looking forward to seeing the scheme rolled out with the first participant organisations over 2016.

And lastly, with progress, I'm very pleased to say that we've had our first fully qualified Certified Actuarial Analyst (CAA) come through the qualification: Michael Tagg, who works at the Government Actuary's Department. The CAA qualification is gaining in popularity, with entries to Module 0 rising rapidly. While the majority of entries are from the UK, we are seeing candidates from countries in which the IFoA has not previously been represented. We have also seen employers actively recruiting for actuarial analysts, and promoting their staff through the qualification, which is fantastic news.

So, all in all, we've had a great year, which is due in no small part to the effective partnership between volunteers and the executive staff. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what new heights we'll reach in 2016.