Deaths - May 2018
Colin Macdonald Stewart CB FIA 1922-2017
Colin Stewart retired at the end of 1984 after a long and distinguished career at the Government Actuary's Department (GAD), including 11 years as Directing Actuary (Deputy Government Actuary).
Born in 1922, Colin was educated at Queen's Park Secondary School in Glasgow and started work in 1939 as a clerical officer in the Rosyth Dockyard. After four years' war service in the Fleet Air Arm, he joined GAD in 1946 and qualified as FIA in 1953.
At GAD he was active in the development of insurance supervision, including the introduction of requirements for companies to publish run-off triangles and the strengthening of supervision in the wake of the collapse of Vehicle & General in 1971. With Ronald Skerman of the Prudential, he was a member of the OECD Working Groups on solvency in the late 1960s, which eventually led to the EU Solvency Margin regime.
He became head of the insurance supervision directorate at GAD just as the new Appointed Actuary system was being implemented following the Insurance Companies Act 1973, and in the middle of the 1974 financial crisis, which led to the demise of several small insurance companies in 1974-75 and the technical insolvency at the end of 1974 of a number of major insurers.
From 1978 to 1984 he headed up the directorate responsible for advice on social security and pensions policy, including the setting up of the Inquiry into Provision for Retirement by Secretary of State Norman Fowler in 1983, the personal pension initiative and the start of discussions on reforms to SERPS requested by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Following his retirement from GAD he spent four years as head of actuarial research at Godwins and, jointly with David McLeish, presented papers to the Institute of Actuaries in 1987 and 1992 on methods of funding and regulating defined benefit pension schemes.
He published many papers during his long career, including several on population issues, starting with a Students Society paper on the population of the Caribbean in 1957. His paper on verification of technical reserves in non-life insurance was presented to the Students' Society in 1971 and he presented a paper on insurance supervision in Great Britain at the International Congress of Actuaries in Oslo in 1972.
He served on the Committee of the Institute of Actuaries Students' Society (SIAS) from 1953 to 1960, including two years as Honorary Treasurer, and he wrote the official history of the Students' Society 1960-1985 for the society's 75th Anniversary. He was on the Council of the Institute of Actuaries from 1968 to 1981, including serving as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. He was also on the Council of the International Actuarial Association from 1970 to 1983.
Colin continued to contribute actively to the profession after his second retirement in 1988, including writing a chapter for the book Life, Death and Money, published in 1998 on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Institute of Actuaries and the following year leading a group which published a SIAS paper concerning a central discontinuance fund for pension schemes.
Colin was very fond of his family - and one of his hobbies was genealogical research relating to his forebears. Gladys, his wife of 55 years and the sister of another GAD actuary Len Thwaites, sadly died in 2003 but Colin was lovingly supported by his three daughters and his grandchildren until his death on 17th September 2017, aged 94.
