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09

The role of actuaries in the expanding field of data science

Open-access content Wednesday 5th September 2018 — updated 5.50pm, Wednesday 29th April 2020

A recent McKinsey Global Institute’s report stated that data and analytics capabilities have made a leap forward in recent years.

The volume of available data has grown exponentially, more sophisticated algorithms have been developed, and computational power and storage have steadily improved. The convergence of these trends is fuelling rapid technology advances and business disruptions.

We recently asked two of our members to talk about what data science is and share the research they and the IFoA 'Modelling, Analytics and Insights from Data' working party have done into the role actuaries might play in this expanding field.

Mark Lee (below) has a PhD in theoretical quantum physics from the University of Oxford, and over 20 years of academic research experience in numerical computing, mathematical modelling and data analysis. He specialises in data analysis and constructing actuarial models. 

Mark Lee


Stelio Passaris (below) is 
a senior actuarial manager at FIS, providing consulting support on Prophet, the global leader in actuarial projection software. 

Stelio Passaris

Jane Barrett, author of 
Taking Charge of Your Career (Bloomsbury, 2017) and co-creator of the online programme 'Career Maximiser', hosted the session. If you missed the webinar you can now view the recording on the Virtual Learning Environment on the IFoA website. 

This article appeared in our September 2018 issue of The Actuary .
Click here to view this issue

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