Councils second meeting of the 2018-19 sessional year took place in London on 19 October.
Ahead of that meeting, we held a strategy day that focused on the future shape of the actuarial profession, and what the strategic direction of the IFoA should be in order to help deliver a sustainable future for the profession. There was rich discussion on what our priority goals should be in both the short term and beyond, and we will be following up regularly at our future meetings on the actions and activities we agreed should be at the top of our to-do list.
At our meeting we discussed the ongoing work to build a more flexible qualification framework by redeveloping and repositioning Associateship as the initial destination for qualification as an actuary, following our Qualification Framework consultation earlier in the year. There is more work to be done in this area, and you can expect to see more on this during the coming months and into 2019.
We held a deep dive review into the Markets Development Board, which was established earlier this year to help ensure that the IFoA succeeds in delivering its market development objectives and that those developments stay relevant. We discussed the Board's initial thoughts on its priorities, which include developing a vision for 2028 and beyond, enhancing our digital engagement and capabilities to help build digital communities, and capacity building with employers.
We also examined the work the Regulation Board has done in the past year, which touched on a wide range of subjects; these include the ongoing Kingman Review into the Financial Reporting Council (and its potential implications for the IFoA and the wider profession), the proposal to introduce monitoring of actuarial work, the reviews of the Actuaries' Code and the practising certificates regime, the expansion of the Quality Assurance Scheme outside the UK, and the delivery of professional skills training, including a new suite of video case studies.
There was some discussion of Brexit and the potential impact it may have on the IFoA and its members, though of course much remains uncertain until the UK's negotiations with the EU are concluded. What is certain, however, is that data science is becoming critically important to the future of the profession, and this too was the subject of discussion at both our meeting and our strategy day: there are initiatives under way in this area, but Council emphasised the importance of getting fully behind them and challenged the IFoA to raise the profile and priority of this work.
We will next meet on 12 February 2019 to hold our president-elect election meeting. Our third formal meeting of the sessional year will take place the following day.
Minutes are available here and you can contact us at [email protected]
