This month we celebrate 30 years since SIAS, with the support of the IFoA, launched The Actuary to reach the profession’s entire membership. Those of us on the editorial team had been hoping to commemorate the occasion with a look back at those earliest issues, but COVID-19 prevented us from gaining access to the archives. Never mind – we’ll defer formal celebrations to later in the year.
In the meantime we’ll raise a (socially distant) glass to the magazine’s longevity. Thank you to all current and previous contributors, the IFoA, SIAS and Redactive for making the publication what it is. And thanks also, of course, to you: our readers. We are proud of the magazine’s success in bringing together the actuarial community, and we look forward to its next chapter. Cheers!
The themes for this issue are data science and risk management. For the first topic, we have introductory articles on data-driven insurance, algorithmic trading, cluster analysis, insurtech, blockchain and ethical repricing optimisations (an online exclusive).
For the second, we feature an article on the next stage of thinking in model risk management. Models have an individual risk and a collective risk; while the former is now better understood, the collective risk of models is virtually unexplored. Alan Forrest makes the point that models coexist in many relations and their risks are correlated in unpredictable ways (p.18).
We also hear reflections from three actuaries who made the move to and from academia to find out about their motivation and the lessons they have learnt (p.36). To top it all off, I speak to the new IFoA president Tan Suee Chieh (p.12) about his vision for the profession.
I hope you enjoy the issue.
