Dan Georgescu gets ahead on his holiday reading
Normally, August means a mass exodus out of the office and to a beach, city break or walking holiday.
With lockdown only gradually easing and parts of the world struggling to get the pandemic under control, many are not able or willing to go away, and are instead opting for a staycation this summer. Having some downtime away from the home office is important, and I highly recommend John Kay and Mervyn King’s new book Radical Uncertainty for your holiday reading pile. I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to Lord King about his views on risk quantification, and we start the features section with this interview (p.12).
Our cover feature is about the widower mortality effect, and whether modelling joint lives independently is an appropriate simplification in some cases. Life insurers in particular will be working hard to review their longevity model calibrations while the world is affected by COVID-19 and we are seeing excess deaths (p.19).
A recent surprise announcement in the UK was that the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will merge to form the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We have an article about the crossover of data science and DFID’s work in tackling global development challenges (p.30). The environment and sustainability themes continue with articles asking what a climate liability regime would mean for investment decisions (p. 34) and considering the role of nature-based solutions in the fight against climate change (p.36).
Once you have read the print magazine, I would also encourage you to take a look at the newly relaunched The Actuary website. There you can get all features as well as news and additional online-only content – the future is digital.
As always, I hope you enjoy the issue and look forward to hearing your views.
