President’s report to members – March 2019 Council Meeting

Welcome

This is my first report to members as President of the Actuaries Institute and Chair of Council.  I am very much looking forward to working with Council and all our members this year. I am particularly focused on delivering on our agreed strategy.

CEO’s Report

Elayne reported that Q1 2019 had been very productive with many milestones already achieved. She highlighted that resources are stretched, and we will be monitoring this closely.

With the new Disciplinary scheme approved, a diverse and large range of volunteers are being sought for refreshment of the various disciplinary panels. Council will approve proposed members at the June 2019 Council meeting.

In 2020, the General Insurance Seminar and the Financial Services Forum will be combined into one flagship event, following recommendations from the previous events review. 

Council explored potential collaboration opportunities to be discussed with the President and CEO of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries on their visit to Australia.

ICA2022

Cr Annette King provided an overview of progress on ICA2022. Good progress has been made on the program considerations, marketing plan, sponsorship governance, project plan, and budget. Even though the conference is still three years out, there is still a lot to do.

Royal Commission (RC)

A Royal commission steering committee has been established to determine Institute responses to the Royal commission. Feedback from the recent CPD Tour event (Professionalism in the new world) had generated some excellent suggestions and comments that the Steering Committee will incorporate going forward.  Council were also advised of the imminent release of the latest issue of the Institute’s Dialogue series The Social Condition Report – A Suggestion for Financial Services Businesses co-authored by Ian Laughlin, former Deputy Chair of APRA and Hadyn Bernau of Finity Consulting.

Acknowledging that the RC Implementation Group (APRA, ASIC, Treasury and other relevant organisations) will take time to implement the recommendations from the RC, Council wants to ensure that the profession has the opportunity to put a well-formed view to both Government and the opposition, to promote our value as trusted advisers.

Annual Member Survey

K McFadyen advised that overall the member satisfaction survey results were good and quite consistent across practice area, location and age.  The annual member survey has been running in its current format for a number of years so Council agreed that the format should be revisited to make the survey shorter but with the core questions retained to track trends.

Deep Dive Day June 2019

Council will be holding a one-day session on 11 June 2019 to focus on the two strategically important areas of CPD and Data Analytics.

Employer Stakeholder Plan

Elayne and I and have commenced meetings with the largest employers of our Members to hear their ideas on how we can improve our services and increase their engagement level with the Institute.  The meetings have been very useful and well received by employers.

Education Strategy Implementation Plan

67 students have enrolled for the new Life insurance retirement valuation course. The Life insurance and product development course is currently being developed and two staff have been employed on a contract basis to work on the Retirement Applications subject and the Asset Management Associateship subject. 

2018 Financial Statements

The Institute’s audited Financial Statements for the period 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018 were approved and can be viewed here.

Board of Examiners Report

Low pass rates for Semester two’s 2A Life Insurance and 3A General Insurance were discussed.

Proposed new Code of Conduct

Council approved the new Code of Conduct with an effective date of 31 March 2020 and agreed to the introduction of a mandatory CPD component.  The Code of Conduct Task Force will come back to Council in June 2019 with more detail on the proposed mandatory CPD component including the number of hours and the starting date.

Committee and Working Groups Update

Life Insurance and Wealth Management Committee:  Convenor Ilan Leas and John McLenaghan reported that the revised structure of the life insurance side of the committee, which has been in place for one year, was working well. The same structure of combining all subcommittees into one pool, with working groups formed to work on focused topics areas, will be applied to the wealth management side of the committee.  LIWMPC has also drafted a letter to APRA recommending that increased participation and dissemination of insurance experience data is mandated by the regulator.

Public Policy Council Committee:  Convenor Anthony Lowe gave an update on key recent activities that included the review and sign-off of four major publications – Australian Actuaries Climate Index, the Dialogue papers People, Payments and Projections – a look at modern government service delivery plus Building Adaptive Capacity – Individuals, Groups and Society, and a research paper Exploring Retiree Mortality.  Upcoming projects include the outworkings of the Hayne Royal Commission, Retirement; Private Health Insurance; Climate Change; Genetic Testing; and Anti-Discrimination.  Membership of the committee will also be refreshed to provide more diversity in areas of data analytics, health, Asia/Pacific, climate change and Council representation.

International Committee: Bozenna Hinton, Convenor of the International committee gave an update on its two subcommittees – the IAA and Asia.  The committee has been keeping track of a number of interesting global developments including an IAA restructure, certified actuarial analyst (CAA) global discussions, the SOA and Casualty Actuarial society decision to not proceed with their proposed merger and review of the CERA syllabus.  

Diversity and Inclusion Working Group: Convenor Lesley Traverso’s revised terms of reference for the Working Group were approved to include all aspects of diversity rather than the original three of culture, age and gender, which were set in 2017.

Success stories

Elayne outlined the major successes over the last quarter including the launch of the CPD Knowledge Hub, the drafting of the Appointed Actuary Professional Standards, finalisation of the Code of Conduct, launch of the See what we see campaign on International Women’s Day (8 March) and publication of the 2018 Year in Review.  Council also noted the excellent results from the 2018 HQ Team Engagement Survey which showed a significant improvement in engagement from the previous year.

Annual General Meeting (AGM)

The Institute’s 2019 Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday 8 May 2019 at the Institute’s Forum, Level 2, 50 Carrington Street, Sydney commencing at 12.00pm.

Next meeting

The next Council meeting is on Wednesday 12 June 2019

Feedback please!

In my year as President, I have been focused on building and nurturing our actuarial community. I think we have an incredible group of people that form our community. I feel incredibly proud to be President and I’d like to do everything I can to foster our community. Whilst there’s lots of things we are doing to build our brand and community, I’d particularly like to encourage you to attend our Summit in Sydney on 3 and 4 June. I am a strong believer that getting together physically is important to our future growth and vitality as a profession. I’m looking forward to the exchange of ideas, some great speakers and catching up with you informally.

If you would like to provide some feedback or comments, please contact one of your councillors below.

Nicolette Rubinsztein (President)
Hoa Bui (Senior Vice President)
Jefferson Gibbs (Vice President)
Ann-Maree Cook
Andrew Doughman
Jules Gribble
Steve Hui
Annette King
Bill Konstantinidis
David Whittle

Kind regards

Nicolette Rubinsztein
President

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