GI Research and Thought Leadership Committee (GIRTL)

The GI Research and Thought Leadership Committee's main objectives are to ensure relevance and research for the GI community and consider new and emerging research over a continuous time horizon. The work of the committee is split into four workstreams:

• a) Identifying questions for research
• b) Support ongoing research
• c) Promoting outputs of research to GI actuaries and other professionals
• d) Developing IFoA research environment

Membership of the General Insurance Research and Thought Leadership Committee 2021/22

• Laura Hobern (Chair)
• Zvi Ebert
• Jake Iveson
• Yuming Mei
• Kathryn Moore
• Ritika Rustagi
• Anandi Shah
• Sonal Shah - Education Actuary
• Chris Smerald
• Martin White
• Richard York - Weaving
• Olivia Zhang

GIRTL operates within a Terms of Reference and supports the IFoA's Council in the delivery of its corporate strategy.

How to join GIRTL

All vacancies arising on Boards and their sub-committees are advertised on our volunteer vacancies web page.  Further information for volunteers, including tips on how to chair a meeting, can be found in the Volunteer Information Pack (VIP).

Research Groups

GIRTL is supported by research groups as follows:

• Reserving Reporting Group (RRG)
• Pricing Research Group (PRG)
• Capital Research Group (CPR)

Commissioning Research

The committee is seeking comments and assessing interest from members of the GI actuarial community on five areas of research.  Initial thinking has been put together on research questions relating to Claims Inflation, Super Trends, Insurance Risk Dependencies, Learning from Others and Public Data (Find Presentation here).  After considering the community’s responses, the committee will begin the process of putting together appropriate volunteering teams to carry out what is hoped to be rewarding research work.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these questions through our email address girtl@actuaries.org.uk. You could of course contact any of us in person.  Who would the research be useful for?  Are these the right questions?  How do these questions link with existing research output?  How should we go about answering them and how would you help?

A short survey has been set up to assess your interest levels for volunteering to carry out the research.  You will be asked to provide your name, email address, and which topic(s) you would be interested in helping.  A free text box is available for you to tell us how you may like to participate. Another question relates to any other future-looking topics that would be useful to look into.

In order for the work to go onto the next stages, it would be helpful to have your views and hear of your interest before 31 October 2019.  But of course, the committee is always happy to hear from you on all matters relating to GI research at all times, even on these topics after this specific date.