Welcome to the Risk and Investment Conference 2009

21-23 June 2009, The Grand Hotel, Brighton

Recent dramatic events in global financial markets have highlighted the importance of financing and investment risk in the context of overall enterprise risk management. In particular, the key role played by both funding liquidity and market liquidity has become clear. Many of the financial institutions advised by actuaries will be looking to generate returns by taking advantage of liquidity conditions at the same time as managing their liquidity risk. This theme will underpin many of the sessions at the conference. We thought all actuaries would have an interest in exploring and discussing the interaction of the markets and risk management.

Your enthusiastic organising committee has put together a programme intertwining contributions from actuarial research, updates from parallel researchers in leading institutions, and current views from market participants. We all are indebted to the many and varied speakers who have been willing to contribute to our programme. We will aim to keep this fresh, having regard to possible developments up to the conference date. Life, pensions, general insurance…even if you think of yourself as in one of these practice areas, 2008 has surely shown the crucial relevance of financial markets.

We particularly welcome to our Brighton conference actuaries with an appetite to learn what has or may have been happening in the markets and what lessons this may hold; we also welcome back actuaries working in the finance and investment consulting fields.

In addition to the formal programme, we are well aware that much of the value of a conference like this is the opportunity for informal learning and networking. We have allowed plenty of time for this. All of us involved in organising the conference look forward to welcoming as many delegates as possible to Brighton, where we believe you can be assured of a rare combination of enjoyment and education.

See you there!

Actuarial profession staff at the conference

Pat Rustem (Finance and Investment practice manager) and Mark Symons (ERM practice manager) will be present at the conference, along with several members of the F&I and ERM Practice Executive Committee and they will be interested in hearing your views on what more the executive committees can do for you.

Barbara Beebee, the Profession’s Corporate Communications Manager, will be present at the conference to help members find information about the merger and other issues, and to gather members’ views on any topic they are interested in.

Richard Smith will be there with the Publications Shop - come and have a look at a selection for books on risk and investment themes.

Kate Harris and Rebecca Martin of the Event Management Division will also be there to help you with any issues relating to the organisation of the conference.