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IFoA research programme typically comprises over 100 initiatives at any one time.

A full list of current IFoA research working parties can be found here.

The IFoA supports and sponsors research through member-led working parties in various practice areas and through commissioned external research such as that undertaken in universities. By supporting new research, we continue to further actuarial science and aim to provide members with cutting edge knowledge attuned to the realities of their working lives. This listing contains all IFoA research.

Research outputs can be accessed via Sessional Research Programme recordings and Research papers.

Similarly, IFoA research papers provide a way for members and academics to communicate their findings. Research papers can be accessed via the Sessional Research Programme and knowledge exchange page and via the main site search.

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This cross practice working party has been created to examine the main implications of Climate Change for General Insurance actuaries and identify the best ways to manage those implications.
This cross practice working party has been created to examine the main implications of Climate Change for Investment actuaries and identify the best ways to manage those implications.
This cross practice working party has been created to examine the main implications of Climate Change for Life actuaries and identify the best ways to manage those implications.
This Research Working Party is concerned with looking at Solvency II's objectives and analysing the outcome of the final regulation against those goals
A Study of Major Hurricanes and Subsequent Market Response Working Party aims to address educated and inform actuaries on the nature and predictability of hurricanes and how they can cause insured loss in different classes of business. The working party will also discuss how the market is responding to hurricanes through product innovation, reserving, cat modelling and pricing.
This Cross Practice Working Party considers and examines the very large amount of money being invested by DC savers
This Working Party explores whether an actuarial approach can add value to accounting for Intangible Assets
The Achieving value for DC Pensions Working Party will meet and work with Finance and Investment Board colleagues as appropriate over 2014 and 2015
The disbanded Actuarial Function Working Party explored the work which that needed to be undertaken by the actuarial function to fulfil the requirements of Article 48 of the Solvency II Directive
The Actuaries and Income Inequality Working Party looks at income inequality caused by (or potentially resolved by) financial services and actuarial responsibility
The Actuaries Climate Index (ACI) is intended to be a resource for actuaries and others in developing predictive models for potential climate change related losses or opportunities and for risk management strategies
The Advanced Pricing Techniques Working Party explores new techniques and ideas of pricing in general insurance
The research encompasses life, pension and investment, and the working party will align and build on existing research, both from within the profession and externally.
This Working Party is looking at aggregation and simulation techniques in capital models, and in particular how the methods used are tested, communicated and justified to stakeholders, including regulators
See all programme outputs chronologically including articles, publications, presentations, and press articles relating to this research programme.
PhD Studentship – This project involves research on longevity increase and its effects over the business environment. More precisely the focus will be set on covariates analysis
This Working Party studies the rise of Antibiotic resistance (‘ABR’) and how it has become an increasing concern to the medical professions, health services and governments of the world’s major economies. Given its potential impact, the subject is now of increasing concern to insurers and reinsurers from a mortality perspective, and to a lesser extent pensions actuaries.
The Artificial Intelligence and Automation Working Party will consider how new technology will change the future role of life and health & care actuaries and will consider how actuarial practice needs to evolve.
This Working Party examines different approaches to Asset Liability Management (ALM) in Dynamic Hedging Strategies in order to make recommendations for ALM best practice
This disbanded Working Party worked to identify the opportunities available to insurers in relation to non-traditional assets and the risks and impediments to their adoption
The Banking Debt Working Party is a Cross Practice Working Party which has been set up to look at and investigate the issues affecting banking debt
PhD Studentship – This project has now been completed but reviewed the ways in which different types of liquidity affect the operations of a bank and the extent to which various regulatory requirements add additional constraints to the operations of banks
Behavioural Aspects of Institutional Investment Decision-Making
To examine ways of better detecting (‘sensing’) and responding to change
The Black Swans working party will develop a framework to identify black swan events and account for different black swan risks
The Bond Yields Working Party will look at why bond yields are so low and if they will increase
The Cancer Modelling Working Party closed down in December 2018. It was developing projections of the likely future financial burden of cancer in England and Wales, covering both direct and indirect costs
This Working Party looks at the education of actuaries on the impact of central clearing of Over the Counter (OTC) derivatives on pension funds and insurance companies.
There is a huge amount of climate change research. It can be difficult for life actuaries to know where to start to find relevant information. This working party will seek to help life actuaries efficiently find such information and understand industry practices.
This cross practice Working Party will focus on a broad range of topics covering all practice areas likely to be effected by climate change. Topics include but are not limited to; Impacts on general insurance risks, mortality and morbidity, effect on risk, growth and investment (including ‘asset stranding’) of government (and regulatory) actions to adapt to and mitigate the effect of climate change, and opportunities for actuaries being created by these changes
Formerly the Environmental Risk Reporting working party, the Climate Risk Reporting working party will undertake research on climate risk-related practices in reporting by a range of UK insurance companies and pensions funds.
The Communicating Defined Ambition Working Party builds on previous research to develop a proposal for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to shape pensions policy
The goal of this working party is to investigate best practice from a customer perspective when communicating investment returns to UK retail investors at three key stages in their journey.
This Research Working Party wishes to consider the adequacy of information provided to members of retirement plans throughout all stages of the individual's working life as well as into retirement
This working party will be working to evolve the financial landscape to better meet the retirement needs of an individual by changing the mind set from "having savings" to "using savings" in retirement.
Consumer Risk Metrics was a cross practice Working Party shared by Risk and Life, and it's aim is to develop a simple and easy to understand risk metric that will allow consumers to understand risk in a consistent way. It closed in February 2019.
This working party will look at the impact of capital requirements under Solvency II, and if these relate to (UK) protection and investment insurance products. It will also investigate whether the current post-financial crisis low interest environment is causing changes in the way consumers evaluate the products that meet their needs
The Critical Illness Working Party examines the risks and pricing issues associated with current ABI+ and newer minor illness definitions in the Critical Illness Market
During the period from Q4 2017 to Q1 2020, this working party considered the purpose of transfer values. Their main objective was to look at the principles for setting methods and assumptions used in calculating transfer values. This research was introduced following the increase of transfer value activity in defined benefit schemes, attributable to the introduction of the pensions freedoms in 2014, decisions by trustees to reduce investment risk and very low interest rates.
The IFoA’s Cyber Risk Investigation Working Party has been shortlisted in the category of “Campaign of the year” (2020) by Insurance Insider Honours, the global (re)insurance awards ceremony that recognises market talent. This is a working party aimed at providing insight for actuaries working on realistic capital calculations and enterprise risk management for life insurers and general insurers.
This disbanded Working Party examined the benefit visualisations provide in the communication of technical work
The working party is raising awareness of visualisations, useful when performing risk modelling.
The Working Party examines the resilience of Defined Ambition schemes against different macroeconomic conditions
Disbanded in 2017
With increased reporting volumes, greater technical detail, faster turn-around and more explicit professional requirements being placed on GI reserving functions, the time that heads of reserving teams can dedicate to free-thinking, research and development work is often scarce and commonly perceived as non-existent. Add to this: pressures on expenses, recruitment challenges, and demands from business to demonstrate commercial relevance and add value. So, would heads of reserving gain from group discussions to share experiences, and develop strategies and solutions that can help them develop their teams’ capacity, capabilities and contribution?
The purpose of the Directors and Officers Insurance Working Party is to understand the pricing and reserving risks around this class of business
The Disintermediation Working Party explores peer-to-peer (P2P) lending from the perspective of investors, borrowers and the P2P intermediaries
The Diversity Analytics Working Party was formed in 2017 and was set up to ask the question –‘What will the insurance industry workforce look like in 10-20 years? How will it develop and will it be fit for purpose?’ With the hypothesis that there is a lack of diversity in the insurance sector, the working party carries out research and analytical work to look at the current position and project the future position. They will highlight any areas that are under-represented with the overarching concern that this may impact the performance of the insurance sector.
This Working Party is now disbanded
This programme sought to explore current approaches in economic modelling and identify gaps requiring future research
The Emerging Risks working party has been considering emerging risks in the core actuarial fields of insurance, pensions and investments.
The Environmental Risk Reporting working party will build on the work of the **‘Risk Reporting’ working party and the ‘incentives facing UK firms to adopt early risk reporting provisions of the Revised Corporate Code.
The expansion of insurers investing in the Equity Release Mortgages (ERM), and the asset’s long term use to back annuity portfolios, brings ERM into scope of the “matching adjustment” of Solvency II.
Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues are increasingly acknowledged as important investment considerations. Reporting to the Resource and Environment (R and E) Board and the Finance and Investment (F and I) Board, the ESG Investment Working Party works to co-ordinate and expand the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ (IFoA’s) ESG-related investment activities and advance actuarial capacity in this field.
The Disbanded Risk Reporting Working Party has completed its research investigating risk reporting practices in the Global Insurance Industry
The Extreme Events Working Party is a cross practice Working Party that aims for a better and wider understanding of the various methodologies that could be used for developing benchmark figures, including the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology
The disbanded Fairness in Insurance Pricing Working Party reviewed and summarised various issues (past and present) surrounding the discrimination debate
The Finance and Investment Education Working Party was set up in August 2014 by the Finance and Investment Board to consider how the finance and investment specialist subjects can continue to meet the needs of actuaries to 2035
This working party examines the topic of ‘financial repression’ – Government measures that effectively channel funds which, in an unregulated market, would go elsewhere
This Working Party functions as a source of knowledge and expertise within the Actuarial Profession on matters relating to flooding with a particular focus on the UK.
The Cross Practice FRC and Risk Reporting Working Party sought to identify how the profession could raise awareness of the role of actuaries in meeting new requirements for risk management and risk reporting by major listed companies
PhD Studentship – This project has now been completed. It's objective was to further investigate the applications of FDA in Actuarial Science and to develop statistical methodologies and theories suitable for the problems arising from this area, focusing particularly on mortality and risk selection
This working party has come out of the group’s ICAT (COVID-19 Action Taskforce) workstream work which was looking at the longer term impacts on (re)insurers and the wider market from the changing risk profile of policyholders. The ICAT workstream dug deep into the key personal and commercial lines of business affected by COVID-19 from a pricing perspective, and in addition provide a general framework of considerations for GI pricing actuaries when looking at COVID-19 exposures.
The Genetics Working Party aimed to accumulate a body of evidence regarding the potential risks of anti-selection from genetic testing to allow the profession to make informed contributions to this topic
The calibration and validation of actuarial models in general insurance is often reliant on expert judgments which can be prone to biases, cognitive or otherwise. The Getting Better Judgement Working Party aims to point to more effective elicitation of information from experts
This Working Party provides a forum for GI actuaries to discuss local and international GI issues impacting members in the region, as well as the opportunity to further research in specific regional issues. 
As part of the preparation for the GI TORP Working Party presentation to the 2017 GIRO conference in October, the working party carried out a survey covering the level of automation used in general insurance reserving processes. This survey focused on the timescales and pressures of the reserving cycle and the current state of play relating to the prevalence of manual processes and the penetration of proprietary software. It looked at automation techniques as a mechanism for relieving the pressures on the reserving process resulting from solvency 2, the reserving cycle, IFRS and the pressure for faster close processes.
This Working Party investigates how actuaries might be able to apply their professional skills and experience outside the 'traditional' fields of insurance, pensions and asset management
IFR
Disbanded 2017
This Working Party (previously IFRS 4 Phase II) examines the implications of the accounting changes on general insurers and, in particular, on the work carried out by actuaries
The IFoA Life Research Sub-committee formed three working parties in 2018 to analyse different aspects of IFRS 17. One of these working parties was the IFRS 17 CSM Working Party which delivered in line with its stated objectives and presented its work in a sessional paper in October 2020. During the course of its work, it was evident that a number of IFRS 17 topics will remain open for debate and that will continue to pose challenges to stakeholders. The working party has been relaunched following its brief hiatus with revised terms of reference that would look to cover wider areas of IFRS 17 from a life insurer’s perspective.
The working party will investigate discount rates as they function under IFRS 17.
The working party will investigate whether IFRS 17 meets its stated objective of ensuring that entities provide relevant information in a way that faithfully represents insurance contracts, the implications of IFRS 17 on insurance accounting, profit reporting and supplementary reporting and any IFRS 17 related issues arising for UK life insurers.
Commissioned project - This project used household survey data to examine the likely financial circumstances and behaviour of people during retirement
This Working Party examined the emergence of e-cigarettes and their impact on insured lives. The impact was assessed based on the latest medical research and statistics, mortality and morbidity risk and the identification of any emerging trends
This working party will examine the link between regulation and risk management behaviours.
This Working Party aimed to look at the emergence of wearable technology and the internet of things and their current and potential usage within the health and care area. It closed down in January 2019.
The Income Protection working party aims to investigate how incapacity and sickness vary by socio-economic factors and how it has varied over time, in particular during the recession
The Inflationary protection and investigating reporting management change Working Party looks at a number of issues, including Defined Benefit investment charges and pricing of inflation protection
There is a lack of knowledge which many financial institutions have about infrastructure investment. This working party will undertake research to uncover information about the risks and rewards which investing institutions are likely to experience
The working party will have a broad focus on the improvement of risk management efficiencies through the use of technology, potentially including governance, risk & compliance systems, data analytics and machine learning. It will also consider the three lines of defence model for risk management and contribute to thinking on how the operating model may potentially evolve, through the use of technology.
The Insurance as a Force of Social Good working party aims to explore an aspect of what it means for actuaries to work in the public interest in the insurance sector.
This Working Party has been set-up to explore annuity writers’ exposure to; and management and mitigation of a reinsurance recapture or similar event that leads to an insurer being required to recognise previously reinsured risk(s).
The Insuring Later Life Illnesses working party is working to provide a deeper understanding of later life conditions, and thus allowing insurers to develop more product solutions to help fund care and other costs in later life
The Integrated Risk Management Working Party will assess the three keys risks relating to defined benefit pension schemes – funding, investment and covenant
This Joint IFoA GIRO and CAS – CARe Working Party is exploring what makes for a good reinsurance underwriting submission
This working party explored the reasons we follow the herd seeking to quantify the impact of this, and identify what we can do to support the industry in making assumptions/choosing methods that they believe in
This working party is addressing the Inadequacy of current practices of calculating investment risk and relative return; and plans to propose a radical but intuitively correct methodology to calculate investment returns, relative returns, explanations of differences, or attribution, in a precise and relevant way
This Research Working Party seeks to understand investors as they approach retirement, and through it, the decisions they face, and the impact of those decisions and identify ways in which investors can be supported in making better decisions
The Life Office Taxation Working Party aims to keep abreast of new developments in the field of Life Office tax, to analyse their impact, and to educate and inform members of the profession who are not tax specialists regarding such developments and associated current issues
Reinsurance is commonly used by life and health insurers to manage their profitability, risk, and capital, and to access services provided by third-party reinsurers. The Life and Health Reinsurance Working Party was established in 2014 and has since set itself the ambition of developing into a source of practical knowledge and expertise on matters relating to reinsurance. Rather than looking at the theory behind reinsurance, the Working Party has been focused on the value that reinsurance can provide across the insurance industry.
Life Solvency and Capital Management Working Party wrote a paper on Expert Judgement (EJ) with full survey results, insights and suggestions for best practice/ standards/ templates
Under current regulations, close matching means that companies typically hold assets equal to the full face value of units or apply actuarial funding techniques. Under the proposed Solvency II regulations, technical reserves will tend to be less than the face value of units
The Liquidity Premium Working Party aims to provide a summary of how life insurance actuaries currently use the liquidity premium for pricing, valuation and risk management
PhD Studentship – The initial focus of this project is on data driven methods for establishing liquidity premia
The Liquidity Working Party raises actuaries’ awareness of the wide range of views on liquidity
The Long Term Care (LTC) Working Party analyses alternative long term care funding models, global models, and their potential applications to the United Kingdom.
This working party will investigate long terms guarantees on pensions, savings, protection and annuity products.
A research project jointly commissioned by the IFoA and Life and Longevity Markets Association (LLMA) has developed a readily-applicable methodology for quantifying the basis risk arising from the use of population-based mortality indices for managing longevity risk.
Current actuarial approaches to the assessment of future mortality trends are heavily reliant on reference to historical mortality data
PhD Studentship - This project will look at a number of challenges in the field of longevity risk modelling
The Longevity, Morbidity and Fairness Working Party will Model the impact of different morbidity and longevity experiences of socio-economic groups on the value of annuities purchased
This Research Working Party will consider the wider macroeconomic implications of retirement savings.
This Working Party is considering what With Profit Funds will look like in five years
This Working Party aims to research current issues impacting closed with profits funds and share best practice on how these issues can be managed
The Managing Uncertainty with Professionalism Working Party seeks to develop general and simple principles to support actuaries in managing and communicating uncertainty in all fields.
The Marine and Energy Pricing Working Party is writing a Marine and Energy Pricing specific paper to inform and educate the actuarial profession
This Working Party will consider the management of Matching Adjustment portfolios as a measure approved by PRA under Solvency II, but whose subsequent management is not laid down in all areas. The sums involved are very material but aspects of the future management and fluctuation in the measure is unclear.
The Measuring Uncertainty Qualitatively (MUQ) Working Party is developing reserve uncertainty thinking beyond percentiles and bootstrap style techniques
Model risk is not as well defined and established as other more traditional risks, so the identification, understanding and communication of model risk is crucial.
This cross practice working party was established to investigate “Big Data”. Primarily focused on the latest and emerging thinking associated with modern mathematical tools and techniques, the working party will explore how the actuary may utilise these techniques to remain practical and add value to the businesses it serves
This ground-breaking, international research programme has exceeded its expectations, delivering outputs beyond its primary aims. The Actuarial Research Centre (ARC) funded Longevity and Morbidity Risk (LMR) programme was led by Principal Investigator Professor Andrew Cairns of Heriot-Watt University and co-sponsored by the Society of Actuaries (SoA) and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA).
PhD Studentship – This project will contribute to designing and pricing mortality-linked derivatives and offering the state of art solutions to the longevity risk
The Nat Cat Risk Validation Framework Working Party was formed in order to further examine Cat Model Validation
Produce a scoping document to progress an IFoA definition for net zero alignment of an investment portfolio. As there are plenty of initiatives in this space, it is anticipated that this group will be collating content from these, rather than producing an original IFoA definition.
The Operational Risk Working Party (ORWP) is a Cross Practice working party and acts as the conduit for Operational Risk (OR) research across all practice areas. The Operational Risk Working Party aims to assist actuaries and others in the modelling and management of operational risk. The Working Party has already produced papers on inputs to operational risk models and on operational risk dependencies. It is currently working on a paper on how to validate operational risk models.
This disbanded Research Working Party studied how the 2014 Budget changed the retirement income market irrevocably, impacting the consumer and the regulatory environment.
PhD Studentship – The project aims to design new products that can be used by insurance companies to smooth investment returns for their customers
This commissioned research programme sought to develop pension product designs that kept the customers' needs at the forefront, provided a real income in retirement, whilst minimising costs for the customer.
The research published 19 papers in leading international journals, as well as one longer report and three magazine articles. Professor Andrew Cairns and co-author Ghali El Boukfaoui were awarded a Best Paper prize by the International Congress of Actuaries for 'Basis Risk in Index Based Longevity Hedges: A Guide for Longevity Hedgers.' Several more papers are in preparation.
A cross practice Working Party investigating the challenges of meeting long term care costs, a significant funding challenge for individuals, and both, current and future governments
The Peril Based Reserving Working Party is developing a universal framework for capturing the emergence and development of insurance claims, primarily with a view to developing more granular reserving methods and comparing their performance against existing techniques
This Working Party investigates Periodical Payment Orders (PPOs) and their effects on the UK insurance and reinsurance industry
This Working Party aims to understand how extreme conditions can trigger unexpected policyholder behaviour that significantly impacts insurers. We seek to understand the drivers of such behaviour, so that companies can better manage the consequences of extreme conditions should these occur.
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) co-sponsored an international research project, looking into the impact ageing populations have on asset values over long time periods and considering the potential impact on large pension plans in Canada, the UK and the United States. The research was conducted by the University of Waterloo (Canada) and the University of Kent (UK).
This Working Party was established to promote the development of population health management within the actuarial profession and the health sector.
Commissioned project - The Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) published a series of research reports that investigated the potential impact of auto-enrolment into private pensions on individuals and their levels of pension saving but also on the shape of the private pension market.
The Practising Ruin Working Party aims to introduce practitioners to modern ruin theoretic concepts as part of the toolkit for risk-return assessments
The Pragmatic Stochastic Reserving Working Party researches the stochastic reserving methods available to general insurance reserving actuaries with the aim of agreeing a diverse selection of stochastic reserving techniques which will form the focus of the Working Party's subsequent research
With private assets making up a key and growing part of many investment portfolios, it’s important for investors to have robust monitoring processes in place. A core part of a monitoring framework for private assets is valuation monitoring. As can be seen from recent FCA consultations, this is an increased area of focus, and it is clearly important for private assets to be valued in a robust and independent way. So what can asset owners/managers do to ensure that they have a good framework in place?
This Working Party will look at different aspects of the capital regulation of Life Insurers and whether changes would reduce the tendency for Capital to be consumed or for Capital Requirements to increase in falling markets. This working party disbanded in June 2018.
A cross practice Working Party investigating the challenges of meeting long term care costs, a significant funding challenge for individuals, and both, current and future governments
The Programming for Actuarial Work working party is a cross-practice group established to explore and support the adoption of best practice computer programming concepts and techniques in daily actuarial work.
Commissioned project - This research project covered three areas; a survey of current practices, a survey of existing research and debate, and the developing of a common language for communicating current practice on discount rates and risk
The focus of this disbanded Working Party was to look at Solvency II on Defined Benefit pensions from a risk management angle
This Working Party aims to explore what constitutes best practice in the use of proxy modelling and considers the results of the PRA Proxy Modelling survey on best observed practice.
The disbanded Proxy Modelling Working Party assessed the impact of methodology and design choices against a number of relevant criteria, including accuracy, speed, complexity, ease of implementation and cost in order that a more formal understanding of these impacts can be documented and disseminated.
The Public Data for General Insurance Working Party will address the use of public data by General Insurance companies and research actuaries, prevention of duplication of effort and embedding best practice in the industry to ensure actuaries have the resources to more easily create value for their companies and wider society.
The Rationale for Retirement Behaviour Working Party will seek to better understand patterns amongst those retiring with regards to their pensions choices
This disbanded working party considered the lessons learnt from the failure of insurance companies, and how effective were the FSA reverse stress testing requirements in mitigating future failures
The RRP working group’s objective is to coordinate the development of a framework for actuaries, in both the life and non-life sectors, working to develop Recovery and Resolution Plans.
An overview of publications, presentations and press articles relating to this research programme
The Reserving Functions Survey Working Party is reviewing current reserving practice in the UK, covering those undertaking the reserving work (personal lines, London Market and reinsurers) but also canvassing the views of those using the output of the work such as board members, senior management, and regulatory bodies
This working party aims to develop a framework for helping customers understand risks and outcomes for insurance products and for avoiding unexpected customer outcomes
This disbanded Working Party was set up following the 2010 Risk and Investment Conference because there was little material available in relation to risk appetite and specifically developing risk limits
The working party has been created to assist professionals (actuaries as well as other professionals) employed in life insurance business in understanding the meaning of Risk Appetite, how it is determined and its application. A key aim will be to suggest the possible ways it can enhance value for different stakeholders.
Risk terminology varies from organisation to organisation and actuaries working in different organisations may use different terms to refer to the same risk, or use the same nomenclature for completely different risks. This disbanded Working Party set out a classification system that could be used as a common reference point for discussion risk
The emerging risks and opportunities associated with autonomous vehicles (AV) will need to be carefully considered by the insurance industry. The issues are wide ranging and should be understood by the actuarial profession. This is an important and high profile topic that has public interest ramifications. The actuarial profession should be in a position to inform the public debate and the insurance industry - the work of the Risk Considerations for Autonomous Vehicles Working Party is intended to help achieve this position. This working party was disbanded in January 2023.
The scope for this Disbanded Working Party was to consider a description of the feasibility of assessment / measurement of the culture of risk taking and the approaches to assessment / measurement. Also the assessment of the feasibility of changing the risk taking culture of an enterprise and discuss approaches to changing the culture of risk taking. Unfortunately, the research proposal failed to achieve the funding required to enable it to start
This working party was established to form views and recommendations to assist actuarial practitioners in risk management considerations relating to operating in a digital world
This Research Working Party proposed both theoretically sound and practical solutions to the current Risk Margin limitations. It closed in December 2019.
The procyclicality project was a joint venture between the IFoA and the Bank of England, led on our side by Ashok Gupta and Ronnie Bowie
This disbanded Working Party looked to develop proposals for enhancing our understanding of risk reporting based on the key elements, reporting to regulators, reporting to outside stakeholders, reporting for managing the business
This Working Party identifies the roles actuaries have in life offices, along with trends, threats to and opportunities for actuaries
This Research Working Party seeks to examine running off mature schemes in greater depth
This Research Working Party will seek to develop an understanding of Defined Contribution pension information in the public domain in the UK and overseas of relevance to the Working Party’s Terms of Reference
The Secondary Annuities Scoping Group seeks to conduct research related to annuitants and their engagement in future secondary annuities markets in the UK
The Social Finance and Impact Investing Working Party looks at Social Finance and Impact Investing and the measurement of non-financial returns
A working party looking at social investing
Solvency II IMAP investigates the internal model approval process for Solvency II and the specific challenge this presents for General Insurance actuaries
The Solvency II Practical Review Working Party seeks to evaluate the practical implications of Solvency II one year post-implementation and develop improvements for the PRA to consider in respect of this regulation.
Spreadsheet Models look at the issues surrounding end user computing (EUC) tools, especially spreadsheet models, which are in common uses across most businesses including most internal models
The State Pension Age Working Party will identify the factors we would expect the bodies making recommendations to Government on an age related SPA to take into account
This working party was set up to look at stress and scenario testing in life insurance
PhD Studentship - The project will initially be following two linked themes on the topic of model validation: backtesting of risk models and the development of proxy functions
ARC PhD Studentship addressing the study of survival models and their use in actuarial practice
This Working Party is now disbanded
The disbanded Takaful Life Insurance Working Party had the aim of adding to the overall body of knowledge of takaful and advancing actuarial science
This Working Party explores how ‘Story Telling’ might improve communication of potential future developments and adverse outcomes resulting in better decision-making under uncertainty
The Longevity Index for England (or LIFE index) a bespoke mortality index for England with an interactive App that highlights mortality inequalities in England.
This cross practice Working Party has been created to examine the main implications of Resource and Environment issues for Pension actuaries and identify the best ways to manage those implications
This working party will look at the role of actuaries in new product design
This working party investigated whether consumers understood the value of their with-profits policies and, in particular, was the value of inherent guarantees and potential for real asset growth recognised by consumers? It also sought to understand what the consumer’s perspective was on the run-off of with-profits funds? Are consumers getting what they signed up for and do they understand the potential ‘end games’ of the run-off of the fund? The working party closed down in December 2019, after producing three reports.
Third Party investigates emerging claim trends in third party motor insurance
This Working Party works in tandem with the Third Party Working Party (Data) and the PPO Working Party
The Working Party will consider how customer needs are evolving and the potential impacts on the consumer environment
This Working Party explores the governance and design of existing processes within reserving, ensuring that principles-based guidance (small ‘g’) is given
This working party will examine the management of Transitional Measures for TPs, a measure, one approved by PRA under Solvency II but whose subsequent management is not laid down in all areas. The sums involved are very material but the future management and fluctuation in the measure is unclear.
This Working Party is now disbanded, but was created to review the comparisons of the causes of death by broad classification since 1993
The UK Asbestos Working Party investigates asbestos related claims based on UK market data, investigates trends and reacts accordingly.
UK Deafness Claims facilitates market data collection and investigates claims experience relating to deafness/noise-induced hearing loss in the UK
There seems to be a wide variety of opinions from practitioners in the field of capital (and in the insurance industry more generally) as to the range of uncertainty of 99.5th percentile estimates in general insurance internal models for the purpose of capital setting. This working party will develop existing work in this area, seek to refine the estimates of uncertainty and consider the practical implications of this work.
PhD Studentship – This project studies the rapidly expanding population of annuitants who have undergone knee or hip replacement
The aim of this disbanded Research Working Party was to undertake research to improve the understanding of recent developments and emerging trends in structuring unit-linked funds.
This five-year research programme was commissioned in 2016 to develop new methods for assessing basis risk and evaluating longevity improvement based on Big Health and Actuarial Data.
Knowledge exchange has been a key element of the LMR programme. The research team has delivered over 120 presentations of various types between 2015-2021 including webinars, IFoA conferences, and international conferences. The webinars and recordings of sessional meetings have had over 4,500 views on YouTube and have been used by IFoA members to claim CPD over 1600 times.
This Research Working party will seek to develop an understanding of Investment Strategies. This working party will consider the following objectives:
Why Retire? explores the concept of a binary ‘retired/not retired’ status and the impact of this concept on the structuring of benefit accumulation and decumulation in later life
The general purpose of the working party is to help promote the potential for actuaries to use their risk skills to work in areas beyond the traditional practice areas. That promotion to be both internally within the profession (raising awareness of the options) and externally (showcasing actuarial skills and the value they can add in different fields).