11 April 2022
Hetal Patel provides an update on the IFoA Life Board activities.
On Thursday 2nd December, the Finance and Investment Board met virtually for their second meeting of the 2021/2022 session. The Board was greeted with the warm news that Clara Hughes, Deputy Chair, had welcomed a baby girl.
The meeting focused on the development of the strategy to support the key objectives and themes for the current session – continuing to increase our voice on a number of key F&I issues, in particular, ‘responsible investing’ and ‘institutional investment in a volatile environment’. The Board also considered a number of focus areas including careers and DEI.
Careers
The Board is keen to promote the role of actuaries in the F&I sector. A focus is to support actuaries who are considering the move into the F&I sector. Profiles of a number of volunteers with different F&I careers are available on the F&I section of the website giving an insight into what their roles entail. The intention is to hold an F&I careers event later in the year, potentially involving a panel of experienced actuaries who have made the transition into F&I roles.
DEI
The F&I Board has played a leading role within the IFoA on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and is keen to continue doing so and to work collaboratively with the IFoA and other Practice Boards. To further the DEI agenda, the Board looked at the issue of collecting and reporting on data and GDPR considerations. It was agreed that it was important to start with an understanding of what the Institute itself has been doing in this area and lessons that might have been learned.
Guest speaker: Louise Pryor
We were fortunate to have Louise Pryor join us as a guest speaker providing an open forum for us to ask her questions. She took us through the key themes from the profession’s Strategy 2020-2024 which are:
- repositioning the profession
- transforming the membership experience, and
- fostering a vibrant global community.
Louise emphasised the importance of actuaries' continuous learning. The profession is considering the core curriculum to ensure that it properly equips members in new areas such as data science and sustainability. On the latter, she believes that the profession has an important contribution to make and that actuaries should treat climate like other risks. She felt it was important that members should be well supported with CPD in this area. From a member perspective, Louise advised in early 2022 the website will be going through a transformation. Further, online communities which are currently being trialed in the banking and data science areas will next year be rolled out to all Practice Boards.
Finally, the Board noted and congratulated an important success with the Banking Member Interest Group. A number of volunteers had worked tirelessly for the past 18 months to develop a banking fellowship module which had generated lots of initial interest. Without any outsourcing, it had been delivered on time and under budget.
The Board would very much like to engage and improve connectivity with F&I professionals, particularly international members. If you have not done so already, please follow our LinkedIn page – here you will be able to keep up-to-date with topical articles and blogs, see information on upcoming events, discuss and share key topics and find out more about the F&I Board.
Find out more about the Finance & Investment Board and its activities