Health and Care Board update

Anna Spender provides an update from the latest board meeting. 

We held our first Health & Care Board meeting of 2023 on the 23rd March and once again there were numerous areas to cover leading to a lot of discussion, debate, and further actions.

With this year speeding past we already began to discuss the timing of objective setting for 2023/2024. This year, with the new IFoA Communities Hub up and running, we will be engaging members in this process and you will be able to view and comment on draft objectives this summer (June/July) on the hub.

Neil McCrae (IFoA Web Editor) joined us to give us an update on the new IFoA website including the page setting out information about the different practice areas including Health & Care (https://actuaries.org.uk/about-us/practice-areas/). One of the main drivers for the website upgrade is to make the content more accessible and easy to find, and since launch the site is already showing much higher levels of activity & engagement. It’s a work in progress so more will be added going forward but we encourage you to take a look and feedback your thoughts. This set off a few discussion points around the ease to find things and engaging with international audiences.

Katy Stephenson (Digital Communities Manager) joined us to talk about the IFoA Communities Hub which was launched in February and has had nearly 1,700 people sign up in the first month. As a reminder it’s a digital community that lets us all connect and engage with our peers and colleagues, giving various ways of searching for like-minded individuals such as by country, role, or area of interest. (https://actuaries.org.uk/ifoa-communities/). With a dedicated Health & Care community it also allows you to engage with us and give us input into what we can do as a Board to support you, such as Richard Purcell’s recent poll on the Health & Care hot topic you would most like the profession to work on. We would encourage you to join the Communities Hub if you haven’t already, and contribute to the discussions.

It was great to hear that we have good representation in the Health & Care area at the IFoA Cross Practice Conference taking place on June 26-27th in London, with talks and workshops on topics such as risk pooling, mental health, life after Covid, critical illness, income protection, the right to be forgotten, and a CMI update. More details can be found on the IFoA website (https://actuaries.org.uk/learn/events/events-calendar/ifoa-conference-2023/).

Several other updates were discussed, including;

  • Research sub-committee update on working party activity
  • International association updates including IAA & AAE
  • Policy & Public Affairs updates
  • Right to be Forgotten, and the Poverty Premium