4 October 2022
Richard Purcell, Health & Care Board Chair, provides an update.
The new Health & Care board met for our first meeting on 22 September. Although I have been on the board for 3 or 4 years this was my first meeting as Chair, and it saw our first hybrid meeting after 3 years of just virtual one’s. It was great to catch-up in person with some familiar and new faces alike. However, there will be no return to purely in-person meetings thanks to new technology and the improved geographical diversity of the new board, meaning we are now drawing on experience from India, Singapore, South Africa, and across Europe.
To kick things off we welcomed Matt Saker, IFoA President, who talked about the profession’s strategic focus, including; repositioning the profession and its members for the future, sustainability and climate change, and thinking about member engagement and experience. This instigated a good discussion about the role of actuaries working in health, care and protection and how it may develop. We noted the recent work of the working party looking at the role of the Health & Care actuary, but also the scope for actuaries in our field to get more involved in healthcare analytics, wellness, and post-covid implications on healthcare management. We discussed that to help support this work there may need to be further changes to the curriculum and visibility of entrepreneurs who are already leading the field in some of these areas.
This also linked nicely into a discussion on some of the hot-topics in our space, and where the board should focus its attention in this session. The cost-of-living crisis, the poverty premium, wellness and insurtech were amongst some of the hot topics we covered. It would be great to hear from you though if there are other issues you think we should be exploring further whether it be through research or events. In terms of our key board themes, it seems that social care, sustainability and data science remain important, but we agreed to complete a wider scan of issues before confirming the objectives and themes for the board.
Next, we discussed the proposal to introduce the Chartered Actuary status to protect and advance the status of IFoA members globally. The proposal, recently set out by Matt Saker in The Actuary, seems to have many merits and we would encourage members to attend one of the Q&A discussions being hosted by the IFoA on 13 or 28 October ahead of a vote being put to members.
Looking ahead over the next year there is lots of exciting activity underway in our area, including new research on Social Care, Climate Change, Diabetes and Data Science. We also have a good pipeline of events, including a panel discussion on the Social Care Agenda with a number of prominent speakers, including Sir Andrew Dilnot on 11 October. Finally, we look forward to rolling out a new community platform in the coming months to support greater sharing of ideas and content, and to help better support members working in the Health, Care or Protection areas. More on that later.
One of the key things I took away from our meeting was the importance of members like you and I who volunteer their time. Whether it be joining a research working party, becoming a member of our Lifelong Learning or Research Committee’s, or just submitting a talk for an IFoA webinar or event. Not only does the success of the IFoA rely on members getting involved, it is also a very rewarding experience. So I would encourage you to consider getting involved in some way and to take a look at the current volunteer vacancies or upcoming events.
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