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Help us transform the IFoA - Share your views in our 2020 Member Survey

Stephen Mann, our Chief Executive Officer, explains how your feedback has been the driving force behind improvements we have made to your membership experience, and how you can continue to make an impact on your professional body. 

Your views have been at the heart of our work to keep transforming the IFoA into a progressive, modern, reflective professional body that delivers the support and value you have told us is most important to you. The unique circumstances of the 2020 global pandemic have created both challenges and catalysts in doing this, and we have retained a priority focus on responding to your feedback during the rapid change in the wider world this year.

To make sure your views continue to shape our future strategic direction and day-to-day decision making we want you to make your voice heard in our 2020 Member Survey.

Transforming our member experience

You told us in the 2018 Member Survey that you wanted us to listen, be more relevant and responsive, and deliver an improved member experience. The key message from our 2019 Member Survey results was that we need to do more, and more quickly, to deliver the services and value that you want from your membership.  

The recurring themes from your feedback were hugely influential factors in our recent strategy work and reinforced, to me, the importance of creating a truly member centric culture within IFoA. I want to reassure you that we have listened to the feedback and responded where we are able to with the aim  of ensuring your IFoA membership is delivering the support and value that you need, whatever your career stage and wherever in the world you are and that you feel proud to be an IFoA member. 

Over the past year we have delivered some of the improvements that you said were most important to you. You told us we needed to be more relevant and responsive in our CPD and Professional Skills Training, so we have launched a more flexible, outcomes-focused CPD scheme and a new Professional Skills Training regime, designed to support a more flexible learning approach delivered in a way that better fits around your working life.

You also told us that it was important we provide more opportunities and support for actuaries moving in to wider fields. We have opened up new opportunities for our members to develop their skill sets in new domains, with our Certificate in Data Science and a suite of supporting resources. We launched the FinSTIC community and a range of resources to bring the benefits of a systems thinking lens to financial services and explore how systems thinking can benefit the work of actuaries.

You told us that you wanted more career development resources and support, so we have enhanced our career support and Lifelong Learning opportunities for our members as they progress their careers. We launched the IFoA Buddy System, offering members beginning their career independent, experienced peer support on career choices and professional advice.

We have also enhanced the support we provide our members returning to work after a career break, including new video and blog content offering advice and guidance on returning to work. We have also established a Non-Executive Director (NED) Member Interest Group to provide members with an opportunity to explore using their skills and knowledge in a non-executive environment.

Ensuring you are still able access the career progression and resources during the global pandemic has driven rapid member-focused changes, including moving our examinations and events fully online.

We have also begun a progamme to improve our processes and systems in order to move towards providing the high standard of member service and support that you told us would improve your member experience.  We have already moved our membership and examination exemption applications online and will continue to enhance our technological platforms and operational processes. Processes that used to take weeks and large amounts of paperwork are now done in days.

You said that you wanted us to be a strong, collective voice for our profession as we address some of the key challenges of our time. Over the last year we have provided our members with a space that has enabled them to apply their abilities to create social impact in their chosen fields and contribute to policy conversations at the highest levels.

Our Great Risk Transfer campaign investigated the increasing transfer of risk from institutions to consumers when it comes to planning their finances and will consider where public policy can help to reverse the trend, in cases where it may have gone too far, and how individuals can be equipped to deal with the new risks they face as individuals. 

During the global pandemic we have ensured that our members have opportunities to work together as a profession and deploy their unique skills to support the global response to the pandemic. Our Pandemics Hub gathers the most relevant research, articles, and insight on the subject from recognised experts to create a resource that ensures our members are fully appraised as to the actuarial approach.  

Our IFoA COVID-19 Action Task Force (ICAT) has over 500 volunteers working across dozens of work streams to provide actuarial insight and pandemic-related research that could contribute towards managing the short and long term impacts of this crisis. We have also been communicating directly with healthcare services and governments to offer actuarial assistance, from modelling expertise to help local health authorities plan bed capacity to successfully adding an independent actuary to the pool of experts advising the UK government through SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies).

We have reaffirmed our commitment to a member-centric culture – setting out our commitment in our Member Pledge and our new Strategy 2020-2024. We will ensure your views and feedback remain at the heart of our strategic development through an ongoing programme of member research, which we will expand over the coming year. 

The 2020 Member Survey is an important opportunity for you to let us know how useful you find your membership, whether we are delivering the value you need and how satisfied you are with your member experience. By letting us know how we are performing and whether this has improved since our 2018 and 2019 Member Surveys, we can refine our plans and direct our efforts to make sure we continue making the improvements you want.

I do acknowledge that transforming your member experience is a journey and that we have much more to do. I am excited by the plans we have here but know that you will judge us based on what you see. As many of your will know we have also moved our exams online as a rapid response to the impact of COVID 19 on our students and been able to maintain a meaningful events programme notwithstanding the impossibility of running face to face events. What has encouraged me is the willingness to do what it takes to support members and the very active engagement with them to make these work. Coupled with the range of other activities mentioned here, I hope you get a sense that we are moving in the right direction and listening to you.

Our online 2020 Member Survey will be open until 20 November 2020 – we are committed to making your views count, so make sure you let us know how we are performing.

You should have received an email inviting you to take part in our 2020 Member Survey, but if you haven’t received your email and survey link please contact membersurvey@actuaries.org.uk.