Actuarial Risk Principles

Actuaries are well aware of the importance of risk management as an important tool to help reduce losses, control uncertainty and optimise decision making in order to improve outcomes

We believe that our training and experience gives us an excellent base for tackling risk management challenges.  It leads us to consider the full range of risks that might affect an organisation, and focus on measuring impacts, both positive and negative.  Actuaries are also used to analysis not just based on short-term horizons but potentially extending many decades into the future, and understanding how the impact of risks can be valued in financial terms where this is warranted.

Matt Gurden, Chair of the IFoA’s Wider Fields Working Party, introduces the Risk Principles framework

You can watch the video recording of the launch event for the Actuarial Risk Principles framework in June 2017, which includes presentations of three case studies.

• Members can view the video via our learning environment and claim CPD for watching.
• Non-members can view the video on our YouTube channel.

The IFoA’s Wider Fields Working Party, led by Matt Gurden, has developed the Actuarial Risk Principles framework in order to summarise the key aspects of an actuarial approach to risk management, and how they are inter-related

The risk principles document looks at how a multi-faceted approach to decision making can add value in both existing and 'wider' actuarial fields, by providing decision makers with a better understanding of the risks involved.  

It includes case studies in which topic specialists explore how these risk principles can be applied to analysing the risks implicit in three major issues of international scope:

• Climate Change
• Cyber Risk
• Automated Vehicles

Risk principles and climate change

The first edition of the risk principles document was introduced in December 2016 alongside a successful webinar run in conjunction with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which discussed how the risk principles could be applied to climate change risk.  

Watch the Webinar on Climate Change Risk.