ProfessionNews
14 October 2008 www.the-actuary.org.uk
News in brief
Life insurer taxation seminar
This one-day seminar, on 8 October at
KPMG in Edinburgh, is aimed at actuaries
and other insurance professionals who
are exposed to the impact of tax on
financial results in both the modelling
arena and from a business planning
perspective. Delegate numbers are limited
to a maximum of 20. For more details,
please visit www.actuaries.org.uk/conf/
life_taxation. To book a place, please
visit www.actuaries.org.uk/members/
transactions/conference_booking
Survey number clarification
In the communication about the outcome
of the survey and the vote sent on 13
August, the number of respondents to the
Faculty survey was given as 1366 with one
invalid response. However, the number
of respondents to the Faculty survey was
1367 with one invalid response. The total
number of valid responses to the Faculty
survey was, therefore, 1366.
ATR conference
Next year's Actuarial Teachers' and
Researchers' Conference will take place at
Queen's University Belfast on 6-7 August.
More details will follow in due course.
Are you up to date with news
from your practice area?
If you have not yet registered your interest
in the main practice communities -- which
will ensure that you are included on
our circulation list for e-mails and news
bulletins -- please do so via the members'
area of the Profession's website. This is
your chance to make sure you are in-the-
know regarding CPD opportunities and the
latest news and updates from your practice
area committee.
Longevity Conference
The Actuarial Profession and the Royal
Society of Medicine will present a one-
day conference on Medical Factors
Shaping Longevity on 29 September.
Institute president Nigel Masters
will chair the first session and
various other actuaries will also give
presentations at the event in London.
Delegates will learn about different
actuarial and medical perspectives,
how these perspectives shape their
respective areas of work, where these
perspectives differ and issues of public
interest and accountability.
A fundamental element of any learned
society is the facility for high-quality peer-
reviewed papers on a variety of topics to
be presented and discussed. This helps take
forward actuarial thinking and also facilitates
sharing of good practice, innovative ideas and
interaction between members.
The Member Support Executive
Committee has been looking at ways in
which sessional meetings could be improved
to better reflect members' needs and to
ensure they are effective as a member
support service and provide good quality,
verifiable CPD.
Historically, the Profession has been
successful at securing high-quality papers
for an interesting and stimulating
programme of meetings -- and the plan
is to build on this to make papers more
accessible, provide increased opportunities
for members to debate the salient points and
reduce any barriers to enable more members
to contribute.
To help the process, the Profession is
introducing some changes to Faculty and
Institute sessional meetings -- to place
more emphasis on the discussions and
to make the meetings less formal while
maintaining quality of debate.
There will no longer be a formal opener
to a sessional meeting; having opened
the meeting, the president (or another
chairman) will hand over directly to the
authors of the paper who will highlight
key aspects and identify some questions
for debate or areas where they would
welcome input.
Following presentation of the paper, the
majority of the remainder of the meeting
will be used for debate. Contributors will
be encouraged to make their comments
`freeform' rather than reading from a pre-
prepared script and to link their comments
to a question posed by the papers' authors
or to previous comments.
The main threads of discussion will
then be drawn together before the
meeting is closed. These small changes
were trialled at the Institute sessional
meeting on 22 September.
In rolling out the changes for
future meetings, the Profession hopes
that by reducing the level of formality
but maintaining the quality of debate,
more members will feel willing and
able to contribute to the meetings, as
well as attending.
The Profession expects to continue to
provide a broad programme of stimulating
papers for consideration; each of the
practice areas is expecting to produce
at least one sessional meeting paper
each year.
Other developments include making
papers more accessible, such as including
an executive summary highlighting the
key issues discussed in each section of the
paper. Consideration is also being given to
alternative ways of presenting papers on
the website, so they can be navigated
more easily.
If you are interested in preparing a paper
for the 2009/2010 sessions, more details
will be included in the November issue of
The Actuary. In the meantime, if you have
not been to a sessional meeting for some
time, why not come along in the next few
months? You might be pleasantly surprised.
More details on dates and topics for
forthcoming sessional meetings, as well
as webcasts, mp3 files and Powerpoint
presentations of previous meetings are
available at www.actuaries.org.uk/knowledge/
publications/sessional_meetings. You can
find details of other CPD events, such as
open fora, networking events, seminars
and conferences, at www.actuaries.org.
uk/media_centre/eventsearch
Sessional meetings are changing
Why not donate your unwanted mobile
phones to help sick children?
The Profession's staff charity committee is raising
money for the Starlight Children's Foundation by
donating unwanted mobile phones to the
Foundation. If you have any discarded
phones you would like to donate,
please contact patricia.rustem@actuaries.
org.uk for a prepaid envelope with which
they can be sent direct to the Starlight
Children's Foundation.
Brano Hudak

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