Speaking at the 2013 Actuaries Summit, AMP Life non-executive director Diana Eilert told delegates that actuaries within financial services are possibly missing opportunities by limiting their observations to known data and retrospective trends.
“Actuaries tend to limit their observations to the data that has already been collected [but] sometimes things happen in the data they’re not collecting,” Ms Eilert said.
“I think observations are often lagged, so we’re always waiting for things to develop because we want to see the proper evidence of the trend rather than flagging things early.”
CGU Insurance general manager of claims and chief actuary Donna Walker said that in her experience, the focus of an actuarial role is around influence strategies and creating a “safe” boundary of what a strategy will entail.
She agreed that actuaries need to consider the roles they currently service and where the industry could expand.
“We talk about our core strength being forward-looking and yes, that is a core part of our skill set,” Ms Walker said.
“We think about tomorrow and today, so why wouldn’t we want to be more involved in setting strategy?
“We tend to hold back a bit from creating and developing a strategy and that’s a situation I think we, as a profession, need to think about: Is this a space we want to play in?”
