Professional Skills Training - 24 June 2021

NZ Fellows, who are also Fellows of the IFoA, are required to complete 2 hours of Professional Skills Training (PST) as part of their CPD requirements. The IFoA has developed online PST content (video case studies) to assist with this.

We will host a 2 hours session in the form of a Zoom meeting to help NZ members fulfil this requirement. If you register and attend the event, the IFoA have indicated this will meet their requirements (normally you need to complete this individually).

You do not have to be an IFoA member to attend – this session will be a good refresher on ethics and professionalism for all members.

This year the case studies are titled “Professional in Uncertainty”.

A taster of the video case studies include:

• See how a young, newly appointed Valuation Actuary at a local small general insurance company copes with some challenges dealing with the Senior Management Team, making a presentation to the Board and managing his team;

• Following the retirement of the previous Chief Actuary, his replacement is in post and it doesn’t take long to see that he has a very different approach to his predecessor.

• Two actuaries participate in a live TV interview, but have they done their homework?

• A Scheme Actuary to a DB Pension Scheme suspects they may have uncovered an error but struggling to balance the workload against the needs of her overstretched team. Other concerns arise they seek to raise concerns with an unsympathetic Head of Department.

• A consultancy designs chatbot algorithms for a number of insurance companies, providing differing products in various territories. The same core algorithm methodology uses AI and adjusts and filters the questions that the clients are asked to determine the product recommendation. One of the brokers has complained that some of the products recommended by the chatbot, were not appropriate for their clients. The complaints have been passed to the Insurance Regulator, who has requested a meeting with the actuary to get an explanation as to how the algorithms work.

Accompanying each of the video case studies is a separate video where actuaries and other professionals provide their thoughts on the issues raised.