Charity shop champions?
Following on from Esquire magazine naming actuaries as the worst-dressed professional body, The Actuary editorial team decided to run an online poll to try and determine what you thought of your own personal style. The options provided in the survey, covering all possibilities, ranged from ‘Catwalk king or queen’, through ‘High street hopeful’ to ‘Charity shop champion’.
Now, given that one of our features editors and I recently spent half an hour discussing whether Paris was still the best place to find haute couture, I looked forward to seeing the results that, I was sure, would blow Esquire’s theory out of the window. Imagine my surprise then when the poll showed that almost 50% of actuaries saw themselves as ‘Charity shop champions’.
Now, assuming those actuaries who voted do not have a distorted image of themselves, the corollary of this is that we are a rather scruffy lot, or at least we see ourselves that way. I have to say that I was initially horrified at this result, however, thinking about things further I wonder whether there is some merit in us being slightly dishevelled, like the eccentric intellectual types that hang around university common rooms? Do actuaries, therefore, dress to live up to their intellectual image or is the image just a reflection of who we actually are? This question is crucial to anyone trying to solve the old problem of whether we can improve the brand identity of the actuarial profession.
As I write, the possibility of a merged profession is very real. A merged secretariat may promise a more modern approach to how actuaries are governed, however I believe that a merger cannot change who we are and how the public perceives us. More views about the merger can be found on our letters page (page 8).
Issue themes
Our main theme for this edition is longevity with insight from Sunny Yang on how to communicate the technicalities of life expectancy to our clients (see page 26), a topic that is picked up by John Kingdom in a web exclusive, where he argues that mortality trends are unstable over time and states the case for using a Lee-Carter framework with time-varying coefficients.
Also in this issue, Graham Everness and Mark Atkinson look at pension scheme legislation and the powers granted to actuaries in setting contributions, while Venkatakrishnan Ramachandran provides an overview of the pension scheme buyout market. Elsewhere, Ric van Weelden shows how different time perspectives on asset correlation can help investors reduce the volatility of returns.
Online survey
The Actuary’s website www.the-actuary.org.uk offers a growing resource of exclusive content. As well as John Kingdom’s feature mentioned above, you will find the concluding part of Daniel Clarke’s intriguing dissertation on ambiguity aversion and insurance and other special features.
While you’re there, why not take part in The Actuary’s reader survey which will be live online? It’s your chance to air your views about the magazine and website, and you could win one of five prizes of £100 Amazon vouchers in the process. Be sure to visit before 19 May.
Book reviews
Finally, thank you to everyone who responded to my April editorial and volunteered to join our book reviewer panel. Our review this month can be found on page 39, where Peter Tompkins provides his thoughts on a guide to worry-free investing, and a lesson on forecasting the financial markets. If you have any suggestions for books for review, please e-mail arts@the-actuary.org.uk.
Margaret de Valois
Editor
editor@the-actuary.org.uk
Margaret de Valois, Editor
