Actuarial Image Campaign

[Chuck]

Actuaries, The Movie - Finally, a XXX movie safe for the entire family!

Originally Posted by Michael Davlin

Actuaries confuse their (growingly mundane and common) abstract skills with their domain expertise, and they assign their perceived value to the wrong one, and therefore they arrive at silly conclusions about how their collective salary problem can and should be addressed.

Exactly right. I work in a non-traditional field (HR outsourcing) and am above the DWS 90% percentile point for my exams/experience. That has nothing to do with my abstract skills or "actuarial" skills and everything to do with my domain expertise. To the extent that the outsourcing arena is substantially larger than the traditional actuarial arena, I feel comfortable with my career prospects, not as an "actuary" but as an "outsourcing professional."

I haven't watched the disk. I tried it at work, but it stuttered and skipped and froze and lost sound. I thought this might be some weird offshoot of our "locked down" computers, so I tried it at home, only to discover it is windows-only. (I generally use a Mac in my spare time.) So I am left with the impression that actuaries are incompetent at creating an ad campaign.

Is it really one of these stupid "generic risk professionals, use us everywhere" shticks? I agree with MD, our value is mostly our knowledge of insurance. Quantitative skills have some value, but there are loads of other brands of qualified quants. If I wanted a set of letters that told me "this person is good with math", actuarial credentials would make the list, but they'd be low on the list. PhD in physics would rank much higher, for instance. (A couple of my physicist friends have taken a stroll through finance.) And there are plenty of other professional designations on the intersection of "money" and "math".

I'm really worried when I see the CAS pulling away from the upper exams - the ones that require you to memorize details about insurance and the insurance industry. If we sink to becoming an off-brand of "risk professional", we will fade into oblivion.

Originally Posted by Lucy

I'm really worried when I see the CAS pulling away from the upper exams - the ones that require you to memorize details about insurance and the insurance industry. If we sink to becoming an off-brand of "risk professional", we will fade into oblivion.

Had not heard this before. Can you elaborate?

[Griffin 6]

Originally Posted by Lucy

So I am left with the impression that actuaries are incompetent at creating an ad campaign.

Then they should have an Actuary on The Apprentice. Or hire Bren to do the campaign.

[RDH]

Originally Posted by glenn

I mean, WHO CARES? Nobody cares about actuaries.

I sure hope my employer cares about actuaries.

[RDH]

Originally Posted by Michael Davlin

What other group of professionals runs a superficial image campaign on behalf of their group to tout their relevance, secret knowledge, and accept no substitutes importance, and then plead inexplicable underutilization?

Accountants, Architects & Engineers. The architect ads we have on the local radio here are a little overplayed so would encourage the campaign not to over-expose. I'm going to hold out on whether the campaign is "superficial" until I actually see it in action.

[Griffin 3]

Originally Posted by RDH

Accountants, Architects & Engineers.

Individuals and one-person companies hire those professions. When's the last time the guy down the street needed someone to figure out insurance regulations in 38 states?

[Jables]

Originally Posted by Griffin 6

Then they should have an Actuary on The Apprentice. Or hire Bren to do the campaign.

Bow chicka bow bow...

carrot would become the poster child of the actuarial campaign...

[MNBridge]

I'm very surprised that an Actuary would claim that a MBA or CFA could do our job as well and would be utilized if not for regulations.

Then why do the Reinsurers use actuaries?

I have seen what happens when companies hire non-actuaries to do actuarial work (quite often in fact - If you question this I can explain later if needed). 99% of the time the work is total ****, except because the lay people don't understand the calculations and can't tell where the 'expert' made incredibly inept assumptions no one is ever the wiser.
From here there are a couple possible paths:

1a) The work isn't used to really 'do' anything. i.e. Management decided in advance so the risk analysis makes no difference if it is correct or not.
1b) The work is relied on and because the company is cheap the people who did the work are long gone before anyone figures out it sucked. Or no one ever figures it out -- You can hide bad results a long long time by growing. Or they get lucky the economy kicks in and they appear to make a little $ (or lose less) now everyone assumes that things are getting back on track - if they ever figured out they were losing cash in the first place.

But either way eventually #2 happens:
2) The Company continues to Hemorage money or lose business and blame the economy or something else. Eventually they generally go under, get bought, or just sit in financial distress forever.

Sadly I could say the same thing about way to much of the work done by Actuaries (though usually - not always - they are students who quit the process and ended up at Small Ins. Co. USA as 'The Actuary'.)
And on a tangent THIS is why I have a huge issue with non credialed actuaries using the term Actuary. Companies don't know any better.