Society Of Actuaries Podcasts Feed

In the next installment in a series to further explore and differentiate the regulatory bodies and rating agencies overseeing the insurance industry, this podcast presents a conversation with Fred Anderson, Chief Life Actuary for the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Fred describes his role as the Chief Life Actuary for the state as well as the interaction between state insurance departments and the NAIC, current priorities at the NAIC, and a view on future regulatory changes and how they will affect financial reporting actuaries.

Join new host Nick Kocisak, ASA, and Mike McPhee Anderson, FSA, to learn about Mike's unique educational background and the importance of data science know-how in the actuarial world.  In this episode, Mike discusses some advantages of continuing education and dispels data science "dirty words" like Poisson distribution and decision tree in hopes that actuaries will embrace these advanced techniques and continue to drive the profession forward!

In this episode, Dave Dillon discusses some basics of gene and cell therapies with Marnie Bute of AON and Kristi Bohn of RGA, including a summary on the science, costs, as well as network and coverage concerns. 

In this episode Joe Alaimo interviews Joan Barret, Achilles Natsis and Tony Pistilli to discuss total risk analysis, a technique that provides a consistent methodology for answering questions like “what are the chances we will lose more than $1 million?”

Roger Loomis gets to know Mike Bergerson and learns about the upcoming webcast “LTC M&A—Are the Floodgates Opening?” The webcast is on May 23rd 2024 from 12:00 to 1:15 PM ET. Please register here: https://www.soa.org/prof-dev/webcasts/2024-ltc-floodgates/

Listen as host Jackie Lee discusses GLP-1s and their role in Weight Loss Management, with Tyler Engel. They discuss how these drugs are being used and what actuaries should consider when assessing their costs and implications. 

In the final episode of this mini-series, Shea and Anders cover the other common tree-based ensemble model, the Gradient Boosting Machine. Like Random Forests, GBMs make use of a large number of decision trees, but they use a “boosting” approach that cleverly makes use of “weak learners” to incrementally extract information from the data. After an explanation of how GBMs work, we compare them to Random Forests and go over a few examples where they have used GBMs in their own work.

Nichole Semprit, The Actuarial Foundation Senior Program Specialist and  Channy Cornejo, AP Calculus and AP Statistics Instructor at Santa Teresa High School discuss how the Foundation math competitions, Modeling the Future Challenge and The Hardest Math Problem Student Contest help students expand their skills, build confidence and win college scholarships.

Listen in as host Jackie Lee talks with Joan Barrett about the recent research paper, “Calculated Risk: Driving Decisions Using the 5/50 Research.” The discussion and report will help you answer key questions like “what are the chances we will lose more than $1million.”

Join us for another exciting YPAC podcast as host Shawn Stender, FSA, MAAA, discusses unique actuarial career journeys with Lana Marozava, ASA, CERA, and Joe Long, ASA, MAAA. This podcast will shed light on the numerous different paths that young professionals can take on their journey to become an actuary. Whether that means changing careers from a teacher, project manager, or data scientist or just taking the exams at your own pace—this podcast will help young actuaries understand that there is more than one way to be successful in actuarial work.  

Join Frank Yeager, FSA and Chris Smith, ASA for an insightful discussion about leadership, the future of actuarial consulting, and the value of strong relationships. Frank shares his advice for aspiring and early-career actuaries gleaned over the course of a two-decade long career at Mercer that has culminated in his latest role as US Health Actuarial and Financial Group Leader.

Listen as host Jackie Lee talks with SOA President and Chair, Tim Rozar. They discuss Tim’s actuarial and volunteer background and the SOA’s goals for the year to come. Be sure to check out Tim’s Presidential address here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BG0AhwX6Ic  

Podcast on the industry adoption of emerging data sets across the insurance value chain. The participants include recognized leaders from business, regulation, legal, and innovation. The discussion covers current adoption practices, business opportunity, regulatory  and legal considerations.

Building on the discussion of individual decision trees in the prior episode, Shea and Anders shift to one of today’s most popular ensemble models, the Random Forest. At first glance, the algorithm may seem like a brute force approach of simply running hundreds or thousands of decision trees, but it leverages the concept of “bagging” to avoid overfitting and attempt to learn as much as possible from the entire data sets, not just a few key features. We close by covering strengths and weaknesses of this model and providing some real-life examples.

Dave Dillion and Bryon Robidoux discuss the book Dare to Lead, which was the Joint Risk Management and Leadership & Development Sections book club selection for December. They discuss what it means for managers to be vulnerable. How to give and receive feedback from both a manager’s perspective and the direct report perspective. The end the podcast talking about actuaries can be more curious and innovative.

What is professionalism?  Is it just following the law?  The code/rules of professional conduct?  Is it more than both of those? Listen to our podcast where YPAC member Patrick Samborsky, ASA, MAAA discusses professionalism with Charly J Pazdor, FSA retired, who has written about professionalism for The Actuary magazine as well as being a course director and facilitator for the FAC. 

Shea and Anders dive into tree-based algorithms, starting with the most fundamental variety, the single decision tree. We cover the mechanics of a decision tree and provide a comparison to linear models. A solid understanding of how a decision tree works is critical to fully grasp the nuances of the more powerful ensemble models, the Random Forest and Gradient Boosting Machine. In addition, single decision trees can still be useful either as a starting point for building more complex models or for situations where interpretability is paramount.

Join host Jackie Lee and guest Colby Schaeffer as they delve into the recent SOA research paper, “Modeling the Impact of the Great Unwinding on State Medicaid Programs.” They explore the model presented in the research paper and discuss the societal and actuarial implications of the Great Unwinding. Tune in to learn more about this important topic.

Dave Dillon talks to psychologist Matt Fleischman, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Neurofeedback Advocacy Project, and Charlie Doe, a retired group health actuary, about neurofeedback, infra-low frequency (ILF) neurofeedback, the data on over 500 clients who have completed 20 sessions of ILF neurofeedback, and the prospect to expand neurofeedback's availability.   

In the first of a series to further explore and differentiate the regulatory bodies and rating agencies overseeing the insurance industry, this podcast presents a conversation with Matthew Mosher, MAAA, FCAS, CERA, President and CEO of AM Best Rating Services. Matt presents an overview of the goals of and approaches taken to evaluate insurance companies with a focus on the important considerations for financial reporting actuaries and how they assist the relationship between AM Best and the companies under review.