Requests for Guidance: The ABCD Is Here to Help

Professionalism Counts, December 2024

Have you ever found yourself facing a professionalism issue that you weren’t quite sure how to resolve and didn’t want to discuss with your colleagues or boss? Perhaps you’ve been asked to do something you felt wasn’t right. Maybe you were asked to take on a job you didn’t feel qualified for or had an opportunity to take on a new role but weren’t sure whether you were qualified. Or perhaps you have seen what appeared to be poor actuarial work, but weren’t sure whether you should report it.

The Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline (ABCD) was set up to help in just these kinds of situations. Actuaries have a rare and valuable resource in the ABCD’s request for guidance (RFG) process, which the architects of actuarial professionalism established to help prevent bad practice and thus the need for discipline.

The ABCD offers two types of guidance: Formal and informal. Formal guidance is issued by the entire ABCD in writing and is rare. (The ABCD has issued formal guidance only twice since its inception in 1992, both times on pension matters.)

Informal guidance is common. In fact, in the last few years, the ABCD has answered about 120 informal RFGs each year on a wide range of topics, including what constitutes actuarial services, qualifications for various types of opinions, actuarial standards of practice (ASOPs), communications, control of work product, duty to report potential violations of the Code of Professional Conduct, and many more. (For details, see the ABCD’s annual report.)

So, what can you expect when you submit an RFG? First, you can start your RFG by contacting either the ABCD office or an individual ABCD member. If you contact the office, your initial point of contact will be the ABCD’s legal counsel. In some cases, he may be able to answer your question. If not, he will connect you to an ABCD member, who will reach out to you within a day or so. Apart from a brief summary that goes to all ABCD members, your conversation is confidential.

During your conversation, the ABCD member will likely look at your issue through the lens of the professionalism standards and walk you through the relevant parts of the Code of Professional Conduct, the U.S. Qualification Standards (and related FAQs), and the ASOPs. They may ask questions to elicit more information and raise issues you hadn’t thought of. For the requesting actuary, the conversation is an opportunity to ask questions and get advice from an experienced colleague.

In many cases, the requesting actuary has thought long and hard about the problem before contacting the ABCD. Often, they’ve already come to a conclusion but would still like a sounding board to make sure.

So, when you have a professionalism issue and are not sure what to do, or you think you know what to do but would like to talk it through with another experienced actuary who is not involved in the situation, call the ABCD. They are here to help!