Professionalism Counts, February 2025

I’m Retired—Do I Still Need to Meet CE Requirements?

You’ve had a long and rewarding actuarial career. After decades of hard work and keeping up with developments in your constantly evolving actuarial environment, you are looking forward to retiring. Finally, you won’t have to worry about earning and tracking 30 hours of continuing education (CE) each year!

Not so fast. Are you keeping your oar in the water with a little consulting on the side?

The fact of the matter is, if you provide even one statement of actuarial opinion (SAO), Precept 2 of the Code of Professional Conduct requires you to be qualified—and that includes CE. If you wonder whether you are really issuing an SAO, consider that the definition of a statement of actuarial opinion has two main points:

1. It is an opinion expressed by an actuary in the course of providing actuarial services.1
2. The actuary intends the recipient of the SAO to rely on it.

If both of these points are true, then you are issuing an SAO.

Still, why do you need to keep earning CE at this point? After all, you are a highly experienced actuary with decades of experience—you know what you’re doing.

The point is that things change. Look at the technological advances of the last 10 years or so, with the rise of algorithms, data analytics, and now artificial intelligence—all of which seem to advance every few months. Laws and regulations also change. So do actuarial standards of practice (ASOPs), the professional and related environments, and many other things that could affect your actuarial practice. If you don’t keep up, your knowledge could be lacking, and the services you provide may reflect that. You could be letting down your clients.

Other professions—notably the medical profession, where the practitioner’s knowledge and skill are quite often a matter of life or death—also require practitioners to keep up with developments in their fields. While the stakes might not be quite as high with actuarial work, the financial well-being of individuals and organizations often depends on whether your knowledge is current. So, if you are in retirement and issuing any SAO, it is best to find ways to keep up to date by earning CE relevant to the work you are doing.

The good news is that CE doesn’t have to be earned by traveling to expensive conferences. One way of earning CE while giving back to the profession is by volunteering on an Academy committee in an area relevant to your work.

Commenting on ASOP exposure drafts is another way to earn CE while allowing the profession to benefit from the expertise you have built up over the years. Other low-cost ways of earning CE include self-study, reading relevant articles and other materials, and reading relevant ASOPs. And, of course, Academy members may access all recorded webinars free of charge though Academy Learning.

1 The Code of Professional Conduct defines actuarial services as “Professional services provided to a Principal by an individual acting in the capacity of an actuary. Such services include the rendering of advice, recommendations, findings, or opinions based upon actuarial considerations.”