Professionalism Counts, September 2023

Judgment, Integrity, and Your CE

As the days draw short, it’s a good time to check your progress toward meeting your continuing education (CE) requirements before the end of the year.

Under the Qualification Standards for Actuaries Issuing Statements of Actuarial Opinion in the United States—more colloquially known as the U.S. Qualification Standards, or USQS—you must earn at least 30 hours of relevant CE each year, including 6 organized hours, 3 professionalism hours, and 1 bias hour. If you plan to issue a statement of actuarial opinion for NAIC Annual Statements, 15 of the 30 hours must be directly relevant to topics in section 3.1.1, and 6 of the 15 hours must be organized. These terms—“relevant, ” “bias, ” “professionalism, ” and “organized”—are defined in the USQS. Let’s take a look.

• Relevant: Under the USQS, CE is “relevant” if it 1.) broadens or deepens your understanding of one or more aspects of your work; 2.) exposes you to new and evolving techniques for addressing actuarial issues; 3.) expands your knowledge of practice in related disciplines that bear directly on your work; or 4.) facilitates your entry into a new area of actuarial practice.
• Bias content provides knowledge and perspective that helps you identify and assess biases that may exist in data, assumptions, algorithms, and models that impact actuarial services. Biases may include but are not limited to statistical, cognitive, and social biases.
• Professionalism content helps you understand and apply the Code of Professional Conduct, actuarial standards of practice (ASOPs), and related actuarial professionalism guidance. Examples of professionalism CE include studying, reviewing, or providing input on an exposure draft of an ASOP; studying or reviewing the Code of Professional Conduct; attending an actuarial professionalism webinar; and serving on the Actuarial Standards Board or a professionalism committee.
• “Organized activities” give you the opportunity to interact with actuaries or professionals working for different organizations. Conferences, seminars, webcasts, in-person or online courses, and committee work are a few examples of organized activity.

In our self-regulated profession, a great deal depends on each actuary’s judgment and integrity. Every day you use your professional judgment, grounded in integrity, to make decisions about your work. The same judgment and integrity should apply to choosing your CE. For example, a session that may be helpful and relevant to one actuary may be completely irrelevant to

another actuary. Ultimately, it is your responsibility to make a reasonable, good-faith determination of what CE opportunities are relevant to your practice and thus fulfill the requirements of the USQS. If you have questions, we encourage you to refer to the USQS, the FAQs on the U.S. Qualification Standards, and “Which CE Requirements Apply to Me?” If, after reviewing those resources, you still have questions, you may submit a question to the Committee on Qualifications.

[Hed] USQS Bias Requirement

As this is only the second year that the bias requirement has been in effect, the Academy has received questions about what might qualify for bias CE. Below is a list of Academy resources that may qualify for bias CE.