2025 Academy Award for Research

American Academy of Actuaries Announces

Third Annual Award

for Outstanding Public Policy Research from an Actuarial Perspective

by an Early Career Scholar

SUBMIT HERE

The American Academy of Actuaries Award for Research recognizes an early-career scholar whose work contributes significantly to an actuarial perspective on a public policy issue of interest to U.S. actuaries and public policy makers. The American Academy of Actuaries’ Research Committee invites submissions for consideration by April 15, 2025. A winner of the Award will be announced during the summer of 2025.

The Award will include a monetary prize of $7,500 and presentations of the work—virtually in an Academy webinar and in person at the Actuarial Research Conference in late July at York University in Toronto, Canada. The Academy will cover reasonable travel expenses.

Each year, the Award is devoted to research on a particular theme with broad applicability across different policymaking and regulatory environments and across actuarial practice areas.  For 2025, the Award theme is:

Bias in Assessing Financial Risk: Origins, Detection, Mitigation of biases which might affect actuarial assessments in insurance, retirement planning and/or financial risk assessment.

Background: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Special (EX) Committee on Race and Insurance has, as one of its mandates, to “[c]ontinue research and analysis of insurance, legal, and regulatory approaches to addressing unfair discrimination, disparate treatment, proxy discrimination, and disparate impact.”  While these concerns might arise in any context, the increasing use of “big data,” machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have provided a particular focus for concern at the NAIC, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and at the Academy. The NIST, in its “iceberg” model of bias, identifies three categories of biases: systemic, human and statistical.  We are interested in research on any of these categories, or any combination, assuming the work has application to actuarial work in insurance, retirement planning, and/or financial risk assessment.

Possible Areas of Research:

Methods appropriate for the identification of the sources, detection and/or mitigation of bias in: data; modeling; algorithms; and/or decision-making.

Examples of More Specific Research Topics under this Theme:  any of these topics might be pursued with respect to a particular line of business or more generally:

A. Is there a “best” method for identifying potential “proxy variables” which should be avoided?

B. Are there “best practices” in modeling which reduce the likelihood of biased assessments of risk?

C. Are there tests of algorithms – either in their design or in their outputs – which allow the detection of bias?

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible, submissions must meet the following criteria:

1. Should be related to this year’s Theme

2. Publication Type:

• Publications in peer-reviewed journals;
• Papers or articles accepted for publication but not yet published;
• Ph.D. or other thesis chapters; or
• Other rigorous published research.
• All submissions expected to be in the 10,000 – 20,000 word range.

3. Publication Date: Publications, articles and other publication types mentioned above published or accepted for publication since January 1, 2023; for Ph.D. thesis chapters, chapters from theses accepted by the Ph.D. committee as fulfilling the requirement of the degree, or theses leading to the awarding of degrees since January 1, 2023;

4. Education: Authored by an early career scholar, defined as:

• Ph.Ds who have received their degrees within the previous five calendar years (e.g., for the 2025 award, 2020–2024); or
• Those currently enrolled or enrolled within the previous five calendar years in a Ph.D. program; or those whose highest academic degree was awarded within the previous five calendar years.

5. Subject Matter: The subject matter of the research relates to an issue of insurance or financial risk of interest to United States public policy makers, regulators, or interested stakeholders.

6. Actuarial perspective: The analysis presented is clearly actuarial in perspective. Factors to be considered for this criterion are:

• Most importantly, the nature of the work, and whether it reflects the careful attention to factors such as data quality, statistical, mathematical and logical analysis, and financial risk characteristic of actuarial work; and
• The Ph.D. degree (or highest degree obtained), and whether it was or will be awarded by a Department of Actuarial Science, or in a broader field (e.g., Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Public Policy) with a concentration or significant focus on actuarial science or its equivalent; and/or
• Whether the submitting researcher, their coauthors, or their supervising faculty advisers are members of an actuarial association or have made contributions to the actuarial literature.

7. Country of Residence: Subject to meeting the other criteria, anyone in any country may submit an article or thesis chapter for consideration.

8. Deadline: submitted by April 15, 2025.

If you believe that you have an article or thesis chapter that ought to be considered as:

• an actuarial perspective related to Bias in Assessing Financial Risk;
• with relevance to United States public policy making;
• by an early career scholar;

but are unsure whether the eligibility criteria as specified have been met, please contact Steve Jackson (sjackson@actuary.org) to discuss.

To submit, please complete the online submission form.

All submissions will be acknowledged soon after receipt. Finalists for the award will be notified in May, with a winner notified in June. Arrangements will then be discussed for presentation of the winning research at the Actuarial Research Conference (ARC) in July and in an Academy webinar. The Academy will cover reasonable travel expenses to the ARC.