Professionalism Counts, September 2025
Several years ago, the Academy published a series of articles called The Academy and the Web of Professionalism. Not everyone liked the title—the word “web” conjured unwelcome images of spiders lying in wait for unsuspecting prey in sticky webs.
But spider webs are amazing products of nature—they are remarkably strong and resilient, and a dew-soaked spiderweb can be beautiful in the early morning sun. To quote one article,
“Biomaterials, having evolved over millions of years, often exceed man-made materials in their properties. Spider silk is one outstanding fibrous biomaterial…. Silk fibers have tensile strengths comparable to steel and some silks are nearly as elastic as rubber on a weight-to-weight basis. In combining these two properties, silks reveal a toughness that is two to three times that of synthetic fibers like Nylon or Kevlar.”1
Like a spider web, our web of professionalism is strong and flexible: its principles provide guidance for just about any situation actuaries may find themselves in. These principles are laid out in the foundational documents of actuarial professionalism:
- The Code of Professional Conduct, which sets forth what it means for an actuary to act as a professional and requires actuaries to adhere to high standards of conduct, practice, and qualification;
- The Qualification Standards for Actuaries Issuing Statements of Actuarial Opinion in the United States (USQS), which sets basic education, experience, and continuing education requirements for actuaries practicing in the U.S.; and
- The actuarial standards of practice (ASOPs), which describe the procedures an actuary should follow when performing actuarial services and identify what the actuary should disclose when communicating the results of those services.
Just as important is the fourth component of actuarial professionalism, the Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline (ABCD), which offers actuaries guidance on professionalism issues upon request and investigates possible violations of the Code, thereby helping to uphold the standards of conduct, qualification, and practice.
These components of professionalism have been established for decades, and some may take them for granted. But actuaries have not always been held to (or adhered to) high standards. In fact, one of the main reasons the Academy was founded 60 years ago was to provide common standards of conduct and practice for the profession. Membership in the Academy was intended to identify “those who are competent in the Actuarial Profession.” 2
Shortly after it was established in 1965, the Academy published its first Guides to Professional Conduct. Many of the principles in that first Guides still appear in today’s Code of Professional Conduct, which has been adopted by all five of the U.S.-based actuarial organizations. Others now appear in the qualification standards or standards of practice.
The web of professionalism was woven carefully, slowly, and deliberately over decades, though the 1980s saw an explosion of professionalism activity. Early qualification standards first appeared around 1980 for signing NAIC annual statements. In the next few years, the Actuarial Standards Board was established to create standards of practice, and the ABCD was set up to help uphold those standards. Both bodies are housed at the Academy and supported by Academy staff.
In the 1990s, the qualification standards underwent several revisions, and continuing education was required for the first time. At the same time, the Academy was spearheading efforts to eliminate inconsistencies in the various codes of conduct that the different actuarial organizations had adopted, finally achieving success with the Code of Professional Conduct that took effect in 2001 and remains in effect today. In 2008, a revision to the USQS greatly broadened the definition of a statement of actuarial opinion, making the qualification standards applicable to most actuaries for the first time. As with the ASB and ABCD, the committees responsible for the Code and USQS are housed at the Academy and supported by Academy staff.
The Academy, then, has become a steward of actuarial professionalism, providing a place, framework, and support for the volunteers who serve on these professionalism bodies and do the heavy lifting of maintaining, updating, and upholding the professionalism standards. Through the efforts of these volunteers, with Academy support, the web of professionalism remains strong and resilient in the Academy’s 60th year.
[1]“The elaborate structure of spider silk” Prion. 2008 Oct-Dec;2(4):154–161. doi: 10.4161/pri.2.4.7490
[2] Academy Yearbook 1967 p. 106 https://actuary.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/yearbook_1967.pdf