Insights and Ideas from the American Academy of Actuaries
Contingencies
January/February 2025
A new year, a new administration, and a full slate of priorities: Academy leaders and practice councils set out what 2025 holds for the profession and for policy. Features also ask why regulation lags behind technology and why health care costs remain so hard to control.
Features
The Pacing Problem Unplugged Part 1
This is the first in a two-part series examining how technological innovation has thrown up new hurdles to the regulatory process. "Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road."-Stewart...
Leading with Purpose
The Academy's 2025 Organizational Outlook By Bill Michalisin AS WE BEGIN A NEW YEAR AND CELEBRATE OUR 60TH ANNIVERSARY, the American Academy of Actuaries remains steadfast in its mission: serving the public and the U.S. actuarial...
Your Membership in Action
Practice Council Priorities for 2025 Council on Professionalism and Education Nancy Behrens The Council on Professionalism and Education (COPE) includes representatives of all Practice Councils as well as additional committees and...
What Does the Federal Government’s Change in Political Leadership Mean for Academy Priorities?
By Ted Gotsch Senior Analyst, Content and Publications The 2024 election results bring anticipated shifts in policy and political direction, leaving many pundits and the average American asking "what happens next?" But what does it...
Growing the Profession
Contingencies asked the various affinity groups representing the diversity of U.S. actuaries and their allies to tell us a little about what they had planned for 2025 and encourage all Academy members to get involved in these great...
Understanding and Controlling Healthcare Costs
By Patrick Getzen, FSA, MAAA; Dave Nelson; Karen Johnston, MD Healthcare costs are a mystery to most people and organizations. Even large insurers and governmental entities, paying billions of dollars in claims every year, struggle to understand...Departments
Editor’s Note
New Year, New Opportunities
AS THE CALENDAR REMORSELESSLY EDGES TOWARD THE EVENING OF DECEMBER 31 each year, many people take it as an opportunity to take stock of what has happened in the previous year and look forward to what they would like to happen in the next 12...
President’s Message
A Value Proposition
By: Darrell Knapp
WHEN I BECAME THE ACADEMY'S 60TH PRESIDENT in November-in my 40th year as an Academy member-I was reflecting on the value of being an Academy member and an Academy volunteer (27 years and counting). And, speaking of numbers,...
Up To Code – Perspectives from the ABCD
Alphabet Soup—An ABCD Primer
By: Tammy Dixon
CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY FAVORITE COMFORT FOODS. But even with a child's disdain for vegetables, there was something appealing about Campbell's vegetable alphabet soup. Perhaps there's an unexplainable urge to...
Commentary
Hurricane Helene
By: Robert Rietz
"SO HOW BAD WAS IT?" asked a Michigan friend a few days ago, "Hurricane Helene, how bad was it?"
I told him we lived in downtown Asheville, which didn't bear the brunt of the Sept. 28 storm, and our condo building escaped...
Cryptic Puzzle
Chutes and Ladders
By Tom Toce
Entries start at square one and proceed to one hundred. If a word ends at the bottom of a ladder, the next word begins at the top of that ladder. If a word ends at the top of a chute, the next word starts at the bottom of that chute....
Puzzles
Five by Five
By Stephen Meskin
The puzzle column in this magazine almost eight years ago: Vol 29 No 3 (2017, May-June), was about tiling 4×4 squares with tetrominoes. At the end of that column, I challenged readers to try larger squares and/or different...
The Last Word
Perplexing Questions
By Robert J. Reitz
I'm old. I bear no ill will toward anyone who closed the back cover after reading that. For the remaining readers, I pose a question that has tugged at my sleeve for a couple of years: "What's my responsibility to younger...
