Category Archives: Professional Education

New CAS Institute to Offer Specialty Credentials

As I announced on November 16 at the CAS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, during the CAS Board of Directors meeting held on November 15, the Board unanimously approved the formation of The CAS Institute, which will provide credentialing and professional education for technical quantitative specialists whose work often overlaps and supports that of actuaries. The … Read more »

Access Resources to Advance Your Technical Skills

Big Data has officially arrived, and it’s changing the way business works, including actuarial science, wrote David Zornek, an actuarial consultant at Oliver Wyman, in the most recent issue of the Actuarial Review. Zornek, who is also a candidate representative to the CAS Candidate Liaison Committee, highlighted a variety of resources that actuaries can use … Read more »

First CAS Interactive Live Stream Event a Resounding Success

This year, the Casualty Actuarial Society introduced live streaming to our professional education events. The live streaming format was piloted at the 2015 Casualty Loss Reserves Seminar (CLRS) in Atlanta, GA. The program streamed a keynote address and four concurrent sessions as they happened at the seminar. The pilot was a resounding success and will … Read more »

Five New Ways You Can Earn CE Hours Starting in 2015

The CAS Interactive Online Education Committee is busy developing several online courses on the topics of: Introduction to R Introduction to Stochastic Reserving Statistics for Reserve Variability Statistics for Predictive Modeling Bayesian MCMC The self-paced, interactive online courses will allow actuaries to participate in virtual, hands-on education that is designed with adult learning principles. The Committee’s … Read more »

Wanted: Actuary with Predictive Modeling Experience

Does your actuarial training make you attractive to employers looking for someone to join their predictive analytics team? Why would they hire you over, say, a PhD in statistics? This was an important question for me personally, as I was looking to break into the world of predictive analytics. And yes! Success! I’m 6 months … Read more »

What are Your Highlights from the CAS Centennial Celebration and Annual Meeting?

As the CAS moves forward in its Centennial year to address the many challenges that lie ahead, I want to take a moment to reflect on the kick-off to the year – the Centennial Celebration and Annual Meeting held last month in New York City. The Centennial Committees who put together the event did a … Read more »

A Successful Year for the Continuing Education Review

The Continuing Education Compliance Committee (CECC) has completed the 2014 Continuing Education review and is happy to report that all members selected for review either met or exceeded the requirements! This year, about 1% of membership was randomly selected for review, which is about 70 members.  The members of the Executive Council and Board of … Read more »

Survey: Are You Thinking Outside the Triangle?

At the CAS Centennial Celebration and Annual Meeting, Don Mango, Dave Clark, Jim Guszcza and I are presenting a session called “Reserving for the Next 100 Years: Thinking Outside the Triangle.” We’re going to talk about whether we’ve been innovative in reserving, and it’s quite debatable. On the one hand, the CAS has over 400 … Read more »

Join the CAS Community of ERM Practitioners

The CAS has taken another step forward in supporting its members working in enterprise risk management with the formation of the CAS Enterprise Risk Management Special Interest Section (ERM SIS). I invite you to join me and other actuaries with an interest in advancing ERM practice by becoming a member of the section. As I … Read more »

Using R for Actuarial Work

In March 2013, the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) released a major new version of R, the free software programming language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. R 3.0.0 takes better advantage of 64-bit memory and allows data structures that exceed two billion records! R is useful for a number of tasks. Replicates most … Read more »