York Actuary

This post is a few days late, but never mind.

So it turns out that the dinner has had to be postponed due to
a) it being on the same night as a works do for my company in York
b) it being on the same night as a works do for some of the companies in Leeds
c) Approximately nobody wanting to go (possibly due to a) and b) )

I'm told there's been a hefty cancellation charge. Motto to the organisers (and it's a simple one. Actually it's two):
1) Give people a sensible amount of notice that such a dinner is being planned
2) Choose a venue that can be accessed without a million pound taxi charge. We don't all have cars, and some of those that do would like to get rat-eared.

Not as catchy as Aesop's mottos, but I'm read by less people so can probably get away with it.

The date for the annual Yorkshire Actuarial Society Dinner has finally been announced, giving us members a whole 2 weeks of notice. Not great planning if you ask me. I believe some of the delay was caused by the organisers failing to confirm the booking at the original venue with the result that the date there was given to some other group. So it's off to a new venue, even further away and harder to get to than the original one. Can't remember its name, otherwise I'd note it here.

Now this in itself does not worry me unduly, as a change is always fun. It's been tricky to persuade other people to go though. And these things are never much fun on your own. And then to top it all there is now going to be a work party on the same day, which could potentially be good fun. It would be possible to go to both, but that sounds like hard work to me. And I'd be drunk when I got to the dinner. So this year YAS dinner will sadly be missing my presence.

Last year's dinner featured the now legendary YAS bingo. Should theoretically have been good fun, if a little silly. However, this was somewhat spoilt by giving the same bingo card to every single person - which kind of misses the point of bingo. Potentially you could have a 100 people all shouting "House!" at the same time, which would have been hilarious if the error hadn't been spotted in advance.

First a thought about offshoring: What do they call it in Europe? If they move jobs to India where it's cheaper, the jobs aren't moved offshore, as India is on the same land mass (though possibly a different tectonic plate). Maybe they just call it "moving jobs to a country with a comparative advantage in call centre provision" but in French, German or whatnot.

We had a debate at work yesterday, which was mostly organised by my good self. It's remarkably hard work trying to find just four volunteers to speak, but I think they all had a good time at least. The topic of the debate was: "This house believes that insurance companies should only use rating factors over which the insured individual has control". ie it's unfair to use things like gender to price insurance as that goes against the principle of equal rights for women. Clearly nonsense, but then I'm an actuary and we tend to understand the reasons behind insurance pricing better than most.

The guys proposing the motion had a bit of an uphill struggle, as they started off with an 8% share of the vote. By the end they had got it up to...10% - well done, good effort and all that. Around 10% of people had also become too confused to have an opinion any more... possibly due to the obtusness of some of the arguments put forward (especially on the opposition side). I'd go over the main points raised in the debate, but I don't have my notes. Something will be done by somebody at some point to go on the company intranet site, so if it's good I may nick it and post it up here.

Audience participation was sufficient, but could have been a bit more enthusiastic. I know most of them have thoughts and opinions - come on people, share!

Slightly strange actually that part of my job involves arranging a mass discussion. I'm sure I should be doing some hard calculations instead....

I went to a meeting of the Yorkshire Actuarial Society in Leeds on Tuesday. Can't remember exactly what the paper being presented was called, but it was a sequel to Modern Valuation Techniques and was presented by Elliot Varnell.

It mainly covered the creation of a stochastic yield curve model - fit an initial yield curve and then let this evolve stochastically over time. This can then be used to value pretty much any asset or product whose return is based solely on interest rates. Some of the maths was a bit over my head, but I had at least read the initial paper so could follow what was going on most of the time. I found the talk fairly interesting - and it's good to try and keep up with some of the more technical developments in the profession. I don't generally get involved too much in that sort of thing whilst actually working.

I would link to the actual paper itself, but I can't find it on the 'net. Sorry!

The turnout was very low, especially amongst the people from Leeds. But that at least meant I could have extra biscuits!

There is a Parliamentary Select Committee Meeting in London today, on the subject of "Restoring Confidence in Long-Term Savings". Present will be the Chief Execs of Aviva, Legal and General, Prudential, Royal and Sun Alliance and Standard Life. Arguably the latter should be focussing on restoring confidence in his own company, but that's another story.

I'm told that these meetings are sometimes broadcast in the evening on (possibly) BBC parliament - could be interesting viewing as the execs should get a bit of a grilling. I'm not entirely sure what the meeting will cover, but it may include 1% price caps + the Sandler report, compulsory pension schemes and with-profits tramsparency.

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