COMMITTEE NEWS

October 2017

Banking Working Group (of the Scientific Committee)

The past few months have been a busy time for the Banking Working Group (BWG). It met during the IAA Council and Committee meetings in Chicago, where a report was provided on its activities, progress was reviewed against the group’s workplan and its strategic priorities for 2018 were agreed upon. The group started with members from eight countries and now consists of volunteers from 14. It continues to see an increase in interest from across the globe, with recent additions from Sri Lanka, the U.S., Colombia, Ireland and Mexico.

As part of efforts to provide education and CPD opportunities to banking actuaries and raise awareness of banking practice by actuaries, the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA) Banking Committee and the BWG hosted a webinar to discuss the development and implications of IFRS 9 and showcase how actuaries are adding value to ensure it is implemented successfully.

This webinar, which attracted 117 registrations and 78 attendees from across the globe, was moderated by Michael Tichareva, Chairperson of the Banking Committee of ASSA and the BWG. The panellists were Ania Botha, an associate director at KPMG (South Africa); Matthew Walker, an associate director at Deloitte (South Africa); and Christian Marini, a modelling specialist and project manager at Prometeia (Italy). All have extensive experience in working with banks and in the implementation of IFRS 9 in a wide range of countries. The attendees’ questions involved a variety of topics, from the modelling aspect to the macro-economic considerations, displaying the broad range of impacts and interest that this topic has in the actuarial banking community.

Given the positive feedback on the quality of the content delivered at the webinar, and an earlier webinar on actuaries in banking, several more will be planned for 2018, with considerations for using them to gain CPD hours.

The recording and the slides of the IFRS 9 webinar can be downloaded here.

As part of its strategic initiatives, the BWG designed a banking survey targeted at individual actuaries and student members of IAA member associations. Participation by associations is voluntary. The survey is ongoing until the end of 2017 and possibly the first quarter of 2018, depending on the extent and pace of responses. The intention is to seek the views of actuaries and students working in banking or who have an interest in banking. These would then be taken as input towards developing banking as a practice area for actuaries at a global level, with banking education development and provision of CPD opportunities being pivotal in the initiative.

As part of the bid to develop banking education and provide CPD opportunities for actuaries and actuarial students in banking practice,the Banking Education Interest Group, established in 2016 by the Education Committee as an informal group, has been expanded to include more members from different jurisdictions and is reporting to both the group and the Education Committee. Its mandate is to investigate banking education and CPD development for the global actuarial profession.

The survey includes questions on education development and CPD opportunities and the results are expected to provide input into these important initiatives. The results to date show great interest in banking, with a high proportion of participants wanting further details on the actuarial profession in this area.

The participating countries to date are South Africa, Australia, France, the U.S. and the UK. More member associations are being approached. Should your association want to participate in the survey, please contact Amali Seneviratne.

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