A CENTURY AND A HALF, RESPECTIVELY, OF CASUALTY AND CONSULTING ACTUARIAL WORK

A century ago (1914) the Casualty Actuarial and Statistical Society (CAS) was founded. My purpose in writing this paper will be to review the origins of the CAS, to discern trends in its operations over the years, and to consider plausible scenarios for its future. My review will be helped by interviews I had a half-century ago (1962-63) with one of the Charter Members, and by an interview I had a generation later (1986) with the son of the first CAS President. The latter interview constituted a small part of the research I did in preparing for a Society of Actuaries presentation on the Founding Fathers of the North American actuarial organizations.

A half-century ago (1964) I became (and remain) a consulting actury. While my practice over the years has covered all actuarial areas, it has been primarily concentrated in casualty actuarial work, a speciality that previously was rare among consulting actuaries, but which subsequently has become a significant part of the field. My paper will review the origins of this consulting actuarial speciality, will look for trends in the field over the years, and will consider plausible scenarios for the future. My review will be helped by my full-time work as a consulting actuary over the past fifty years and by my extensive professional activities during that same period.

My proposed paper thus will be an analysis rather than a history of non-life actuarial work in the United States from its origins a century ago, and of corresponding consulting work from its origins a half-century ago. As might be expected of an actuarial paper, it will then build upon that analysis to construct alternative scenarios for the future.