ASTIN Section
Our History
ASTIN is the first and oldest section of the IAA. It was founded on October 16, 1957 in New York City. Its inception is indebted to the conditions that prevailed in the first half of the 20th century – an era associated with
- pre-war advances in science, and especially in the field of probability theory and statistics,
- World War II and scientific and technological innovations that originated from it; and
- post-war world and the rapid economic growth and favourable social and political developments.
Having once attempted become an independent actuarial organisation to serve the non-life insurance industry, ASTIN was destined to eventually become a part of one global united actuarial profession. Throughout its history ASTIN has evolved and broadened its boundaries to areas ranging from the well-established Ratemaking and Reserving to more contemporary Risk and Capital Management, and newly emerging Data Science and Machine Learning.
All these achievements would not be possible without a number of ASTIN’s prominent figures. Those who laid the foundations of the classical risk theory, those who founded ASTIN, and those who further developed its intellectual base.
We are now in our 7th decade and still going strong. Today, being a well-established global professional forum, we draw upon the values of the ASTIN brand.
This period was dominated by Scandinavians. In particular, the two prominent figures associated with those times are Filip Lundberg and Harald Cramér. In 1903 in his PhD thesis, and also later in 1909 at the International Congress of Actuaries in Vienna, Filip Lundberg was first to mathematise the insurance operation by considering it as a stochastic process. Somewhat similar to the work of Louis Bachelier, who at the time used stochastic processes to describe the movements in stock prices, Lundberg’s ground-breaking proposition was revolutionary and well ahead of its time, as the formal mathematical apparatus of stochastic processes would only appear later in 1930s with the work of Harald Cramér and also prominent Russian probabilists A.N. Kolmogorov, A. Khinchin and B.V. Gnedenko.
Harald Cramér continued Lundberg’s work, and in 1930 formalised it into the so called ‘Collective Risk Theory’. Its practical importance was only really understood and appreciated after WWII.
Non-life actuaries: the birth of ‘the actuary of the second kind’ – 1914-1957
Actuarial science, from its early times when it was formed as a separate mathematical discipline at the end of the 17th century until the beginning of the 20th century, was solely devoted to solving life assurance problems associated with finding accurate quantitative methods for evaluating premiums and reserves for annuities, pure endowment and whole life assurance. These problems were deterministic in principle, and were solved by life-insurance actuaries – the ‘actuaries of the first kind’, as Hans Bühlmann described in his ASTIN Bulletin editorial from 1989 titled Actuaries of the Third Kind? (Volume 19, Issue S1, 1989).
The emergence of the ‘actuaries of the second kind’, non-life insurance actuaries, is mainly associated with the introduction of probabilistic and statistical methods to the non-life insurance industry. Unlike their peers of the first kind, who were focusing mainly on deterministic methods, non-life actuaries had to master the new skills of probabilistic thinking.
The early generation of non-life actuaries emerged in North America with the creation of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS). Over time, they evolved and matured professionally and by the late 1940s had gained an important status in the industry for promoting scientific methods for non-life insurance ratemaking and reserving. In particular, they were famous for developing significant expertise in non-life statistics, e.g. Credibility, or so called ‘American Credibility’ (Albert W. Whitney, 1918). The list of prominent figures and great contributors form that early generation include Arthur Bailey, Francis S. Perryman and L.H. Longley-Cook.
Later, the second wave of non-life actuaries emerged in Europe after WWII. Many of them, being actuaries and/or mathematicians, served their countries in the army in specialised units during the war and developed a completely new set of mathematical skills associated with the application of probability and statistics in the development of effective military defence systems and strategies. Examples included such areas as Game Theory, Cryptology, Linear Programming and Operations Research, and also Sequential Statistical Learning.
Those who survived the war and returned from military services were eager to make use of their new skills developed whilst serving in the army. They started to work outside life insurance, gradually focusing on non-life insurance problems and applying the new techniques of mathematical statistics, stochastic modelling of insurance process and decision-making analysis (Game Theory). By early 1950s various groups of non-life actuarial enthusiasts were informally appearing in Europe, gravitating mainly to Scandinavia:
- Scandinavia: Harald Cramér, C.-O. Segerdahl, Paul Johansen, L.-G. Benckert, C. Philipson, Ingvar Sternberg, Gunnar Benktander, Teivo Pentikäinen, Petrus Mattson, Ove Lundberg (son of Filip Lundberg), Sparre Andersen, and L. Wilhelmson
- France: J. Dubourdieu, Pierre Depoid
- Italy: F.P. Cantelli, Bruno de Finetti and G. Ottaviani
- Important singletons: Bobby Beard (UK), Hans Ammeter (Switzerland) and Edouard Franckx (Belgium)
ASTIN creation – first attempt, 1953-54
An idea of forming a new international organisation of non-life actuaries was first mooted in November 1953 under the initiative of a small group of enthusiasts, a preparatory committee, consisting of
- Hans Ammeter (Switzerland),
- Bruno de Finetti (Italy),
- B.H. de Jongh (The Netherlands),
- Boleslaw Monic (Poland-UK),
- Jean Sousselier (France); and
- Stefan Vajda (Austria-UK).
The plan was to have the inaugural ASTIN meeting at the forthcoming International Congress of Actuaries (ICA) in Madrid scheduled for June 1954.
In addition to becoming an independent organisation, ASTIN also wanted complete freedom to publish a bulletin and hold its own scientific colloquia, which required unconditional financial independence.
However, after having a preliminary discussion with the Comité Permanent (the predecessor of the IAA), the permission to form such independent organisation was not granted. The Comité Permanent was willing to give ASTIN freedom for publishing a bulletin and hold its colloquia, but could not agree in principle with the idea of forming an independent international organisation. The Comité Permanent was insisting that ASTIN should not aim to become an independent organisation, but rather work towards becoming a subsection of the ICA, and proposed to change the statute accordingly. The formation of ASTIN was therefore postponed until the next ICA.
After holding a series of talks and discussions, the final agreement between the ASTIN preparatory committee and the Comité Permanent to form the ASTIN Section was reached. The deal was brokered by Comité Permanent’s representative, Sir George Maddex (UK).
The ASTIN Inaugural Meeting took place on October 16, 1957 in the Hotel Commodore at the ICA in New York. The agenda of that meeting, attended by 46 ASTIN members, consisted of the following two items:
- adoption of the ASTIN section rules proposed by the Comité Permanent; and
- election of the first committee of ASTIN.
 |
 |
 |
The meeting agenda was successfully fulfilled, and ASTIN was officially formed as a first Section of the Comité Permanent (IAA). The ASTIN first committee was elected and consisted of
- Bobby Beard (UK)
- Edouard Franckx (Belgium)
- Paul Johansen (Denmark)
- Boleslaw Monic (UK)
- Francis Perryman (USA)
- Carl Philipson (Sweden)
- Sir George Maddex (UK), representative of the Comité Permanent
In this first committee meeting straight after inauguration the first ASTIN officers were chosen as follows:
- Chairman: Paul Johansen
- Secretary: Robert Beard
- ASTIN Bulletin Editor: Edouard Franckx
- Treasurer: Boleslaw Monic
Since its creation ASTIN has been playing an important role within the IAA. It has become the trademark of scientific advances in insurance mathematics and economics. ASTIN has benefited from the freedom and independence it was provided by the IAA in having been able to carry out fruitful ground-breaking research. Over decades, the new generation of non-life actuaries was raised – the generation that further developed ASTIN, significantly contributed to its intellectual base, and made a positive impact on the actuarial profession.
In our quest for excellence, we consistently demonstrate an uncompromising pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In essence, this is what defines our brand.