Page 15 - Turkinsurance Digital Magazine

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tice and operations. We see that actuarial activities are much What are the activities of your society to improve the exist-
more common in non-insurance areas, particularly banking. We ing actuarial practices?
rapidly need to train and raise many more actuaries. However,
it is not possible to keep high educational standards and pro- We can categorize the activities of our society under several
ceed rapidly at the same time. There are also some differenc- groups: We organize trainings and seminars for professional de-
es concerning the positions of actuaries in companies. When we velopment. In 2016, we held a seminar with the topic of “Profes-
compare the actuarial practices of companies operating in our sionalism and Ethics”. In 2017, we hosted a regional conference
country to those in developed markets, we can see that there in cooperation with IAA, which was attended by over a hundred
are a lot of areas open for development. Moreover, Solvency II participants and international speakers. This two-day conference
requirements in Europe are expected to expand this gap even fur- included several presentations about the current agenda and pan-
ther by deepening and diversifying this field. Actuarial function els were sector related developments were discussed.
in other countries and in our country do not overlap in terms of
concept definition, which is another reason for those differences. Plus, we organize many university visits to introduce our profes-
It is evident that the ultimate practice should be conducted by sion to students. We try to provide guidance to our students with
actuaries; however, we need to separate the individual actuaries the aim of raising better actuaries.
and those working inside corporate functions from each other.
Corporate functions require several actuaries to work in coor- Our members also contribute to the preparation of actuarial ex-
dination to address different subjects. For the upcoming terms, ams by providing questions.
we expect insurance companies to start seeing actuarial function
beyond the current concept and as a part of internal systems such
as risk management, internal control, audit etc. With the IFRS “An insurance company that fails to keep
17 requirements, actuaries will be undertaking bigger roles and
responsibilities concerning financial tables. Therefore, we can the actuarial basis of its business robust
say that actuarial profession will become much more critical in cannot survive within today’s increasingly
parallel with the new IFRS 17 studies.
competitive business environment”
In your opinion, what are the major problems of actuarial
profession in our country? We organize internal meetings where we analyze and evaluate
the developments in our sector. Our society prepares reports
This profession faces different problems in different areas. The fact about our professional opinions and submits them to the Under-
that society is not well informed about this profession is a problem, secretariat of Treasury and other related functions. As I have
which makes it difficult to attract qualified human resources. Un- mentioned earlier, we prepared a report on “Actuarial Function”
necessarily being limited to the insurance market and the trouble- with active participation of approximately 20 of our members
some working conditions of insurance market, combined with an and a much better attended survey set; and we submitted it to the
unprofitable market structure make it really challenging at times. Undersecretariat of Treasury.
Operationally, few existing actuarial departments have to deal with
many operational tasks. As a result, we can not easily reach the level We try to attend to international meetings and organizations.
of expertise of our colleagues working in other countries. In devel- During IAA meetings, our members undertake active duties and
oped markets, we can see actuaries who have specialized in pricing, make presentations in the committees and sections they partic-
reserves, financials and broken that down to insurance lines such as ipate in. Therefore, we can represent the actuarial and insur-
health, life, liability and other non-life insurance. On the contrary, ance standards of our country on international platforms; and we
an actuary in our country is expected to interpret the data in all support the development of local practices by monitoring recent
those areas. Even if it is not expected, an actuary generally ends up developments around the world.
working on all of them. On the one hand, this is a big challenge; but
on the other, it seriously broadens the perspective of the actuary. The way to do a job in the right way is to evaluate the elements
of that job accurately, analyze and interpret the potential de-
Position of the actuaries working at companies and at the Under- velopments of those elements, and revise your work through a
secretariat of Treasury is another issue that we need to address. continuous feedback process. Actuary is the profession that will
Actuaries are involved in critical processes within companies; while execute this process most accurately for all organizations and
conducting provisional activities in an independent manner. The companies engaged in risk management and data science, par-
regulations prevent actuaries being promoted to senior manage- ticularly insurance companies. Today’s hot topics such as “big
ment positions such as assistant general manager to maintain their data” and “artificial intelligence” are among the most common-
independence; however, in practice, this puts actuaries in a position place of modelling alternatives for us actuaries for years. All
that does not guarantee direct contact with the Board of Directors. organizations that create the environment for actuaries to reveal
Therefore, the result can be the exact opposite of the purpose. Last and use this know-how will reach much better positions in their
year, we submitted a comprehensive report to the Undersecretariat markets. Anyone who focuses on what should be done about those
of Treasury titled “Actuarial Function - Practices in Turkey and areas rather than what is trending will definitely cross paths with
Other Countries” which included our opinions on these matters. an actuary along the way.
Zeynep Tütüncü / zeynept@bestyayincilik.com