Mission Statement

To investigate, learn, stimulate and use diverse economic thinking for the goals of supplementing actuaries’ education and CPD, and supporting actuaries in their professional work and as they serve the public interest.

Membership and approach

The MIG is open to anyone to join, and is not limited to actuaries. Indeed, seeking out external expertise is important for this MIG. We intend that the style of the discussions will be suited to the purpose of the MIG, which is a search for discovery and enquiry into economic questions that are relevant to the areas in which actuaries operate. An important theme is the need to face up to uncertainty as a pre-requisite to being able to tackle difficult questions. Of particular interest are lines of thought and enquiry which are additional to the economic paradigms which have dominated both academia and the financial sector over the last few decades. The style will be to encourage and engage with fresh questions, especially questions which seem to have had limited attention to date, and to encourage diversity of thought.

Managing Committee

The MIG shall have a Managing Committee (MC), the members and chair of which will be appointed by the IFoA’s standard volunteer vacancy process. The MC will be responsible for setting the MIG’s terms of reference and overseeing activities of the MIG. The MC will ensure that activities undertaken further the goals of the MIG as described in this document; providing that is the case, the MC will make every effort to ensure that members are free to pursue any activities they wish. The MC will report on the MIG’s activities to the Finance & Investment Board on a periodic basis, to be agreed with the Board.

Scope

The Economics MIG is sponsored by the F&I Board to:

Raise awareness and understanding of our use of economic thought, theories and models and the implications for policyholders, pension scheme members, insurers, regulators and society.

Engage in meaningful discussions in various areas of economics, especially those relevant to our stakeholders. For example, in assessing implications for managing long term assets and liabilities and addressing the related risks and uncertainties.

Engage with interested parties, including academics, outside the actuarial profession, to deepen the level of understanding of MIG members, with a view to posing and investigating questions of importance to actuaries in today’s rapidly changing world and of expected relevance to the future.

Promote discussion and debate about the strengths and limitations of current economic thinking, of actuaries’ current uses thereof, and whether actuaries’ current uses should be revised, refined, supplemented or replaced altogether in the future.

Support members of the MIG and the IFoA in assessing implications of economics and actuaries’ use thereof.

Code of Conduct

All conversations within the MIG should be regarded as confidential unless indicated otherwise. While we hope and expect that these discussions will inform your own thinking, it is not permissible to quote from other members of the MIG or infer views held by other members of the MIG as a result of these discussions. Everyone should feel able to express opinions freely within the MIG without concern that these opinions will be shared outside the MIG without their express permission.

Potential Activities

The scale and breadth of the activities of the group will depend upon the volunteers who come forward to join in our discussions. We envisage there being a number of concurrent working groups, with a regular sharing of thought across the whole group. Activities we currently envisage include the following:

1. Identify and ask difficult questions of any nature

2. Identify and explore issues specifically within the financial system

2. Identify and explore issues specifically within the financial system

3. Provide discussion fora, including engaging with interested non-actuaries; maintain liaison with significant ongoing economic research activities outside the actuarial profession

4. Mutual education and learning: provide pluralistic, informal, educational support to MIG members to help them understand, for example, each economic theory’s paradigm and how to think about it from outside that paradigm

5. Mutual education and learning: provide pluralistic, informal, educational support to MIG members to help them understand, for example, each economic theory’s paradigm and how to think about it from outside that paradigm