Tan Suee Chieh explains why Chartered status is something to be welcomed, not feared.
The United Kingdom is an internationally respected centre of global finance and is also the home of actuarial science.
The IFoA has now grown beyond the UK's national borders. It has expanded globally and enjoys an enviable reputation for ethical and professional standards. As a result, governments, organisations, companies, and the public worldwide know that the IFoA's members abide by a stringent code of conduct, ethics and personal behaviour.
The IFoA's qualifications carry weight.
Chartered status and the UK
Through the authority of the British government and the monarchy, the IFoA can award Chartered status to those individuals it accredits, as many other UK chartered professional bodies already do. This UK feature is unique for professional bodies.
Why should the IFoA move to Chartered status? Because if we do not do so, anyone can claim to be an actuary in the UK, as is the case today.
Introducing the Chartered title means that an actuary has to be a qualified member of the IFoA. Simply put, we can protect and enhance our brand,
The current IFoA designations are, of course, very well established in the insurance and pensions fields. However, outside these realms, the actuary may not be recognised as a professional on an equal footing with lawyers, accountants, architects and engineers (all of whom carry the Chartered title). Worse still, non-IFoA members can claim they are doing actuarial work and call themselves actuaries, and we have no legal recourse. Introducing Chartered status would put an end to this irregularity.
In addition, the changing business landscape means that as a profession we operate even more outside our traditional practice areas. Chartered status will set us apart from those working in these areas with lesser, or no, qualifications and will be particularly useful in areas where no professional regulations exist.
The British Chartered designation is a powerful brand, widely recognised worldwide as denoting a trustworthy and expert professional.
Nothing is lost and everything to gain
When it is put before us in November, IFoA members should vote for the move because the current proposals ensure that nothing is lost by anyone while all of us stand to gain.
Previously, the approach to Chartered status the IFoA was considering was for the Associate grade to be renamed Chartered Actuary. Those of us with the higher grade of Fellow would have also called ourselves Chartered Actuary, with IFoA Fellow as an add-on. The consultation in 2018 showed that this left many of our members feeling that Fellows would be regarded at the same level as Associates, eroding the Fellow status, relevance and its ‘gold standard’. In the current proposal, this will not be the case.
We are preserving the critical distinction between Fellow and the Associate, ie we would be called Chartered Actuary (Fellow) using the post-nominals FIA C.Act or FFA C.Act, or Chartered Actuary (Associate) using the post-nominals AIA C.Act or AFA C.Act. Members will be able to continue using the post-nominals FIA/FFA and AIA/AFA, if they prefer.
Please bear in mind an Associate today is already recognised to have attained the standards of an actuary internationally (IAA).
The current proposal will attract and encourage many to enter the profession and branch out to less traditional fields, creating new pathways to new forms of Fellowship, bringing opportunity and dynamism to the profession and benefiting us all.
So vote Yes to the Chartered Actuary proposal – nothing is lost and there is everything to gain.
