With sufficient planning and preparation, the writing process should now flow relatively easily. At this stage, less is generally more - except when it comes to emphasis, stories and visual depiction.
Aim for brevity in your style and content. Your report will be judged on quality, not quantity.
Do not be tempted to put in excessive content in order to demonstrate that a lot of work has been undertaken this is not meeting the needs of the user. Do not unnecessarily expand the scope check regularly that scope creep has not occurred.
Reports often serve multiple users with differing levels of knowledge of the subject matter. The writing style should therefore be appropriate for the user with the least knowledge. Awareness that another actuary may read the report can lead to the temptation to put in jargon and technical terms in order to maintain intellectual credibility. However, where possible, this should be avoided or at least confined to more technical appendices. A glossary is essential, particularly where acronyms are used.
Rather than start writing by diving into the details of each section in turn, it can be better to initially write down the main section headings and the main conclusions. Use key bullet points at this stage, which can be fleshed out later.
Consider the flow of the points. Is the order the one that makes most sense to the author or to the user? It is also worth trying to avoid taking the user on an ‘emotional rollercoaster’ i.e. causing unnecessary alarm by highlighting a problem before revealing why it’s not material. Instead state conclusions first and provide explanations second.
Focus on what the user wants and needs to know - recognise there is much of your work that they are fine taking for granted, they want to know what is key to their decision-making
Various approaches can be used to help get the message across to the reader. One powerful approach is to use storytelling. This can result in better retention of information by the reader than by stating facts. Storytelling can also help to recognise and clearly formulate knowledge gaps
“A picture is worth a thousand words” according to the well-known idiom. However, it is important that each picture doesn’t require a thousand words to explain it! Reports may lack visual tools because the author may consider text to be quicker to create. However, this is where consideration must be given to the time of the user it is no use if the written explanations are long-winded or unclear and take a long time to decipher (or in the worst case are not understood at all).
Read the other blogs in this series on Good Actuarial Reports.
