Sophie Wright and Shuyan Liang, co-chairs of the IFoA Conference 2023 organising committee, preview the event’s unique and essential offering to all actuaries
The IFoA’s June annual conference is our flagship, cross-practice hybrid event. It’s held live in a London venue and caters to actuaries around the world through online streaming and recording.
This year, we are pleased to be leading efforts to fill the two days with speakers who bring knowledge, ideas, and insights to inspire today’s actuary to be fitter and thrive even more in uncertainty.
Working with actuarial colleagues from all IFoA’s practice boards and lifelong learning committees (risk, finance and investment, general insurance, life, health and care, pensions, and sustainability), we consider the IFoA Conference 2023 to be an ideal forum for driving key areas forward in the profession.
Covering a wide professional spectrum, this conference provides you with an opportunity to meet peers from across the industry, exchange views, and build your professional network. It also complements our focused GIRO and Life conferences, coming up in November, which take a deeper dive into the life and general insurance areas.
We’re excited to share this thought-provoking event with you and wanted to give you a flavour, as best as possible at this early stage, of what we hope to cover.
The conference will have five plenaries delivered by exceptional speakers from inside and outside the industry. There will also be 35 technical workshops that will delve into the most current topics for each practice area, providing breadth as well as technical depth across various ESG topics.
We’re pleased to have already planned talks on:
The IFoA Conference 2023 is also a chance to step outside of our areas of focus and expertise, to delve communally into challenges that all actuaries need to rise to.
In Europe, first Brexit and then the invasion of Ukraine provided sharp reminders that no sector is immune to geopolitical risks. Supply-chain problems and their economic impacts – clearly closely linked to geopolitical events – are these days inescapable factors in actuarial work across the board.
Further potential global flashpoints are evident too, and all while our industries are adapting to the new normal post pandemic and striving to adjust to net-zero demands and the impacts of a changing climate.
There are other areas too, where bringing a broader, collective approach is only likely to add value for organisations, for the profession, and for individual actuaries.
For example, artificial intelligence technologies and data analytics methodologies are posing a challenge to the actuarial profession. How we respond now, how we choose as a profession to move forward, and how we as individuals receive and integrate these new factors into our work, will impact our future.
And the ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda is pressing, with societal changes, demands from regulators, and growing evidence of organisational and financial benefits to be gained. The conference is an opportunity for mutual reflection and support to ensure that we are all on top of this important issue.
The conference is a part of the repositioning of the actuarial profession. Bringing together the wider IFoA community is opening up possibilities for broader perspectives and more nimble skillsets, preparing us all to meet the changing demands of the global marketplace.
We hope that you will join, in person or online, to help us to cultivate innovation, to learn from and exchange views with colleagues, to join the conversation, and to contribute to the collective strength of our profession.
Save the date: IFoA Conference 2023, 26 to 27 June, in-person in London and online
