The Committee on Qualifications (‘CoQ’) is an extremely important group even though not as many actuaries are familiar with the CoQ as the ASB. Under Precept 2 of the Code, actuaries must be qualified to provide actuarial services. There are two parts to being qualified:
- An actuary must satisfy the “look yourself in the mirror” test.
- An actuary must meet any applicable qualification standards.
The CoQ drafts recommended changes to the Qualification Standards (‘QS’). The QS deal with both basic education and experience to be qualified AND continuing education. There are also specific qualification standards for signing certain insurance opinions. So, the CoQ could recommend the QS be amended to provide for any of the following far-fetched ideas:
- Reduce the required number of hours for annual continuing education to 10 hours or increase the requirement to 100 hours
- Require that an actuary be both a pension FSA and an EA to sign pension statements of actuarial opinion
- Recognize the SOA general insurance track but not the FCAS
Is the CoQ considering any of the above? Extremely unlikely. But, with meetings held behind closed doors, how would the actuarial community know?
The members of the CoQ are appointed by the President of the Academy. Who has final word on approving updates to the QS? The Academy’s board of directors – the same board that voted to close all CoQ meeting to the public, the actuarial profession and the Academy members.
Please support transparency and sign the petition now!