SOA Podcasts - Society of Actuaries – Details, episodes & analysis

Join us for another exciting episode of YPAC podcast as host Yisi Wang, FSA, CFA sits down with Blake Hill, FSA, FCIA, a distinguished leader in the insurtech industry. Discover the transformative power of technology in insurance, and the unique challenges and opportunities within the insurtech sector. Blake also shares invaluable career advice for young professionals and highlights the benefits of volunteering within actuarial organizations. 

Host Nick Kocisak, ASA, is joined by Austin Kang, FSA, MAAA, CERA, to discuss the importance of being more than just a "number cruncher" as you fulfill your actuarial duties.  Austin shares his experience working in the health consulting industry and provides lessons learned on how to leverage your actuarial background to gain trust and confidence with your clients and coworkers. 

Join us for a conversation dedicated to helping actuaries navigate the complexities of “managing up” in their profession. On this podcast, Tasha Boland, FSA and Morgan Zuidema, FSA will delve into practical strategies and insights for building effective relationships with managers, understanding leadership styles, and achieving career growth within actuarial teams. From communication techniques to goal-setting strategies, listeners will gain valuable tips to elevate their professional presence and excel in their actuarial careers. 

In the next installment in a series to further explore and differentiate the regulatory bodies and rating agencies overseeing the insurance industry, this podcast presents a conversation with Fred Anderson, Chief Life Actuary for the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Fred describes his role as the Chief Life Actuary for the state as well as the interaction between state insurance departments and the NAIC, current priorities at the NAIC, and a view on future regulatory changes and how they will affect financial reporting actuaries.

Join new host Nick Kocisak, ASA, and Mike McPhee Anderson, FSA, to learn about Mike's unique educational background and the importance of data science know-how in the actuarial world.  In this episode, Mike discusses some advantages of continuing education and dispels data science "dirty words" like Poisson distribution and decision tree in hopes that actuaries will embrace these advanced techniques and continue to drive the profession forward!

In this episode, Dave Dillon discusses some basics of gene and cell therapies with Marnie Bute of AON and Kristi Bohn of RGA, including a summary on the science, costs, as well as network and coverage concerns. 

In this episode Joe Alaimo interviews Joan Barret, Achilles Natsis and Tony Pistilli to discuss total risk analysis, a technique that provides a consistent methodology for answering questions like “what are the chances we will lose more than $1 million?”

Roger Loomis gets to know Mike Bergerson and learns about the upcoming webcast “LTC M&A—Are the Floodgates Opening?” The webcast is on May 23rd 2024 from 12:00 to 1:15 PM ET. Please register here: https://www.soa.org/prof-dev/webcasts/2024-ltc-floodgates/

Listen as host Jackie Lee discusses GLP-1s and their role in Weight Loss Management, with Tyler Engel. They discuss how these drugs are being used and what actuaries should consider when assessing their costs and implications. 

In the final episode of this mini-series, Shea and Anders cover the other common tree-based ensemble model, the Gradient Boosting Machine. Like Random Forests, GBMs make use of a large number of decision trees, but they use a “boosting” approach that cleverly makes use of “weak learners” to incrementally extract information from the data. After an explanation of how GBMs work, we compare them to Random Forests and go over a few examples where they have used GBMs in their own work.