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Financial System Inquiry – the Interim report
The Financial System Inquiry, headed by David Murray (former Chairman of the Future Fund and CEO of Commonwealth Bank) has released its Interim Report (all 460 pages of it). For those who haven’t been following this, this inquiry (which is already known as the Murray inquiry) is the natural successor toContinue Reading
Book Review: #Girlboss
#GIRLBOSS, by Sophia Amoruso, is part memoir, part business advice, part self-help book, written by the founder of Nasty Gal, an online fashion retailer which is, after seven years of life, making $100m in annual sales – all online, with bricks and mortar stores coming soon. It is a light breezy read ofContinue Reading
Book Review: The Trusted Advisor
The Trusted Advisor, by Maister, Green and Galford Last week I ran a workshop as part of the Young Actuaries Program at the Actuaries Institute on building relationships for both external and internal clients. In preparing for it, and talking to colleagues (especially Darren Robinson, who reminded me I had lent himContinue Reading
The Role of the Appointed Actuary
Concerns about the appointed actuary role In a recent Insight publication (pdf), APRA made a few points about the role of Appointed Actuaries, particularly where it involves Pricing, which seem to express some concern as to whether appointed actuaries have been effective: A tender for group insurance involves input from a numberContinue Reading
Book Review: Asia’s Cauldron, by Robert Kaplan
Today’s book review is Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific, by Robert Kaplan. Robert Kaplan is an American journalist and foreign policy adviser. Although this book is about Asia, he writes this book not so much an Asian expert (although he clearly is), asContinue Reading
Cycling in Sydney – is it riskier than it used to be?
In the last few weeks, there have been some nasty cycling accidents in Sydney. I’ve been a cyclist commuter in Sydney off and on since 1996, and my first reaction (particularly as one of the cyclists killed was a neighbour of mine) is to think that I should stop cycling,Continue Reading
Big data and actuaries – are we part of the solution?
The Actuaries Institute had a financial services forum last week, which I managed to get to some of. My first report is of the Big data plenary session which closed the conference. I’ll start with some background reading: Cheerleaders for big data have made four exciting claims, each one reflected inContinue Reading
Women’s only carriages: balancing harassment and crowds
The Eye family is on holiday in Japan at the moment. Our family of four (three male, one female) accidentally jumped into a women’s only carriage on the Osaka metro the other day. It took us one stop to run the gamut of emotions from surprised, to embarrassed, to indignation (thatContinue Reading
Weekend Links
I’m not going to make a habit of this, but there have been some great articles for interested actuaries this week that I wanted to point to. Tim Harford in the FT wondered whether in our enthusiasm for Big Data, we have forgotten some statistical principles: Four years after the originalContinue Reading
How many ships disappear each year?
When I read The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, one statistic that astonished me was that “two large ships sink every week on average [worldwide] ” according to Dr Wolfgang Rosenthal. The author, Susan Carson, suggests that the numbers are high, but thatContinue Reading