These extraordinary times present us with the opportunity to do extraordinary things and it is no different with this year’s Actuarial Convention.

For our first ever Virtual Convention we have an exciting line-up of presentations, panel discussions and workshops.

The Virtual Convention will be presented in three streams where two presentations will be shown in each concurrent session with time allocated for presenters to answer questions live after their presentations.

Workshops will be presented live to ensure maximum interaction. Here are some highlights from our Virtual programme:

A Healthcare and Data analytics session on Day 1 focusses on the Covid-19 pandemic including: ‘Lessons learned in modelling Covid-19’ where Barry Childs will discuss the development and evolution of the ASSA Covid-19 model.

The presentation will focus on dealing with risk and uncertainty in the modelling process and the challenges of widely ranging views. By the time of the Convention we will know with greater certainly how South Africa has fared compared to other countries.

There will be a discussion around what aspects of the model we got right, what we got wrong, and suggested lessons for endeavours of epidemiology model building in the future. AND ‘Using Mobile Movement and Other Data to Understand the Impact of Interventions on the South African COVID-19 Epidemic at a Provincial Level’ by Louis Rossouw.

His work highlights the use of Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling to aid the understanding of the evolving pandemic and the interventions implemented to stop it. He will show how it was able to estimate the R value of the epidemic as it progressed and what the impact of interventions are or were.

He will also be able to investigate changes in interventions and how these would have improved or worsened outcomes. The work will also cover differences between the South African results and similar work in other countries.

The presentation will also include a comparison of early model predictions and how they change over time and how accurate the model was over time. Our Retirement matters and Investments concurrent session will cover: ‘Actuary on FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early)’ where GJ Mellet will discuss the goal of the FIRE movement which is to replace cost of living at early retirement.

As FIRE won’t be possible for the majority, the goal for these members is Financial Independence (FI), i.e. to replace cost of living at retirement.

Actuaries, especially consulting pensions actuaries, have the skillset and access to members to actively lead and encourage FI and the FIRE movement. AND ‘Asset allocation: Demonstrating the Advantage of a Scenarios Approach’

In this presentation Bhekinkosi Khuzwayo and Teboho Tsotetsi will demonstrate the use of a more flexible scenarios approach to asset allocation in the SA market and show that it can lead to superior risk-adjusted returns. In this study, they aim to show that:

• the scenarios approach can lead to superior risk-adjusted returns compared to the traditional asset allocation methods,

• the use of the scenarios approach gives investors a more insightful risk management framework by forcing them to consider ‘alternative histories’ which may not have happened before in history.

A thought provoking Life Insurance Panel Discussion session will cover the following: ‘The Future is African: How to avoid the pitfalls and thrive working throughout Africa.’

For many years, and perhaps now exacerbated by CoViD19, the world has struggled for economic growth. Many businesses have expanded into new markets to chase the inflation-beating returns that they so desire. Africa is an attractive proposition, and there is still large un-tapped potential within largely uninsured populations. However, investing through Africa can come with many pitfalls that must be navigated.

Giles Waugh and his panel will aim to showcase learnings from decades of work across the continent in various capacities. These include; statutory/appointed actuary, internal actuarial function, auditor, due diligence and trusted business advisor.

The panel will include experienced actuaries from South Africa, and across the rest of the continent that will share their experience and views on the future. AND ‘Don’t leave money on the table. Optimise your capital.’ We’re about two years into SAM and the dust has settled with many life insurers finding a steady rhythm of submitting regulatory returns.

The industry now has an opportunity to improve beyond just reporting efficiently and in this panel discussion we will explore capital optimisation approaches within the SAM regime.

Early Registration ends on 31 August and is just R3,365 for members and R6,625 for non-members, so register today.

Regards The 2020 Convention Organising Committee