Aalia has been asked to put together data for a regulatory submission, looking at an international insurance group’s (headquartered in the UK) exposure to various potential catastrophe events around the globe. She discusses their difficulties with colleague Jools, whilst being pestered by Cliff who is the Compliance Manager to ‘just put together whatever they can’ to meet the regulatory submission deadline.

A reliable Insurance company is considering the best option for a tranche of its business. Colette (Actuarial Director) puts Marco (Senior Actuary) in charge of the project but indicates the answer she’s looking for. Marco’s team does the analysis and despite him knowing that it doesn’t give the result Colette was looking for, feels compelled to follow his professional instincts regardless.

An insurance company has invited an actuarial consultancy to a meeting to pitch for a climate change and sustainability project. Through a lack of preparation, in-built biases and preconceptions by the consultancy staff, the meeting goes from bad to worse.

High-flying actuary Alex ‘appears’ to find herself ‘in the dock’ regarding some routine procedures she may or may not have carried out whilst dealing with a client on communications and conflicts. Alex’s recollection of her actions are weak, leading her to become more and more uncomfortable. But when it turns out to be just a “bad dream” she feels her subconscious may be trying to tell her to reflect on her work and commit to being more thorough.

Having trained and qualified as an actuary in the UK, Ayo is looking for a medium to senior role in his native Africa. He attends an interview at a local insurance company with an international parent. The Senior Actuary is looking to bring someone in who can refine current processes within the business but without' rocking the boat' too much. Ayo is keen to hear about the current approach for setting pricing and valuation assumptions in this developing market and has some probing questions before deciding whether this role is a good fit.

Brandon, is a young, newly appointed Valuation Actuary at a local small general insurance company. He has had little previous experience of valuation work, having previously led the Pricing and Product Development Team at a large general insurance company. There are three scenarios – the first is where he has to deal with a difficult issue with the Senior Management Team; the second is where he has to make a presentation to the Board; and the third is where he has to manage more experienced and junior members of staff.

Rachael was promoted to Head of Valuations 2 years ago at the firm she joined as a trainee some 8 years earlier. She has a good rapport with the Chief Actuary, Brian, who is about to retire and helps him produce key reports for the firm. Things change however once his successor, Harry, is in place and Rachael struggles to adapt to a new style of leadership and approach.

Clyde has been with the company for four months and has just been added to the client team for a large, important client, Massomax, headed by team-leader Danica. To date Clyde has also been working for smaller clients which earn less in fees, including TiniMicro, with team-leader Susan. Clyde has a statutory deadline approaching for TiniMicro and there will be a fine if he misses it. However, Danica urges Clyde to prioritise work for their bigger paying client Massomax, hinting that prioritising her work will be good for Clyde’s career progression. See what happens when Clyde attempts to resolve the competing pressures.

Marcus and Alison are both actuaries and a married couple work at competing firms. Here they describe, via phone calls and video diaries, the pitfalls of working from home, sharing a makeshift office and having to manage confidential processes in a confined space. Confidential information on screens and Marcus’s inquisitive mother make balancing work and two young daughters at home much more challenging than necessary.

Black Box Insurance sets up Project Polar with a multidisciplinary team of actuaries and data scientists to implement a pilot using AI technology for insurance renewal pricing – quicker, faster, less human interaction for competitive advantage. Watch how this unfolds and issues that arise when the Board decides to skip the pilot and go straight to full implementation of the technology.

Belinda, a Scheme Actuary, has some questions around the model proposed by the Corporate Actuary Carl for the mortality assumptions in a Scheme funding review. Carl is less than cooperative in helping Belinda understand the model, claiming the information is confidential and anyway, it's an industry approved model that everyone is using. Which of them is being unreasonable here?

Niels, a partner in the firm, has set a multidisciplinary project team a deadline of one week to come up with a best estimate price for a particular project. The team are set to work long hours and get off to a good start. However the following day, things start to look less clear and the team are under pressure to meet the Friday deadline. On Wednesday Niels bursts into the project room looking for a result as he still needs to get approval and deliver the report by Friday. The team are taken aback that the deadline has now shrunk by two days and they are under pressure to come up with a recommendation.

Susan, a Risk Actuary, is faced with a dilemma when asked to deputise for the Chief Risk Officer, Don, in his absence, at a proposal meeting the following day. Susan learns that Ian, the Financial Director, has submitted a proposal to get the go-ahead for a new insurance product at the meeting and knows that the Sales Director, Raymond, will be keen to launch the product the following month. Susan has concerns about the short timescale to thoroughly review the risks and is worried about the potential impact on the company's profitability and audit. However, she comes under considerable pressure from Ian to support the product launch at the meeting.

Andrew, Chief Actuary at ILAC Singapore is in the middle of filming a promotional video as part of a recruitment drive, when Pui Yee, a recent recruit, lets slip she is about to download “Actuarify” software, a comprehensive reinsurance comparison tool from her previous company. Andrew abandons the promotional shoot and steps in with some advice for Pui Yee, before putting her professional judgement to the test.

James has recently become a Non-Executive Director (NED) for a small Financial Services company. In view of his background he has been asked to join its Risk Committee. He is attending his first meeting of the Committee where the key item on the agenda is cyber security. The meeting arrives at some action points but James is not wholly comfortable with them.

Frank, a newly appointed Scheme Actuary, meets his clients who have an exciting business plan in place to grow their business and envisage the deficit in the pension scheme being paid off in 2 years’ time. Frank has different views to those of his predecessor and his clients are not happy when he shares this with them.

Chief Reserving Actuary, Peter, presents a range of reserves at an annual meeting. After being challenged he suggests a narrower range. However the Finance Director, Stephanie, is clearly not happy and seeks advice from an actuary friend. Armed with this information, at a subsequent meeting she then proposes setting the reserves at a much lower figure which is even below the bottom end of Peter's earlier recommendations and puts pressure on the Board to swiftly agree. Let's see how Peter reacts.

Sara has been providing advice to pension scheme client, Tremwell, who want to make medium to long-term plans to bring their scheme into a funding position. The team has been developing a new model 'Project Gemini' which is relatively untested. With rumours of a proposed company sale, Tremwell is keen to use the software to produce the company valuation, but doesn’t want to pay for testing or controls. Des, the project Manager is under pressure and doesn't think the model is ready, especially with so much riding on the model outputs, and of course he needs it to be fit for purpose for all clients, not just Tremwell.

An Insurance company, led by Ellen, has a strategy to grow by acquisition. Project 'Silver Bullet' is the due diligence phase on their number one target, who have put themselves on the market. They have been given access to a 'data room', within which they think is the important information for a buyer to assess the company. It's highly market sensitive, so only a very small team is allowed to know the work is going on and as with most due diligence, it is being done under extreme time pressure, with information being made available for only a few days before a final decision has to be made! Nathan, an actuary, is tasked with carrying out the valuation and expresses doubts about the acquisition at the anticipated acceptable price, amidst concerns that some areas of the business are high risk.

Serena, a recently qualified actuary, puts a proposal to Victoria her boss, in respect of maturity pay-outs for a closed group of policyholders, for which the calculations rely on the, soon to be abolished, statutory regime in the UK. Serena’s simplified calculations would be sustainable and, subject to estimated future expense savings, affordable. Due to pressure from the Board to constrain budgets Victoria suggests Serena should change the assumptions to come up with a narrower range of outcomes and a good rationale that any underpayments are not material. Choose your own ending: i) Serena maintains her ground, ii) Serena gives in to pressure.