Australian Actuary inspires growth in Sri Lanka’s actuarial profession
President of the Actuaries Institute, Australia Ms. Naomi Edwards recently embarked on a short but impactful private visit to Sri Lanka. During her visit, she met with several council members and volunteers of the Actuarial Association of Sri Lanka (AASL) to share her insights and experiences in the field of actuarial science.
Ms. Edwards is a highly esteemed professional company director who currently serves on the boards of TAL, Australia’s largest life insurer and various other boards across different industries in Australia.
The association in a media release said that an actuary is a highly specialised professional who applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess and manage financial risks, particularly in areas like insurance, pensions, investments, and financial planning.
During an interactive luncheon meeting, Ms. Edwards shared her insights into the growth of the actuarial profession in Australia and the opportunities available to smaller, developing markets like Sri Lanka to learn from their experiences.
Actuaries are known for their ability to apply mathematical and statistical techniques to assess and manage financial risks, making them valuable assets in various industries. Traditionally, actuaries have primarily operated within sectors such as life, non-life and health insurance, pensions, investments, wealth management and banking. However, owing to the unique skill set actuaries possess, she highlighted that actuaries could be valuable assets in any industry requiring the construction of models using extensive data to address business challenges.
Further elaborating on this point, she mentioned that actuaries
could contribute to predictive analytics, predictive modelling, data mining and offer tools as well as techniques and perspectives for managing operational risks within an organization.
She went on to say in this age of big data, there is a growing global demand for decision making and risk management reliant on data science techniques. As such actuaries are ideally positioned to meet this demand, as a result of our training, intellectual abilities, professionalism and experience of working with data for nearly two centuries. Australia boasts a community of over 3,700 actuaries who have been practicing for over 125 years.