Meet the Asociación Colombiana de Actuarios (ACA)

February 2016

The ACA recently turned 45 years old with more than 120 members. They are in a changing environment: education, regulation and industry are moving forward. The first master’s degree in actuarial science in Colombia began in 2014 at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and other universities are starting to implement undergraduate and graduate actuarial degrees. Regulations have defined the role of the responsible actuary in the insurance industry, recommending that these actuaries should be members of an IAA Full Member Association. Colombian insurance companies have never had so many actuaries on their payrolls.

The ACA’s principal short-term objective is to formalize the actuarial profession given the constraints of the Colombian Constitution (in order to regulate any profession, a law must be enacted by the country’s Congress).

Pictured (left to right) at the International Actuarial Symposium: ACA President Andrés Vesga, ACA Vice-president Francisco Baquero, Carlos Arocha of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) International Section, Edward Robbins of the SOA, pensions expert Josh Bank, ACA Secretary Armando Zarruk, Finac director Luis Gabriel Caro and ACA Treasurer Camilo González.

In November, the ACA organized the fifth International Actuarial Symposium, held in Bogotá, Colombia. This event has taken place every two years, but this was the first time it had been hosted by the ACA. Around 140 people attended the symposium, which focused mostly on solvency regulation issues, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) accounting and analytics.

It was made possible thanks to the support of ACA patrons and sponsors such as universities, insurance companies and consulting firms. Special thanks were given to the IAA Section Actuaries Without Borders for helping to organize a seminar on pricing general insurance, which proved so successful that a second one had to be promptly organized.

Expert speakers from leading companies, regulators, universities and other organizations presented varied sessions, and a lively panel about big data and analytics was moderated by Juan Pablo Córdoba, chairman of the World Federation of Exchanges and CEO of the Colombian Stock Exchange. Differences and common ground between data scientists and actuaries were discussed, along with whether current buzzwords were really new. The conclusions were that the principles of insurance and actuarial science are mandatory for any sensible analysis and that new technologies, methodologies and theories complement the actuaries’ toolbox but do not replace it.

Table of Contents