The President (Mr N. J. H. Salter, F.I.A.): Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to my Presidential Address, the title of which is Diversity Makes Us Stronger.

Those of you who know me know that I shall never be presidential even if I am President. For those of you who do not (and by way of introduction) I am a pensions actuary, a partner in a UK-based consultancy. I am supported here tonight by representatives of my family who have more contact with actuaries than might be considered good for them: my wife, Suzie, who obviously is married to an actuary; my two children, Katie and Jamie, obviously daughter and son of an actuary; my cousin William, who married an actuary; my sister-in-law Jane, who also married an actuary – a different actuary, obviously – and finally that actuary, Jeremy Goford, who was President of the Institute from 2002 to 2004. I also have my assistant here, Vanessa, without whom nothing would get done. So there you go. That is the full list of people that I rely on.

I have been a member of the actuarial profession since I was 21. I leave it to you to speculate on how long ago that was. Do not let my youthful looks and Olympian physique fool you. It has actually been quite some time. To give you some sort of an idea how long it has been, we did not have a computer in the office when I first started work.

In that time I have felt an enormous sense of pride to work alongside peers who are passionate about what they do, who work hard to ensure actuarial expertise adds value, and are committed to developing the future of our profession – and none more so than David Hare, the outgoing President.

To become President of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) genuinely fills me with a sense of honour and humility, and I am delighted to take up the mantle for the next 12 months.

Depending on how you count it, I am the 75^th, 65^th, 135^th, or 5^th President. This depends on whether you consider my role to be the continuation of the Institute, the Faculty, both, or just the merged body of the IFoA.

I think that my role is a continuation of the two preceding entities, and so I believe that I am maintaining the heritage of both great bodies.

To use the phrase commonly attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, I feel as though I am standing on the shoulders of giants, and if I can take the profession a further step forward, it is only because of the enormous strides that my predecessors have made.

My ambition is to take the profession forward. I want to make a difference. But looking at the list of the names on the wall here in Staple Inn, there are some giants of our profession: Frank Redington, for example, and my mentor, Geoffrey Heywood, whose memorial service was held this very afternoon, and Faculty presidents, too, including George Lidstone, who has mathematical methodologies named after him, and John Wallace, who turns 100 this week, making a mockery of our mortality tables.

I am never going to make the strides that such people made; just one little one, I hope.

Bringing you back to more recent times, and taking the shortest roll call, I will have some pretty big boots to fill. Every year since the merger, the IFoA has progressed under the dedicated leadership of some outstanding people alongside the demands of business as usual.

Working with Council and the Executive, Ronnie Bowie established the bedrock of our professional body, concentrating on getting the structure right and working together. That is the internal organisation. Jane Curtis focused on getting the strategically critical relationship with the FRC in the right place. That is our regulatory supervision. Philip Scott introduced our new brand, that is, our internal and external face, which we summarise as community, integrity, and progress. This in turn gave David Hare the foundation against which he could focus on our external profile and increasing our relevance to the outside world.

So, in effect, over the course of a government’s standard tenure, our Past Presidents have implemented the merger of two entities, established a harmonious relationship with an outside regulator, developed a recognisable ‘face’, and raised our profile on the domestic and international stage. I wonder how many heads of state can claim that feat. Presidents-past, you are in the wrong job!

There is a serious point here; as Presidents, our term is short. In 12 months we can sow the seeds but it will be our successors who bed in the roots, and when the tree flourishes it should be the members who harvest the fruits of our labour. That is the approach that I will take.

I want to build on all the good work that has gone before and be able to look back, in another 5 years, and see how our profession has progressed further under the leadership of my successors.

As David said earlier, there has been clear progress already on our strategy. We know what we want to do and we are working hard to do it. To be clear, it is Council which sets the strategy, and the President’s role is to champion the strategy internally and externally. Despite appearances, the President has no power.

We educate, we regulate, and we support our members and aspiring actuaries in the UK and internationally. We speak up on matters of public interest and we look to advance all matters relevant to actuarial science. As President-elect, I have seen how David has furthered our progress through ramping up the relevance with the outside world, and I want to build upon this.

My focus will be on how, as a profession, we can and should recognise diversity to make us stronger. Embracing diversity, recognising its value, and harnessing it for the good of our profession, undoubtedly presents a challenge. As Charles de Gaulle once said, how can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

Think about it!

It is right to encourage diversity. There is a vast body of evidence that documents how teams made up of people with diverse backgrounds are stronger than teams made up of clones.

People who perceive diversity as a moral imperative or societal goal are missing the point. It should be viewed as a competitive advantage and as a business opportunity. Historically, actuaries may well have been predominantly male and white. That has changed and that is undoubtedly for the good. If you look at our membership now, 37% are female – up from 31% 5 years ago. So, it is still not up there but it is getting better; 47% of our students are now based overseas.

I want to reinforce the IFoA’s objectives of encouraging diversity in our membership, and in our members’ representation on our volunteer bodies, be it Council, our Practice Boards, or wherever we seek volunteers.

We must aim to provide international members with the support that helps them; but we should also encourage them to volunteer for the benefit of the profession more widely. I am delighted that council now has three members based overseas. This is all part of the community aspect of our brand values.

I am confident that the will is there among our members and the Executive to continue on this path to progress that we have already taken.

So that is one perspective on diversity. But this is a multi-faceted concept and I want to approach it as such during my Presidency. With that in mind, the second pillar of diversity concentrates on the actuarial skillset. This might be a bold statement but it is one I will stand by: our training leads us to be different from other people, although some may say we were different before we started the training!

Let me explain. Our skillset is broad. It covers numeracy, obviously; but it is a lot more than that. It is not just the ability to analyse data but to build complex models with many variables. And even then we are trained to be sceptical. We may have been integral to the model’s development, but we will not automatically believe the output from the model that we have built. We value consistency; we worry about the “why?” and the “is the answer right?”.

It is this numerical and enquiring skillset that gives a user confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the advice that we provide. We are also excellent problem solvers. We excel at taking data, analysing it, and finding ways to communicate it, which are understandable and helpful to our clients. We work in the public interest. We do not provide advice that benefits us, we do not manipulate markets, and we do not seek to gain from the regulatory system.

Instead, through our code, simply put, we seek to do the right thing. This is the value of the professionalism that we require from all our members – the integrity, if you like, from our brand values.

In much the same way as we champion diversity among our peers so that we can recruit and retain the best talent, we should champion the diversity of our skillset to open new doors and build opportunities for our members to flourish in both traditional and new areas of business.

Why is this so important? As other professional bodies, such as the accountants, have recognised, attitudes are changing: attitudes towards learning and the relevance of what is being taught; attitudes towards the lifelong career prospects and expectations of international mobility.

We need to remain cognisant of the fact that the pool of highly talented individuals, where our future membership will come from, is moving away from making lifelong career choices in favour of seeking qualifications which give greater career options and flexibility over time.

That is why championing the diversity of our skillset is so critical to the future relevance of our profession.

This brings me to the third pillar of diversity that I shall focus on: the diverse areas in which we now work, and this is what I would consider to be part of the progress from our brand values or, as David emphasised through his presidential theme, the need to be relevant.

You might reflect on my earlier comments and note that at no point have I referred to pensions or insurance as I described our skillset. This is important because it reinforces a key part of my message. We actuaries need to be known for what we can do, not for what we are currently doing and the areas in which we currently work.

We need to adapt to changes in the financial industry and political space, and we need to use our expertise to identify opportunities and risks for the profession and how our skillset should be applied in the future. That is easy to say, but quite a challenge to execute in practice.

But we do have good form here. As actuaries, we are trained to think laterally, so let us apply that learning to our professional development and look beyond the silos of practice areas.

Cross-practice engagement will allow us to share good practice and learn from our colleagues. I have no doubt that there is much that I can learn from colleagues working in life, general insurance, health and care.

We will benefit from this sort of cross-fertilisation of knowledge but, in practice, our busy day jobs can make it difficult to put our head above the parapet and find the time to engage with actuaries working in different areas. And, to some extent, our annual conferences reinforce this.

Our conference programme is fantastic and I applaud all of our members and staff who put so much time and effort into developing engaging and fulfilling programmes as well as bringing along an outstanding array of after-dinner speakers.

But does the current format encourage or facilitate cross-practice engagement? How does it support members who are not easily pigeonholed into one or other of the existing practice areas? Those might be the areas that will grow fastest in future. Are we developing a programme which is fit for the future by continuing to work within these silos?

I would like to look at developing our conference model to offer actuaries from different practice areas the opportunities to meet with and learn from colleagues from outside their own industry or specialism.

One way of doing this might be to deliver a cross-specialism conference, and I would welcome feedback from members of the profession on how we might take that forward if that was deemed to be a good idea.

Looking at our syllabus and CPD through the diversity lens, I think that it is important that our exams adapt as the needs of the marketplace change. We need to continue to educate our future actuaries to be relevant to the markets in which they will ply their trade. This requires a constant review of our examination syllabus, a task that I know keeps the education team on their toes.

But this also means that as a key part of our professionalism we need CPD to be taken seriously. New actuaries can be educated by the examination system, but qualified actuaries should also want to learn new things. There should be plenty of opportunities to learn from those in other practice areas. In short, as David said, actuaries need to keep relevant.

From the user perspective, I think that there is clear added value to be gained from actuaries learning from peers outside their own specialist area. So I hope that explains why I want to put diversity – using all the meanings that I have ascribed to it – at the heart of my presidential term and at the heart of the way that the IFoA supports its membership.

What does that mean in practice? What will success look like for me at the end of 12 months? I would like to see an increase in cross-practice events and feedback from our members that they are sharing their knowledge base with professional peers working in different areas. I would like to see evidence of research that cuts across our specialisms and geographical boundaries and focuses on using the actuarial skillset to drive through leadership and inform some of the big questions for academics and policymakers.

I would like to see our profession continuing to champion a blend of individuals from diverse backgrounds working in diverse areas of business around the globe, and I would like to see this represented in our body of volunteers. I would like to see us use diversity as a driver for innovation and change, changing the way that we operate as a professional body, how we support our members, and how we are perceived by the outside world.

That brings me neatly to a subject close to my heart: volunteering and charity. I would hope that all those who benefit from the professional qualification seek to give something back in one way or another. One way to do this is by volunteering to help the work of the profession, and there are over 3,000 of our members who are involved in some way or another. There are many opportunities to get involved and these can be found on the website, where there are frequent calls for volunteers.

I would also like to draw your attention to the existence of the Worshipful Company of Actuaries, which is a charitable foundation based in the City of London, structured as one of the traditional Livery Companies.

The Worshipful Company of Actuaries raises money to support worthy mathematical causes. I would encourage you to get to know what it does.

To sum up, what are my aspirations for the profession? As a professional body, and a body of professionals, I want us to be relevant to the changing needs of the world in which we work.

1. 1. I want us to champion the diversity of the actuarial skillset and the benefits that it can bring to areas of work, old and new.

2. 2. I want us to use our skills for the benefit of our clients, but in the public interest, never losing sight of doing what is right.

3. 3. I want us to attract the very best people from all backgrounds who share our vision of professionalism and public interest.

4. 4. Bringing those together as a professional body, I want to support our members wherever they are and in whatever field they choose to work.

So I can do little better than use David’s three key encouragements to newly qualified actuaries: keep learning, keep right, keep relevant. If we can do all this, then diversity will truly make us stronger. Thank you.