Actuary
I have mentioned that I’m a retired Actuary. An actuary is a professional with advanced mathematical skills who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty.
Actuaries, as a profession, are considered to be a trusted and learned professional like doctors or lawyers or engineers. What I mean by that is that laws have been passed requiring an actuary appointed by the board of directors to opine that the amount of money set aside to pay for claims that have already occurred by the end of the year make a good and sufficient provision for all claims known and unknown. Essentially, the appointed actuary must state that in their professional opinion, if, for instance they work for an insurance company, has enough money to pay claims at the end of any month.
Think about the example of you going to the doctor on December 28th…the doctor probably hasn’t submitted the claim to the insurance company to be paid by December 31st but will and when it does, the insured members of the company expect that the insurance company has the money to pay it. The sum of all these claims that aren’t paid is called the unpaid claim liability of the company.
There are lots of requirements that have to be met before one can be the appointed actuary of an insurance company including education, experience and being appointed by the board of directors (which makes them complicate in this process something they take very seriously too). One requirement is ongoing education. One way of meeting part of the ongoing education requirement is reviewing actuarial standards of practice. These are written documents, created by actuaries for actuaries, that describe common ways of doing or reviewing actuarial work and the assumptions that have to be made.
Every year, I would spend hours reading and reviewing these standards of practice before I wrote my actuarial opinion as to the adequacy of the unpaid claim liability. While there are occasionally changes, revisions, or clarifications to these standards of practice, most of the time they are exactly the same as the previous year. You have to motivate yourself to carefully read and comprehend them because, in the worst case situation, you might have to prove that you know what you are doing to avoid being accused of malpractice (similar activities happen for doctors and lawyers and engineers). More importantly, an actuary that can’t defend their review may lose their professional certification and their future ability to earn an income.
This brings me to the Bible. The Bible is our standard of practice as a person who has been redeemed by grace from God.
“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” - Romans 15:4 ESV
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17
“Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…” - Luke 24:45
“Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” - 1 Timothy 4:13
As an appointed actuary, I wanted to do the right thing to both the company I worked for and my professional responsibilities as a qualified actuary. I knew that if I didn’t do what I was supposed to, I might lose my job, my reputation and my ability to earn a future income. That made doing what I needed to do easier. As a sinner redeemed by Christ, I owe him everything. He told me to continually learn and do better ( with the help of the Holy Spirit).
