As IFoA members may know, I am working on a project to improve things by introducing competition into the near monopoly situation that the IFoA has enjoyed for many decades.

#actuaries #competition #valueformoney #education #union 

As some of you already know, I am working on a project to introduce competition into the monopoly that has been enjoyed for many years by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA).

Fellows and Associates

I know many are frustrated and even angry at the way the IFoA has behaved during the last two years:

• in 2023 with the poor way the governance changes were handled and communicated
• in both 2023 and 2024 with the way the IFoA and its Regulatory Board are persisting in pushing the controversial and political "DEI" ("Diversity Equity and Inclusion") doctrine into a key aspect of members' life: the Actuaries' Code.

Having spent 34 years as an IFoA member, including 8 years as an insider (on Council and Management Board and other Boards/Committees), I think it is fair to say that after qualification most actuaries used to regard the IFoA with a modicum of respect or at worst with indifference.

In recent years, that seems to have changed with many now either fearing the IFoA or even strongly disliking it.

The IFoA is felt by many experienced Fellows to be:

• overly controlling
• intrusive
• bureaucratic
• incompetent
• secretive, and
• poor value for money.

Some actuaries (some 10% of Fellows) have no choice but to be with the IFoA: those who by legislation need a Practising Certificate for their job.

Traditionally an unknown (because the IFoA do not disclose this) number of Fellows leave the IFoA before retirement, either because they feel that their job no longer needs IFoA membership (and they no longer wish to pay high fees to stay a member). For reasons that the IFoA said they wanted to research and publish (but have so far failed to do so), this happens disproportionately to female Fellows.

But increasingly I hear Fellows who are fully intending to continue working for many years saying "if only there was an alternative organisation, I'm really fed up with the IFoA".

These Fellows (who don't need a Practising Certificate) stay because they have felt that the only alternative is to not be a member of any actuarial body. They are reluctant to do for a variety of reasons including:

• fear that their employer or clients will be unhappy if they are no longer an FIA/FFA (or in some cases an Associate [the number of Associates is still very small compared to Fellows])
• fear that their professional indemnity insurance costs will increase
• possible loss of networking
• possible impact on their future career
• a general reluctance to avoid a leap into the unknown.

All this is understandable.

Students

While reddit forums are not going to be representative of all IFoA students, they are nevertheless a useful guide to trends in student views towards the IFoA.

It only takes a casual glance at posts on the main sub Reddit used by IFOA actuaries around exam booking, sitting and result times to see the massive level of frustration that students have about their experience with the IFoA.

Frequent pain points seem to be:

• technology failures (e.g. when booking exams, but particularly on exam result days, which are stressful enough without having to repeatedly try to login to a site that keeps crashing)
• things that make the exams unnecessarily difficult (questions mismatched with the tuition or past papers, unpredictability and wide spread between markers, time pressure that is unwarranted because rarely needed in actuarial work)
• having to compete against well organised online cheating groups (something that the IFoA inexplicably - and unforgivably in my opinion - exacerbated by holding staggered sittings of the same exam paper at different time intervals!)
• frequent changes to the exam formats and rules
• confusing rules about "plagiarism" which increases anxiety among the majority of diligent students about false positives (anecdotally several students have been falsely accused of plagiarism by the IFoA - although once again, the IFoA publishes little or no information about false positives and no statistics about alleged breaches of its "Assessment Regulations" - the rules students are subject to about exams)
• The very long and uncertain qualification time and the student dropout rate (again the IFoA publishes little or no information about this). My research shows that the time to reach Fellowship is increasing and has extremely high variability, and that about half of students who join the IFoA never make it to Fellowship.

Students who want to reach Fellowship (or Associateship) have little choice (unless the IFoA reintroduces lots of MRAs - Mutual Recognition Agreements - which in the past have allowed European actuaries to qualify often with only a handful of exams after university, as compared to the 13 that the IFoA currently requires). They have to stay with the IFoA until such time as they either qualify or decide that they have had enough of the exams.

The IFoA therefore has a very high level of monopoly power over students. How has it used it?

Well, if anything over the past few years the IFoA has arguably taken greater advantage of this power than before, not less.

For example:

• Despite boasting repeatedly in successive years about significant improvements to its website, the experience that students suffer on exam result days has generally remained dire
• The IFoA used to run student consultative forums which were at least a semblance of giving students a voice. But no student consultative forum minutes seem to have been published for several years, Even when minutes were published, students have complained that the minutes were heavily edited in favour of the IFoA.

How can we improve the journey for both students and Fellows/Associates?

What I am working on is a solution that will help both of these groups.

For Fellows and Associates who don't need a Practising Certificate

A new actuarial membership organisation [NewOrg] which they can join (either instead of, or in addition to the IFoA) which will:

• recognise the IFoA Fellow/ Associate qualifications and grant them Fellow / Associate membership of the new body
• record and monitor that members complete annual CPD requirements
• have a code of conduct (confined to professional life and proportionate and non intrusive, unlike the current IFoA)
• allow professional indemnity brokers/insurers/underwriters and clients/employers to verify that a member has the status they claim (Fellow / Associate)
• provide quality content including networking opportunities and online discussions
• for members who are still members of the IFoA, powerful facilities to organise
• for members who are still members of the IFoA, the mere existence of [NewOrg] will act as a strong catalyst for improved service and better value for money from the IFoA.

For IFoA students

IFoA students are stuck with the IFoA until such time as they either qualify or stop taking the exams.

As mentioned above the IFoA has enjoyed a near monopoly. In my opinion it has abused that power. Students have felt powerless and understandably fearful (note that practically all the posters on the main IFoA reddit sub group are anonymous). Occasional attempts have been made to organise petitions to send to the IFoA but these have usually been abandoned shortly after creation or been largely ignored by the IFoA.

History shows that there is a very powerful remedy to such an imbalance of power: a union.

What I have in mind is a union of IFoA students, for significantly less than the current IFoA student subscription fee. A union which will provide students with:

• the ability to organise and have strength in numbers
• a General Secretary (me) who will be their voice and pursue just demands and grievances with the IFoA.
• no longer will students need to personally stick their heads above the parapet with the IFoA. The Union and its General Secretary will do that for them.

And for those students who qualify: they will no longer be faced with a monopoly (the IFoA). Once they reach Fellowship they can choose between the IFoA and [NewOrg].

Interested? Register when the waitlist is available

If you are an IFoA Fellow, Associate or student with whom any of the above resonates, you will soon be able to register your interest in a waitlist. You can also message me here on LinkedIn if you want information earlier.

#actuaries #competition #valueformoney #education #union