There was a time, Chris Smerald says, when he didn’t always enjoy being an actuary. Not because of the job. Because it was difficult to define.
“People would say, ‘Oh, I know what that is’ and immediately put you in a little box,” he says. “Or they’d have preconceived ideas about you based on where you worked.
“I've been on calls where people have said: ‘If you want to do this, you're going to need an actuary. They're helpful, but they're expensive’. And that kind of wraps up a lot of people's impressions.
“We also have the reputation of saying ‘no’ a lot. The model says no, so we say no. That's very traditional to what people think of as an actuary.”
Chris feels chartered actuary designation may go some way towards increasing understanding of the actuarial profession and role.
“It could be an opportunity to redefine what we are,” he says. “People may think they know, but they will need to actively learn what a Chartered Actuary is. And we can't communicate that well to non-actuaries without understanding what an actuary does.
“The actuarial profession is a discipline of system sciences. We solve complex problems, but we never have everything we need to reach an answer. So we apply what we call ‘business knowledge’ – a euphemism for systems thinking.
“As an example, someone I previously worked with has been using consulting actuaries, but feels like he needs what I offered as his colleague. And that was simply a collaborative relationship, where it was me that said yes or no, not the model.
“We achieved that by figuring out how to reframe a problem so the model said yes. To do that, you need the business knowledge – you have to find and understand all the factors that have an effect. A good actuary has the curiosity to do that.”
“You have to find and understand all the factors that have an effect. A good actuary has the curiosity to do that.” – Chris Smerald, Chartered Actuary (Fellow)
It’s curiosity that drives Chris to apply his actuarial skills in new ways. “I’m a member of the International Society for Systems Sciences,” he says. “That’s where I met this chap called Peter Cook, who did a presentation on ideas that underlie the sciences.
“It was difficult to understand, but it was really interesting. He had been working on his ideas for a long time. His difficulty was in communicating it. I asked him for more information, to which he said: ‘You're not going to understand it until you read this textbook on chaos theory’.
“I got through the first three chapters and understood the ideas around the principle. Then we started talking, and that evolved into me helping him.”
Chris found his work on the communication of complexity useful in working with Peter. “He's explaining all these complicated things, trying to translate them into simple language,” he says. “And he found it helpful to have a non-expert listen to him and ask questions.
“We had a series of discussions where I challenged and questioned and wanted to get to the bottom of things, which is very much an actuarial skill, and it was well suited to helping him out.”
In fact, after more than two decades working on his idea, Peter, thanks in part to Chris’s help, went public in September 2024. Chris found the process beneficial too. “It’s helped me better appreciate my own skills,” he says.
“I was thinking ‘why would this scientist find value in talking to me, when I don’t know what a boson is?’ But in fact he’d overlooked so much in trying to get it all down that the attention to detail I was able to bring was important.
“It got me to see better what actuaries do, what I do, how I work, the problems I'm trying to solve. It’s helped me to better understand myself.”
We’ll be sharing member stories from around the world on a regular basis, so keep an eye out for updates. If you’ve chosen to adopt Chartered Actuary status, or if you’ve employed an actuary who is helping to transform your organisation, we’d love to hear from you.
