Application closing date: 30 January
The IFoA is seeking to appoint experienced, proactive and innovative volunteers to join this new working party. The group welcomes applications from suitably qualified non-members.
According to Lord Darzi’s recent report on England’s National Health Service, “the number of people who are economically inactive because of long-term sickness has risen to record highs.”
Income protection (IP) insurance products were originally developed to provide security for people against the financial consequences of being absent from work due to accident or illness for periods beyond statutory sick pay.
In recent years, insurers have begun to offer health and rehabilitation services alongside the pure insurance coverage. These initiatives could have the double positive effects of reducing sickness incidence rates and increasing recovery rates.
The IFoA is setting up a working party to explore and enhance the understanding of long-term sickness inception and recovery rates within the UK’s national workforce population. This aims to provide insights to the modelling of income protection portfolios and wider public health applications.
The aim is to derive sickness inception rates and recovery rates by age, sex and other relevant factors. ‘Sickness’ could mean long term absence from work but the working party will explore a range of definitions which are of interest to both income protection business and population health modelling.
The methods that actuaries have traditionally employed for understanding and explaining the dynamics of IP business could have useful applications within the wider health system. For example, better understanding of the dynamics of people leaving and returning to the workforce at national population level could offer insights for projecting scenarios of the health status of the population and planning of health services and disability benefits.
The working party will review the feasibility of using population-level health data to develop outputs that would be useful for UK public health audiences. This would demonstrate the key responsibility of IFoA members to work in the public interest and demonstrate how standard actuarial techniques (IP experience investigations) can be very useful for public health organisations. It would show the value that actuaries can bring to working with anonymous health data by producing outputs that can support delivery of health services.
To read more about the working party, see its terms of reference (PDF, 240 KB)
We are looking for IFoA members and non-members from public health organisations that are interested in income protection experience investigations and how these, and similar multi-state modelling techniques, could be applied to health, health interventions and labour market outcomes. The group would welcome applicants with the below knowledge and experience.
The time commitment varies but will not be more than 2 hours per month for meetings. The working party will consist of monthly meetings, with more regular meetings as required. Volunteers will be asked to complete tasks in between meetings. Volunteers will need to familiarise themselves with existing literature such as the CMI income protection working papers and other research, so the time commitment for this part alone should not be underestimated.
If you are interested in this role but would like an informal conversation before applying, please email us at engagement.team@actuaries.org.uk.
If you have read all the above and would like to apply, please send us:
Please email all the above to engagement.team@actuaries.org.uk. Please note, we are unable to accept late applications.
We are committed to promoting diversity, equality of opportunity, and inclusion, within all our vacancies and we actively encourage applications from a diverse range of potential candidates. Recognising and embracing the unique and diverse talents of our volunteers is fundamental to the success of our organisation.
Volunteering provides you with a wide range of opportunities. With all rights and opportunities come responsibilities and we ask all our volunteers to comply with the terms of the IFoA’s governance manual and volunteer information pack. Before offering to provide support, please read through: what you need to know.