As President of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries

I have had the honor and privilege to serve my profession and the members of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries (CCA) for almost a year now. My term will come to an end at the close of our Annual Meeting on October 24.

Last Thursday, I received a phone call and later an emailed letter from the President of the American Academy of Actuaries. The Academy later notified its membership with a similar communication.

Here is a paragraph from the Academy's communication to its members:

• The Board believes that ACOPA and CCA perform important functions for their members. Those functions, which include advocating for the commercial interests of their members and their members’ clients, are highly valued by many in the profession. They are, however, incompatible with maintaining the independence and objectivity of the ASB and ABCD. Preserving this independence is vital to the public’s confidence in the U.S. actuarial profession’s ability to regulate itself.

None of the functions of the CCA is advocating for the commercial interests of our members and our members' clients. In fact, the CCA is not a lobbying organization. We do not currently and to my knowledge, never have had a presence on Capitol Hill.

The Academy does.

Of the five major US-based actuarial organizations, the CCA was the first to impose upon its members formal standards for continuing professional education. Later, the Academy and others adopted ours.

In 2006, in response to a crisis within the actuarial profession in the UK, a specially appointed task force of the US-based actuarial organizations released the final CRUSAP report (Critical Review of the US Actuarial Profession) outlining a series of recommendations to keep the independence of the US actuarial profession intact. To my knowledge, the last remaining remnant of CRUSAP had been the Joint Discipline Council (JDC), a group and function whose role was to jointly recommend discipline for violations of the Code of Professional Conduct. Leadership of the CCA took perhaps the largest role in seeing that the JDC came to fruition. All five major US-based actuarial organizations were signatories to it. Last fall, the Academy withdrew causing the JDC to be disbanded.

It's not up to me to be the arbiter of right and wrong.

I've laid out facts.

You decide.