Spotlight on CAS Members

New Vice President-Admissions Begins Term

By Steven D. Armstrong, FCAS, and Shantelle A. Johnson
Student Liaison Committee

In keeping with the Student Liaison Committee's mission to educate and communicate with candidates of the Casualty Actuarial Society, we are introducing a new feature to Future Fellows. In each issue we will interview an outstanding member of the CAS and report on their goals, their vision for the future of the CAS, and other relevant topics.

Our first interview is with Mary Frances Miller, who became Vice President-Admissions at the conclusion of the CAS Annual Meeting in November 1999.

FF: How did you get into the actuarial field?

MILLER: I went to undergraduate school in Linguistics, which falls in between the Humanities and the Social Sciences. I thought I wanted to do research in the structure of languages, and so took math courses so that I would understand the statistics, not just try to apply them in the traditional social science researcher's way. One thing led to another, I took more math, and ended up with a second BA, but no intention to use it. After 3 years in graduate school and all my PhD exams, I was torn between having a life and getting a grant to do field research in Greenland. Life won and I needed a job. My husband was a beginning actuarial student at a life company and seemed to be having a good time, so I sat for Part 1, answered an ad for actuarial students (in the newspaper, no less—demand far exceeded supply in the early '80s), and started at American States Insurance. I got to be a P/C actuary because ASI advertised at the right time, not because I had really thought it out. But I certainly have no regrets.

FF: What lines of work have you been involved with since entering the actuarial profession? What is your current job?

MILLER: I started out as a student in personal lines pricing at American States and held various positions in that department until I became a Fellow in 1988. I then managed the personal lines pricing function through the end of 1991. In 1993, I left ASI to become chief actuary at Sedgwick James.

Marsh bought Sedgwick in the fall of 1998 and our Nashville location didn't fit into the William M. Mercer strategic plan. So five of us from the Nashville office formed Select Actuarial Services in February of 1999.

FF: What kind of activities do you enjoy outside of your actuarial career?

MILLER: I have three children, ages eight, twelve, and sixteen, so kid stuff takes up a pretty big part of my time. I also raise dogs and show them in dog shows and field trials. I have several different breeds, all members of the greyhound family (currently, four whippets, two greyhounds retired from the track, two Egyptian Pharaoh hounds, and a saluki). I am a licensed sighthound field trial judge and enter or judge at about 20 trials a year. I have judged at the American Kennel Club national trial the last two years.

FF: What are your top three goals for your tenure as VP-Admissions?

MILLER: First and foremost, it's imperative that the CAS continues to provide the highest quality education available to casualty actuaries. The basic education side of that is the responsibility of the VP-Admissions, so during my tenure I'd like to accomplish the following:

FF: What changes, if any, would you like to see in the exam system?

MILLER: I think that self-study and examinations are going to be the bedrock of the system for some time to come. However, I would like to see more interactions in the learning process. As chair of the Education Policy Committee, I got to look at the education systems of other societies. In Australia, in order to sit for the Fellowship exams a student must register first for a correspondence course through one of a limited number of specified universities and complete assignments over the course of several months. I wonder if that type of preparation might benefit our students more in the long run than the multi-day cram courses that seem to be the norm for CAS students.

Technology is more and more accessible. I know few actuaries who do not use fairly complicated computer models on a regular basis, but our current exam system is entirely paper, pencil, and a pretty simple calculator. On a timed basis, it's very hard to test complicated concepts. The SoA is experimenting with pre-exam assignments. I would like to see the CAS try something like distributing the facts behind a case study to be tested on the exam.

The world is getting smaller. Our four basic exams are now joint with the SoA. I would like to see us explore more common educational objectives/materials with other actuarial organizations as well, allowing us to concentrate on the specialized education we do best.

FF: What do you see as the most pressing issues for the CAS to address immediately and in the future? Both short and long term, where does the CAS fit in the global actuarial world?

MILLER: We are currently the only actuarial organization with a specialization rather than general education focus. I think our decision not to seek mutual recognition with the other organizations was the right one, but now we need to coordinate with the other actuarial organizations to ensure that our decision is not misinterpreted. The need for more specialized skills is going to grow, not shrink. How can the CAS ensure that employers continue to look to CAS members to meet those specialized needs?

Can we—and do we want to—coordinate our credentialling process with other international bodies as other organizations respond to the need for greater specialization?

FF: What do you envision the CAS looking like in ten years?

MILLER: CAS members will practice in many more places and in many more areas than they do today. They will be highly mobile and their job responsibilities will be constantly changing. The CAS will continue to be the primary educator of casualty actuaries, but I think we will be surprised by how much the Syllabus will have evolved in such a relatively short time. The CAS will still be a volunteer organization because that's what has and will continue to serve us best.