Volunteering in Romania

by Mark R. Shapland

One of the hallmarks of our Society is the tremendous amount of volunteer work that keeps the organization running. Usually, the volunteer work can be done in your office, or in some exotic location like Chicago or New York in the dead of winter. But occasionally, being a CAS volunteer involves traveling outside of the United States.

This past June, I was given the opportunity to serve the worldwide actuarial community by traveling to Bucharest, Romania to put on a workshop for the Romanian Actuarial Association (RAA). The RAA was set up at the end of 1998 as a professional nongovernmental organization. Its main objectives are the recognition, support, and promotion of the actuarial profession in Romania.

According to Adina Lupea, the President of the RAA, "the first priority of the RAA is the training and development process." With this in mind, she contacted the Financial Services Volunteer Corp (FSVC) to ask for assistance. The FSVC subsequently contacted the CAS, who responded by sending out a call for volunteers to put on a workshop covering reserving and pricing topics. The timeline from first contact to departure for Europe was only a few weeks, but since I had already organized workshops covering these topics in the past, I decided to take up the challenge.

The FSVC was founded in 1990 after the historic changes in the Soviet Union and Central Europe. FSVC's mission is to tap into the expertise of financial professionals to help develop the financial infrastructure of countries that are establishing free-market economies. FSVC does this by working with financial institutions, in both the public and private sectors, to help them address practical and policy bottlenecks to development.

FSVC operates with funding from USAID and private sources. By using volunteers like myself, it is able to stretch its resources to help complete the most projects in as many countries as possible. I like their approach to using foreign aid because we are teaching others how to operate an efficient economic system and not just sending food or some other transitory aid (although this also has a place in foreign aid). For the volunteers, FSVC pays for airline tickets and other out-of-pocket expenses, while the volunteers donate their time and expertise. Their Web address is www.fsvc.org.

Upon arriving in Bucharest, I was met by Lupea, who served as my host and tour guide. Bill Taylor, the local FSVC representative, was also there to meet me. Lupea and Taylor provided invaluable assistance and guidance in organizing and putting on the workshop.

Romania is a beautiful country in Eastern Europe, surrounded by Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Black Sea. Romania was under the communist rule of their leader Nicolae Ceausescu until the revolution in 1989. The country has been struggling to develop a free-market economy ever since the revolution. One visible sign of how difficult it has been are the many state-owned buildings in downtown Bucharest that have not been completed since construction stopped in 1989.

In Romania, the free-market insurance industry is in its infancy and although the insurance market has been slowly growing, industry profits are on the decline due to increased competition and rising claim costs. Actuarial activity is a very new concept in Romania and there exists only a very small group of persons having the necessary skills and capabilities for this profession. Thus, the volunteer support provided by both the FVSC and CAS was welcomed and appreciated.

A major impediment to the healthy development of the insurance industry in Romania over the past 10 years has been the legal instability and lack of regulations. Many foreign companies have been reluctant to start new insurance operations in this environment. Therefore, one of the goals of the workshop was to set aside time for the group to discuss various regulatory issues and to draft some regulatory proposals.

For anyone volunteering in a foreign country, there are unique challenges that come along with it. First is the language barrier. Even though many people in Romania have very good English skills, the workshop was run using simultaneous translation. This makes terminology and answering questions asked in Romanian particularly interesting. Next are preparation and equipment problems. Our goal was to have all of the workshop materials translated and printed prior to my arrival, but the short time frame made this impossible. Making sure that my computer worked with the Romanian equipment also proved to be a challenge. Finally, we had some last minute scrambling to accommodate the size of the group—the target group was 12-15 participants, but we ended up having over 40 participants. Lupea was indeed delighted by the level of interest in the workshop.

Along with the challenges come some unique opportunities and great benefits. In this case, the opportunity to meet so many of our Romanian colleagues and to help them develop their skills was very rewarding for me personally. The quality of their questions and the fact that almost all of them stayed to the end of the workshop showed me how genuinely interested they were in learning new skills. Even those who did leave apologized for having previous commitments and expressed interest in coming to another workshop in the future.

Another benefit is the chance to visit a foreign country and to experience some of their culture. One of the highlights of my trip was a tour of the castle at Sinaia, where I was able to buy a handmade tablecloth for my wife for a mere 735,000 Lei ($35). The timing of my trip also coincided with the 2000 European Cup soccer tournament and we were able to cheer for the Romanian national team along with thousands of fans in the square in front of my hotel as they played the Germans (one of the favorites) to a 1-1 tie. The Revolutionary Square in front of the hotel also has some historical significance, since it is the plaza where the overthrow of the Ceausescu government started back in 1989 -- hence the name.

Based on my experience in Romania, if you have the opportunity to volunteer in a foreign country, I highly recommend it as a very rewarding and fulfilling experience.