Note: this session is on Wednesday at 16:00! Chipperfield Extension (building on the other side of the bicycle shed, across from the KBS Sibson exit), Seminar Room 1.
Title: You’re fired!
Abstract: ‘You’re fired!’ The three words candidates from the tv show ‘the apprentice’ used to fear when facing Donald J Trump in his boardroom (or Lord Sugar if you prefer the UK version). Nobody wants to hear those daunting words but nobody is really safe from hearing them either!
The financial health of a company can be heavily linked to forecasts and assumptions made by professionals and experts. Poor judgement or decision-making by those ‘experts’ can thus be very costly to employees, clients and sometimes the whole economy. The 2007-2008 financial crisis is a good example of this.
In this talk, I will start by giving an overview of the roles actuaries undertake in insurance companies, pension funds and investment companies. I will then talk about my personal experience working as an actuarial analyst for a life insurance company and show you some of the modelling work I used to do. Finally, I will talk about how some poor assumptions taken by the actuarial team, higher management and shareholders led to the eventual ‘crash’ of the company!