The final version of the Critical Review of the United States Actuarial Profession has been released. It’s available for download from the CRUSAP website.
It’s longer than the draft circulated for comments, and it’ll take a bit of time to digest the new version. My thoughts on the prior version were posted in this blog last October.
One thing that did jump out in my initial scan of the final report — there seems to have been a shift from thinking that consolidation of the profession would be beneficial-but-politically unrealistic to an outright call for consolidation.
I don’t dislike that shift. However, I think it will be interesting to witness the reaction of the CAS’s membership to that outright recommendation.
I do, however, stand by my earlier position of thinking that consolidation which preserves the uniqueness of the CAS’s focus in the exam system, is probably a good idea, and potentially offers a neat way to handle a few of the other questions the society has been wrestling with (specifically: classes of membership, reformation the exam system, and voting rights).
However, I do also empathize with my fellow CAS members about the fear of being lost in a sea of life actuaries if some sort of merger/consolidation were ever to occur.
There should be on the horizon a debate that will be most interesting to witness.