Professional Development
This Pillar is designed to support professionals and aid them in developing their actuarial expertise as they carry out their roles. This will involve workshops, masterclasses, webinars and courses, among other channels. This pillar will include a structured modular programme, the Analytical Foundation Programme (“AFP”) which will cover specific areas of actuarial practice, aiding professionals in developing a foundational actuarial knowledge, and best practices to carry out their work
The AFP will:
- Be modular, a combination of compulsory and elective courses (depending on specialization and needs)
- Be virtual, to reach actuaries all across Africa
- Cover a wide range of technical actuarial fields including Life Insurance, Non-Life Insurance, Pensions, Healthcare, Banking, Risk Management etc.
- Also cover non-actuarial skills such as professionalism, ethics, communication skills, use of judgement etc.
Attendees will be issued with a certificate of completion at the end of the programme; it is anticipated the programme would take two years to complete. In addition, individual modules may be made available for practicing actuaries who may want a refresh on specific topics, or gain a basic understanding of a topic that is not within their specialty.
Educational Development
This Pillar is designed to improve actuarial education locally. It primarily involves supporting universities with their actuarial degrees as well as aiding corporations to develop their study programmes.
In particular, this pillar involves:
- Working with universities to improve their curriculum.
- Working with universities to improve the quality of knowledge of their graduates
- Working with university faculty to improve the quality of their tuition i.e. train the trainer
- Support with adjunct lecturers who could join university staff on a part time/full time basis
- working with examining bodies (e.g. IFoA, CAS, SoA) to get universities accredited for exemptions in the courses offered by universities.
- Encouraging knowledge and awareness of the Actuarial profession within communities to attract high performing students to the university programs.
- Aiding corporations to understand the role of actuaries in their organizations and how to support their actuarial staff in their development journeys; this includes advice on developing an actuarial study programme
Tutorial
This Pillar is designed to help those studying for exams. It involves helping actuarial candidates outside the university setting with classes, lectures and resources to help understand the actuarial exam content to give them a better chance of passing actuarial exams. This support could also include paying for exams to the extent resources are available.
The Tutorial Pillar will provide support to students studying for initial exams from the following bodies:
- Actuarial Society of South Africa
- Casual Actuarial (US)
- Society of Actuaries (US)
- The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK)
This Pillar will also aim to pay exam fees on a needs-based approach. Note that the pillar has not been designed to sponsor and train candidates for exams through to Fellowship. It is anticipated that as corporations understand the actuarial profession more, and candidates become more experienced and advanced in their own exam journeys, the individual Fellowship candidate will take the initiative to get the necessary training and support to complete their exams, backed by their employer, as is usually done within the profession.
Sustainable Funding
To allow for a sustainable and lasting academy which at maturity should be able to operate regardless of whether or not it received annual donations, AADA will primarily be funded in the long term by an endowment.
Whilst AADA is building the endowment fund, it will still need other funds to operate. These operating expenses will be raised from donations. It is anticipated that the funding of the operating expenses will mainly be needed till the endowment fund objective has been achieved. More information on funding levels and benefits for contributors can be found in the appendix.