The Mortality Working Group is planning to make a significant change to the baseline (or expected number of deaths) used when measuring excess mortality for Australia. The Working Group intends to move away from the philosophical question of “How has the pandemic affected mortality?” to instead answer the question “Is 2023 mortality the ‘new normal’?” […] The post Excess Mortality: Considerations in Moving Away from a Pre-pandemic Baseline appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

The Global Climate 2011-2020 report shows a decade of continued bad news on climate change. This article reviews the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) Report[1] to highlight the lack of positive action, and also show the effects on UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If we are able to make real progress on climate change this will […] The post Acceleration of Climate Change Trends Revealed appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

This article explores how retirement spending may change for individuals as they progress through retirement, and the impact of choosing an appropriate level of indexation on their retirement income could have on their required level of retirement savings. One of the fundamental elements that is often overlooked when helping individuals plan for their retirement is […] The post Appropriate Indexation of Retirement Income appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

In the latest edition of the Associate Edition, we chat to Gaurav Agrawal whose narrative extends far beyond mere calculations. Beyond the job title, who are you? We want to know the person behind the Associate! I am an easy-going and active person who likes to stay busy. I really enjoy networking and meeting new […] The post The Associate Edition: A Journey of Risk, Strategy and Growth appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

The Wikipedia page titled ‘Sports Economics’ is less than 500 words long. You could read the entire thing in less time than it takes to watch the highlights from your team’s latest match. Or, incidentally, in less time than it takes you to read this article. Sports economics is – as the name suggests – […] The post Football Fan Fact-Finding: The Economics of Sporting Success appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

Catch up on the Actuaries Institute Mortality Working Group’s latest analysis of excess deaths. In summary: Total excess mortality for 2023 is 5% (95% confidence interval: 3% to 7%) or +8,400 deaths – i.e., there were 8,400 more deaths than expected if the pandemic had not happened. More than half of the year-to-date (YTD) excess […] The post Excess Mortality 5% Higher Than Pre-Pandemic Expectations for 2023 appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

A reflection of one actuary’s journey so far… In 2020, I took an opportunity to join a formal research journey even though, for the last 30 years, I have been doing non-academic research. While I await submitting my thesis —marking the end of this journey — I began thinking about the importance of bridging the […] The post Bridging the Academic and Industry Gap appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

In the last of three articles, authors Colin Grenfell and Cary Helenius illustrate trends in long-term share market investment performance auto-correlations based on data over both 124 and 64 years, highlighting the presence of negative auto-correlations in both datasets. In this article, we examine whether the negative auto-correlations that strongly featured in 64-year historical data […] The post More Negative Investment Auto-correlations appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

In this Normal Deviance column, Hugh looks at the lessons around edge cases in generative AI. You may have seen the news that Google had to scramble to fix their Gemini AI image generator in late February. At issue were modifications designed to increase diversity when generating images of people. In many cases, it worked […] The post The Unfortunate Preponderance of Edge Cases appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more

Welcome back puzzlers and problem-solvers! The Critical Line returns with another challenge that promises to test your wit and creativity.  In this edition, we present a series of six cryptic clues, each concealing a single-word solution. Your task? Decode each clue to uncover its hidden answer, but don’t stop there. The true challenge lies in […] The post The Critical Line – Volume 39 appeared first on Actuaries Digital ..read more