From the President

The CAS and Regional Affiliates

The Casualty Actuaries of the Desert States, the CAS's newest Regional Affiliate, held its first meeting on February 18, 2000 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Approximately 20 founding members, along with the organizers, Julia Perrine, Andy Ribaudo, and Kevin Donovan, attended this first meeting, which included discussion of the group's purpose and future activities. I was also fortunate to be there and was struck by how similar this first organizational meeting was to the first meeting in 1985 of the Southwest Actuarial Forum, the Regional Affiliate of which I am a founding member. I suspect it was also similar to the first meeting in 1964 of the CAS's first Regional Affiliate, the Actuaries Club of Philadelphia (now named the Casualty Actuaries of the Mid-Atlantic Region).

For the last 36 years, as the membership of the CAS has grown and become more geographically diverse, Regional Affiliates have formed to help meet the needs of casualty actuaries. As president of the CAS I have so far visited 9 of our 14 Regional Affiliates and am newly aware of the important contributions these groups are making toward the purposes of the CAS. The Regional Affiliates usually hold two meetings a year. Most of the meetings I have attended included high-quality educational sessions covering either technical actuarial issues or professionalism issues, or both, and thereby provided a very convenient and inexpensive way for many casualty actuaries to meet part of their continuing education needs. The meetings also provided a forum for communication and exchange of ideas among casualty actuaries as well as opportunities for socializing.

At the meetings I also heard about the other activities in which the Regional Affiliates are engaged. It is an impressive list of activities. Many of the Regional Affiliates are very active in promoting basic education of casualty actuaries by offering exam seminars and facilitating formal or informal student study groups. Many of them are promoting the casualty actuarial profession through their work with colleges and universities in their geographic area—several even fund scholarships for students who show promise as future actuaries. Some are involved in reaching out to high school students with an aptitude for mathematics to make them aware of the actuarial profession and its rewards.

Even though the Regional Affiliates are largely independent from the CAS, they are all involved in activities that directly support the goals of the CAS. The CAS has never really taken a formal look at all the ways in which the Regional Affiliates have been helping the Society, however, nor has it thoroughly considered how the CAS might work more effectively with the Regional Affiliates to achieve even more progress toward our mutual goals. We have now launched such an effort.

The Regional Affiliate Task Force has been formed to conduct such a study and recommend to the CAS's Executive Council how the CAS could work more effectively with the Regional Affiliates. This effort will also help us address one of the issues in the CAS's Strategic Plan. The section in the plan on Regional Affiliates includes the following: "The balance between what is done at the affiliate level, at the national level, and at the continuing education seminars should be developed."

Under the excellent leadership of Ramona Lee, the task force members have already begun their work. They have formed a preliminary list of questions to be addressed and have begun soliciting input from the leaders of all the Regional Affiliates. I am looking forward to the task force's findings and recommendations and am excited about the possibility of making the partnership between the CAS and its Regional Affiliates even more productive.

I hope all CAS members will support the activities of the Regional Affiliate in their geographic area and share with Ramona and the other members of the task force any suggestions on how the CAS and the Regional Affiliates can work even more effectively together.

Please send your suggestions and comments to Ramona Lee at Ramona.Lee@comm6.state.ia.us or call (515) 281-4095. The members of the Regional Affiliates Task Force are: Nolan Asch, Jerry Degerness, Gordon Diss, Dave Hafling, Therese Klodnicki, Michael Lamb, David Mohrman, Julia Perrine, and Ken Quintilian.