Actuarial Responses to the Pandemic in the UK

In this presentation, three actuaries central to the IFoA’s activity in the pandemic outline how the UK profession responded. The presentation is structured around the three distinct groups involved: the COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group (‘ARG’), the IFoA’s Continuous Mortality Investigation (‘CMI’), and the IFoA COVID-19 Action Taskforce (‘ICAT’). These three groups produced an immense amount of information helping both actuaries, policymakers and the wider public understand the main issues of the pandemic better. The ARG has to date put out well over 100 bulletins, along with associated social media posts leading to over 25,000 Twitter followers. The CMI has been publishing weekly excess deaths calculations to show the real mortality impact of the pandemic, along with analyses of 2020 insurer mortality data. The ICAT quickly established a number of workstreams (eventually 93) with well over 500 volunteers publishing notes on themes ranging from life underwriting considerations to P&C claims inflation impacts. The presentation will cover the main findings from some well-received papers and analyses published by these three groups, as well as the learnings from the perspective of how actuaries can best respond to rapidly changing situations where the traditional actuarial mindset of intellectual caution and a desire for certainty can be inappropriate.