Desk calendars to be given away

We have 20 desk calendars to be given away to Insurance News regular readers.

To receive one of the calendars, all you have to do is email us a scanned copy of your recent business card.

The calendar will be mailed to the business address on your business card and due to cost constraint, we will only mail to an address in Malaysia.

The first 15 readers with an insurance related job title (including but not limited to actuarial title) on their business cards will be sent a desk calendar. The 16th to 20th readers with an actuarial title on their business cards will also receive the same.

Life Insurance Day 2009

The Life Insurance Association of Malaysia (LIAM) celebrated the Life Insurance Day 2009 today with the official launch of LIAM-NAMLIFA Blood Donation Drive.

The Launching Ceremony was officiated by the Director General of Ministry of Health, the DG represented the Minister of Health YB Dato' Sri Liow Tiong Lai.

In his speech, LIAM's President said that the nationwide blood donation set a target of attracting 1,600 blood donors at 16 centres nationwide. The blood donation drive started on 26 October and will last until 1 November.

Source: TAS Blogger, LIAM

LIAM's President delivering his speech

Director General of Health Ministry

The Official Launch of the Nationwide Blood Donation

Budget 2010

We have been covering Budget 2010 live today. In case you missed it, you can still visit Insurance News Twitter version for a list of Budget announcements related to the insurance industry.

EAAC Closing Ceremony and Farewell Dinner

The 15th EAAC closed after 4 days of events. A Farewell Dinner was held immediately after the Closing Ceremony.

Malaysia officially received the EAAC flag in the Closing Ceremony, after being chosen as the host country for the 16th EAAC.

During the Farewell Dinner, in accordance with the EAAC tradition, each member country went on the stage to perform in the Talent Show. Australia was announced the Champion with Singapore and Malaysia in the 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Closing Ceremony and Farewell Dinner Photos:

The 15th EAAC Organising Committee Chairman passes the EAAC flag to the 16th EAAC Organising Committee Chairman.

Malaysia is officially the host country for the 16th EAAC

Talent Show: Australia

Talent Show: Indonesia

Talent Show: The Philippines

Talent Show: Singapore

Talent Show: Chinese Taipei

Talent Show: Japan

Talent Show: Thailand

Talent Show: Hong Kong

Talent Show: South Korea

Performance by the Korean Children Choir


See you in 2 years time in Kuala Lumpur

Happy birthday ASM and something on EAAC

Do you know that the Actuarial Society of Malaysia was founded on this day 31 years ago? I bet most people have forgotten.

Well happy birthday, ASM!

And do you know that ASM was actually the first host country for the East Asian Actuarial Conference back in 1981? It was called "Actuarial Society of Malaysia, 1981 International Seminar". Almost all of us were not in the industry then and of course for the younger ones , you were not even born!

This year the 15th EAAC will be held in Seoul and the event will take place next week. 11 delegates from Malaysia have signed up. This is a much higher number compared to 3 Malaysian delegates who signed up for the 1999 EAAC also held in Seoul which I attended (only 2 attended out of the 3 who signed up). In case you don't know, Malaysia is the host country for the 16th EAAC to be held in year 2011 tentatively from 10 - 13 October, after a long 30-year wait.

Host countries for the 16 EAACs:

1981 Malaysia
1983 Singapore
1985 Philippines
1987 Hong Kong
1989 Taiwan
1991 Indonesia
1993 Singapore
1995 Japan
1997 Thailand
1999 Korea
2001 Hong Kong
2003 Philippines
2005 Indonesia
2007 Japan
2009 Korea
2011 Malaysia

Stay tuned and we will bring you more news on EAAC in days to come and over the next 2 years.

Great Eastern hires takaful head

Great Eastern hired Mohamad Salihuddin Ahmad some 2 months ago to head its future takaful unit. Salihuddin was previously CEO for Prudential BSN. It is believed that his previous position in PruBSN has recently been filled.

Great Eastern is applying for 1 of the 2 new takaful licences to be awarded by BNM later this year.

Source: Business Times, TASclusive

More actuaries are becoming CEOs

Lately we have seen a few actuaries who have been made CEO in the Malaysian market. Based on our knowledge, currently (or in the near future):

• 4 out of 15 conventional life insurance companies CEOs are actuaries
• 2 out of 8 takaful CEOs are actuaries

In the 90's, there were also quite a number of CEOs who were actuaries. In late 90's and early 2000 however, marketing/agency/sales people were the favourite pick for CEO. The trend has since reversed partly due to the introduction of RBC which requires the chieftains to be well versed in risk and capital management.

Increasingly there are also more actuaries who become CFOs.

Source: TAS

Individual Capital Assessment Talk

ASM organised a Talk on Individual Capital Assessment (ICA) for its members today at Great Eastern. The Talk was well attended by close to 80 members. Some members arrived at 3:30 pm possibly unaware of the change of time in view of the Puasa month.

ICA is the UK's approach to RBC. During the Talk, Hui In, the Malaysian actuary who returned from UK, highlighted the ICA methodologies, the impact of ICA to the life insurance companies and the differences among ICA, RBC, Solvency II and Swiss Solvency Tests.

Members who attend the Talk are entitled to 1.5 CPD hours.

For other ASM's news, please click on ASM label below.

SAS LIA Life Protection Seminar

Singapore Actuarial Society (SAS) and Life Insurance Association of Singapore (LIA) held its first ever Life Protection Seminar at InterContinental Hotel on 20 August 2009. The seminar attracted over 120 participants mainly from life insurance companies from Singapore.

The 1-day seminar featured 6 presentations, 1 luncheon address by MAS and was rounded off with CEO Round Table discussions. Topics covered included underwriting, disability income, insurance adequacy, risk, financial crisis and capital management.

ASM Actuarial Idol

ASM held its first ever Actuarial Idol Singing Competition in conjuction with its 31st Annual Dinner yesterday at Grand Millennium hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The event was attended by 170 members. 9 groups participated in the Actuarial Idol Singing Competition. The President and the Immediate Past President were invited as the judges for the competition. However, their scores carried only 50% weightage on the final results, the other 50% was dependent on the audience response. It was no surprise to see strong support groups mainly comprising the fellow colleagues of the competition participants making loud noises during the final moment before the results were finalised.

The Actuarial Idol competition was won by Isaac Chiew from Watson Wyatt, with 2 ladies from Prudential and the trio from Great Eastern winning the 2nd and 3rd places respectively. It was a night full of fun, who dare to say that actuaries are a bunch of boring people!

Earlier that afternoon, Surinderpal Singh and Jefferey Zain each presented a professional paper to the members, one on Genetic Underwriting and the other one on Takaful.

During the dinner, ASM also paid tribute to Benny Ng, a fellow actuary who passed away in April this year.

More photos

Videos:

1. Isaac Chiew - My Way


2. All Contestants

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