I've never forgotten a keynote speech made at the 2006 ISO Tech conference wherein speaker Dan Pink said the near future would be shaped by three factors: "Abundance, Asia and Automation." It was a salutary message for an industry that seems mired in sameness. Our ongoing struggle with perennial technology and process challenges can blind us to the reality of significant change until it's too late. A related message comes from Celent's Mike Fitzgerald at the analyst's blog. Fitzgerald calls our attention to "10,000 Actuarial Students!"Like the ISO speaker, Fitzgerald alludes to the demographic potency of a country with over a billion inhabitants. Ten thousand souls is a small number of individuals in such a country, but it is a significant number of qualified actuaries for the global insurance industry. Fitzgerald tells us that "over 10,000 people in India are currently sitting for the actuarial exams." He continues:

First, over 10,000 people in India are currently sitting for the actuarial exams. As the result of the growth in the knowledge worker outsourcing industry and the privatization of the Indian insurance industry, actuarial studies are now much more attractive to qualified students. Scarcity (read price), will be reduced as a result of this increasing supply of expertise.

Second, companies increasingly need to apply their internal actuarial talent to more strategic activities such as sophisticated price modeling and risk management. Predictive modeling and multi tier pricing require constant attention and monitoring. Existing regulation in Europe regarding Solvency II consumes increasing amounts of resource. Both of these activities are best performed in-house.

There are two forces at play in Fitzgerald's scenario. One is the demographic transformation that is changing the political scene in many parts of the world and, in this case, resulting increasingly large numbers of highly qualified individuals emerging from Asia and impacting business in the West and elsewhere. The other force is technological innovation. Technological change may appear to occur only slowly in this industry, and especially so in the inner sanctum of actuarial organizations, who have traditionally taken a do-it-yourself approach to the adoption and maintenance of technology tools. However, technology architecture transformation is rapidly bringing actuarial processes within the embrace of enterprise information circulation. This in turn has two main consequences. One is that actuaries have been liberated from manual processes and tasks associated with the collection and maintenance of data, making them more available for higher-value work. Secondly, actuaries are increasingly treading into new territory within the insurance enterprise, performing new roles related to predictive modeling, enterprise risk management and reporting/compliance.

The impact of 10,000 new actuaries (this year alone) in a technologically liberated and influential role within insurance companies is hard to underestimate. However, one change it is likely to bring, Fitzgerald argues, is that the actuarial function itself will evolve to a "multi-source, onshore/offshore...model."The impact of 10,000 new actuaries (this year alone) in a technologically liberated and influential role within insurance companies is hard to underestimate. However, one likely change it is likely to bring, Fitzgerald argues, is that the actuarial function itself will evolve to a "multi-source, onshore/offshore...model."