The following is an excerpt of the CAS Presidential Address given at the CAS Centennial Celebration and Annual Meeting on November 10, 2014.

By all measures it’s been a highly successful 100 years. One can’t help but reflect on the 97 charter members of the then Casualty Actuarial and Statistical Society and ask whether they would be pleased and proud of how the CAS has grown and evolved. I’m confident they would be proud…I certainly know I am! And I’m confident you are as well….all 2,000 of you who have come together to celebrate our Centennial and to be with professional colleagues with whom you’ve worked and served the CAS with through the years!

I’m exceptionally proud that you gave me the honor of being president this very special year. It is certainly special and I couldn’t be more proud of the CAS and our members. We stand for professionalism and share a collective pride in the CAS both as an organization and as individual members.

At such a milestone, it’s opportune to look back at what drove our success and think about how we will duplicate or surpass that success in the coming 100 years.

Practically every business or organization has a written set of values — and perhaps the most common denominator in those value statements is “integrity”: the character, shared values and mutual aspirations that we possess individually and collectively as a professional organization.

As an organization of professionals, we serve an interest greater than our own individual interest. We keep our eyes looking forward for the benefit of our current members, our future members, and our employer and regulator stakeholders. We have inherited a wonderful legacy and we are obliged to preserve it and pass it along.

For virtually all of our 100 years, we have had the advantage of filling a growing and increasingly valued niche in the insurance business. Actuaries were certainly sought after and we added unique value to our employers. We have also had the advantage of no real competitors in our arena. That’s changed recently, both from within the profession with the SOA and outside the profession with data scientists, statisticians and other similar specialists.

In spite of this competition, our membership growth is strong; 8% this past year and 7% the year before. The pipeline is healthy with a record 3,000 candidates taking our exams this spring. The future pipeline is also strong. I was recently on a panel at the Actuarial Society of New York career fair in which 750 students attended. These current and future candidates are counting on us to open new doors for them to have the same career opportunities we’ve enjoyed. We’re not going to let them down!

We have inherited a wonderful legacy and we are obliged to preserve it and pass it along.

An important long-term challenge for the CAS is dealing with increasing competition from other disciplines. We must ensure our continued, unique relevance. In part, this is why the internal, nonproductive competition is so disturbing. We are looking inward — “at our own shoes” — instead of at how we can collaborate to meet the expectations of our future members and build on the legacy of our former members.

Very recently the CEO of one of the largest insurers said in an interview that he’s hired a “chief science officer.” With a staff of 130 statisticians and similar technical experts, this CEO didn’t even mention actuaries! That’s a wake-up call. We need to ensure our basic education, continuing education and research are top notch so actuaries remain the real “value adders” — the ones in the firm who have sufficient technical skills to build on the other technical resources and bring that blend of insurance knowledge, business acumen and technical skills together to strengthen the company. That’s our true challenge and we need to be flexible and adapt to this changing environment…

MySpace and York Barbell and countless other enterprises remind us that times change. And today, times are changing more rapidly than ever before. We need to anticipate these changes and welcome the opportunities they will present. We must embrace change and think like entrepreneurs. After all, we are risk professionals. Are we willing to take risk as an organization to innovate and improve or are we content to stick to the tried and true that’s worked well for the last 100 years?

To paraphrase Satchel Paige, you won’t succeed by looking over your shoulder at the competition and to see how well you’ve done; you succeed by looking ahead, focusing on your strengths. In our case, it is tempting to look back over our strong history. From our beginnings we have exhibited core values of openness and transparency with our members, have fostered integrity in our relationships with our employers and regulator stakeholders, and have instilled professionalism that creates mutual confidence in each other. We live by our Code of Professional Conduct.

In some respects competition has been very good for us. We’ve had to raise the level of our game, and we’ve done that…CAS Student Central has more than 1,100 students from 275 schools. CAS Academic Central is up and running with 200 academics participating. Our University Engagement volunteers write case studies that help teach practical applications of property-casualty subjects. More than 400 University Liaisons meet with students throughout the year to provide guidance only a practitioner can give…our Innovation Council…will stimulate thought and implement initiatives to provide new opportunities for all our members…

We are also developing alliances with other leading actuarial organizations throughout the world to create an information exchange. The CAS and these organizations all possess valuable casualty actuarial research and practitioner materials. Sharing these resources will benefit CAS members as well as the members of these organizations.

Our basic education is the standard employers and regulators expect…Technological innovations and content changes are well under way to provide new opportunities…We will maintain the unparalleled value of our credential.

These collaborative efforts represent the confidence our members have in the CAS, the respect we have earned internationally, the trust and mutual confidence we have in each other, and the shared goal to have the CAS remain independent, focused and strong…

We have a wealth of opportunities to be leaders and demonstrate our strengths identifying, assessing, quantifying and mitigating risk. Risk is inherent in so many emerging concerns: climate change, global instability, digitalization and “big data” and all its ramifications, social media, the Affordable Care Act, automated vehicles, unmanned commercial aircraft, cyber liability, our aging population and other related financial and social issues…We can add value both to our employers and society with our combination of analytical skills and business understanding. I’m confident we are ready for the challenge!…

Our core values of trust, integrity and professionalism…are the bedrock that has served us well for our first 100 years and that will serve us well in the coming years. We have every right to be proud of the CAS and every right to look forward to our collective contributions and continued success for not only the next year, or the next decade, but the next 100 years!

Wayne Fisher was elected CAS president in 2013. He is the former group chief risk officer for Zurich Financial.