In the summer of 2021, Vo Duy Cuong and Luong Xuan Truong approached the CAS with an idea. Cuong, a general manager in risk management in the actuarial department of BaoMinh Insurance Corporation in Ho Chi Minh City, and Truong, an appointed actuary for Baoviet Life in Hanoi, wanted a pricing course for health insurance developed with the help of the CAS and Insurance Association of Vietnam (IAV).
Bob Conger, FCAS, and I thought it would be best to provide a course on general insurance ratemaking and then apply the concepts to health insurance. Our next step was to find an instructor. We contacted Peter Murdza, FCAS, a retired professor from the University of Hartford and South Korea’s Soongsil University as well as author of Casualty Study Manuals. Mary Hosford, FCAS, the chief health actuary for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Insurance, was an obvious choice as a subject matter expert.
Murdza’s materials were readily available, so we began tweaking the course for our Vietnamese students to add Hosford’s insights into health ratemaking and my considerations concerning business challenges. Murdza taught the virtual 12-session course, “Concepts Underlying Property-Casualty Ratemaking,” which ran from June through October 2022 and covered materials from the CAS Exam 5, including introductions to ratemaking and reserving. Also contributing to this effort were Roberto Perez, FCAS, who taught one of the classes on predictive modeling, and some dedicated volunteers who translated the materials into Vietnamese.
Of the 84 students who started the class, about 46 students took an IAV Exam focusing on the materials. I encourage these students to continue to study and take the CAS Part 5 Exam.
Ronald Kozlowski, FCAS, is the lead consultant with RTK Actuarial & Professional Services in San Francisco. He is involved in numerous CAS international working groups and task forces as well as the Professionalism Education Working Group and helps plan continuing education events around the globe.
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