Life insurance is one of the traditional and largest areas of practice for actuaries.
Actuaries work within life insurance in various roles including:
Life is the largest of the IFoA’s 7 practice areas. It’s integral to the IFoA in all of its key areas of influence: research, continuing professional development (CPD), public affairs, and regulation.
Explore all the IFoA’s active life research working parties.
The IFoA’s Life Board is a member-led board of senior volunteer actuaries that actively influences the environment in which life actuaries practice. It advises the IFoA on important life issues and sets key objectives annually. The board operates within a terms of reference laid out in the IFoA’s governance manual.
Further information for volunteers, including tips on how to chair a meeting, can be found in our Volunteer Information Pack.
Membership is drawn from a broad cross-section of the life insurance community to ensure full coverage of all life insurance-related issues. In 2024 to 2025, its members are:
The Life Board and its subcommittees are committed to ensuring that their members are educated and practice in an environment of the highest standard. The board and its subcommittees are responsible for:
The Life Board has oversight of and is supported by the:
The Life Research Sub-committee ensures a strong research output in the life practice area through member-led research.
It oversees all research in the life practice area, including:
Membership is drawn from a broad cross-section of the life community to ensure a spectrum of specialties and topics are investigated.
The sub-committee operates within a terms of reference (47.2 KB PDF). The terms of reference are laid out in the IFoA’s governance manual.
The Life Standards and Consultations Sub-committee ensures that regulation relating to life insurance is kept up to date and that appropriate guidance is available to members in the life community.
The sub-committee also:
Membership is drawn from a spectrum of senior actuaries with experience in addressing policy issues, and maintaining standards.
The sub-committee operates within a terms of reference as laid out in the IFoA’s governance manual.
The Lifelong Learning Sub-committee (Life) ensures that education and CPD requirements are coordinated and constantly evolving for the benefit of life actuaries and all members.
It oversees all education and continuing professional development (CPD) needs and is responsible for the:
The sub-committee is supported by the IFoA Communities Team and Education Actuary Colin Thores.
Membership is drawn from a broad cross-section of the life community to ensure a spectrum of specialties and topics are represented.
The sub-committee operates within terms of reference (86.2 KB PDF). The terms of reference are laid out in the IFoA’s governance manual.
The Life Asia Sub-committee ensures a strong research output in the life practice area through member-led research.
The sub-committee is the first regional sub-committee of the IFoA formed outside the UK, with the specific purpose of:
This will provide strong foundation for similar forums for other regions outside the UK, and for other actuarial disciplines.
The sub-committee sets out to:
Working with its members, the IFoA has commissioned a piece of research that will identify consumer protection needs and explore the extent to which these are being met in the Asian market. The life insurance markets in Asia are diverse with different levels of private and government-backed coverage.
We are taking a deeper look into selected Asian markets to compare and contrast the level of development and customer needs. A key focus will be on what customer needs exist and how these are being met with the current insurance offering in each market. Further to this, the research will consider the experience where customer outcomes have been unsatisfactory and how this has shaped the development of the markets.
It is expected that the outputs of this research will provide the IFoA and its members with an independent (non-commercial) and focussed set of data points to enable a better understanding life insurance customers’ risk appetite, challenges, expectations, experiences, knowledge, and requirements, by social demographic class. The research outputs should provide timely and relevant population sample data to enable conclusions and make recommendations regarding the topic, fit for today’s forward looking environment.
To find out more, contact the IFoA Communities Team.
For more information about any of our practice areas, please email the Communities Engagement Team
