RGA Sponsorship of Multimedia Knowledge Portal
William Boland
Executive Director
RGA Global Marketing
In 2019, RGA became the exclusive sponsor of actuview, a multimedia knowledge portal for actuaries, and the insurance community. actuview was created by the German Actuarial Association (DAV) and the platform was born out of an idea by the DAV when it hosted the 2018 International Congress of Actuaries (ICA) in Berlin. For this event, interested users were able to virtually attend sessions scheduled for the same timeslot; review recorded content at their own pace (sometimes overcoming linguistic barriers); or even follow the presentations from another location without attending the actual event.
The vison of actuview is to become the central actuarial streaming portal worldwide, and RGA is proud to play a role in bringing insurance professionals from client companies, international actuarial institutions, and national associations together through global events to share industry insights on actuview’s knowledge portal. Since its official launch in March 2019, actuview has offered access to more than 15,000 users in more than 100 countries and published more than 500 videos to the site. While actuview is a global platform, its European roots have helped it generate traction within Europe’s insurance community. Over the last few weeks, the Actuarial Association of Europe partnered with actuview to give all of its members actuview access.
In addition to financial sponsorship, RGA is a regular contributor to actuview thought leadership content. Over the last year some of RGA’s top subject matter experts have produced videos across a variety of areas: wellness and consumer behavior, predictive analytics, innovation and medical advances. The videos are both an opportunity to share RGA’s unique point of view, and to see what industry professionals, including clients, find most interesting!
Abstracts from RGA’s three most popular videos on actuview are below.
“How Behavioral Science Can Help Solve the Insurance Industry’s Biggest Challenges”. Matt Battersby, Vice President and Chief Behavioural Scientist. Matt explains the role of behavioral science in creating products, policies and communications based on how people really do think and behave rather than how we think they should think and behave.
“Chess and Underwriting.” Jeff Heaton, Vice President and Data Scientist, Jeff discusses advances in AI that have been applied by Google to master the game of chess using simulated data, and how this technology can support life insurance underwriting. He describes ways in which big data effectively supports actuarial functions, and challenges of relying on simulated data alone to model real world problems.
“Genetics and Risks of Anti-selection” 
Peter Banthorpe, Global Head of Research and Data Analytics discusses the results of RGA’s research study with King’s College London and the implications for genetic anti-selection in protection insurance.
In 2019, actuview participated in signature events through video and live-streaming. These include the 3rd European Congress of Actuaries (Lisbon), the IAA Section Colloquium (Cape Town) and the Asian Actuarial Conference (Singapore), among others. RGA is pleased to have joined actuview through sessions at the June ECA (Portugal), and last month’s Asian Actuarial Conference (Singapore), in particular.
In the coming year, actuview will have a growing presence at key events across North America, Asia and Europe. The Actuarial Colloquium (Paris), organized by the French Institute of Actuaries, is one of these events, and planning is underway. RGA will be a participant, and actuview will be facilitating access to conference sessions and workshops. More than 1,000 actuaries from around the world are expected.
All readers of the EMEA Quarterly can also see developments on actuview by signing up for the “actunews” monthly newsletter available at www.actuview.com. If you are interested in exploring all the content on actuview, reach out to your RGA account coordinator for complimentary subscriber access.