Yeah, I was exaggerating there. Though actuaries have participated in million dollar cons.
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I have no idea how I would steal money as an Actuary.
I’ve worked on consulting projects where the valuation numbers were being used in the negotiation of a secret merger or acquisition. At that point in my career, it would have been too easy for me to inflate or deflate the numbers if someone bribed me to, without it being discovered. It would have been easy for me to engage in insider trading or tip someone off to it.
I’d never entertain that kind of thing, and I think most actuaries wouldn’t, but it’s important for us to act with integrity because 1) we can do a huge amount of damage if we don’t, and 2) if the public perception of an actuary is someone who is likely to commit fraud as enough people get caught doing it, the entire profession suffers for it.
yeah, I would need to be higher up the food chain for that. I could play stock games of a takeover.
theoretically maybe, though I don’t believe I ever had a deal.like that without a peer review, a managerial review and a senior management signoff
okay FINE Amy is awful. MAKE HER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Yeah, I’m not saying it would be downright easy, just TOO easy if I was motivated. Maybe a better way to phrase it is easier than it should be. And there are small consulting shops where there is even less oversight.
Then there are people like this guy. It doesn’t seem like he got his insider info from work, but he just as easily could have.
Actually the official complaint for his case shows how someone like me could have gotten tangled up in this. A consulting actuary friend working on the pension plan learned of the deal and shared it with the guilty party.
People still have way too big of heads about this thinking that somehow actuaries are special.
DBAs, software developers, etc… basically anyone who has access to data or code could do this exact same thing. Change one little value in a database, spreadsheet cell… ? It could very easily go unnoticed.
This sounds like the result of someone going through the FAP and thinking anything other than “Wow, those were hours of my life that I will never get back.”
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I was thinking of the movie we had to watch to get our fsa’s. Basically an actuary inflates premium to save the company, and resolves it by creating a ridiculous pyramid scheme by reinsuring fake policies. I don’t know if the actuary got rich (probably not) but for a while there was a mega corporation that was essentially a massive fraud, leeching millions of dollars while providing zero value.
I don’t know how many actuaries actually embezzle or accept bribes or whatever, but white collar crime generally is more expensive than blue collar crime and actuaries are situated to stop it or help it.
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At my first job, I worked for some Boomer types that didn’t really get computers, so they asked me to fix some IT issues. I recall stumbling across my income in an apparently public Access table thinking hmmmm…
I also thought, wow getting through this nonsense and I can finally call myself an Actuary with a capital A in that silly ao survey.
This says a lot more about how you view yourself than anything else. How do you feel about Precept 1?
Way to completely miss the point. There’s nothing special about this profession compared to thousands of other professions out there that have countless responsibilities. It’s not even worth going into examples of since they’re so numerous that anyone on this board has the ability to step back and look at them and see how an act of malfeasance could do damage.
How does that connect with your statement about the FAP?
Actuaries aren’t the only profession requiring honesty and integrity, and no one is claiming that. But what is the harm of expecting that actuaries act with the utmost integrity? How does that do anything except uphold the profession?
Do you think it’s important for us to act with integrity? Or do you think it’s not a big deal because we aren’t special? What even is your point anyway?
Kids these days probably dont get one with virtual apc. 
I think we all agree, that accountants and doctors and police and stock brokers and CEOs should have similar codes of conduct due to being in positions of power. And people who break the code should lose their jobs, if not their fingers. Which brings this back to the equality thread.
I recall, in an attempt to affect change, pointing out to Internal Audit how incredibly easy it would be for me to defraud the company. I probably could have taken them for an amount in the low 7 figures and moved to some country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US. They would’ve figured out it was me eventually, for sure, but it would’ve taken years before they even realized they’d been defrauded, most likely.
I didn’t do it because I’m an honest person who values my integrity and clear conscience and I like living in the United States and visiting with my friends & family whenever I want. But it would’ve been so easy.
Unfortunately the auditor was entirely unconcerned. I did hear through the grapevine that they finally fixed the problem about 15 years after I pointed it out. Had a relatively simple solution, they just couldn’t be bothered as it wasn’t a priority.
you can’t make this shit up