Comparison of Fellowship fees for actuarial organisations deemed broadly equivalent by mutual recognition

Professional Actuarial Topics Actuarial Politics
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Here is a comparison (converting from local currency to sterling £) of the current Fellowship subscription/dues annual rates for the 8 actuarial organisations which are in a mutual recognition cluster group for Fellowship. (I’ve included the ABCD fees for SOA and CAS to make their dues comparable to the other societies, which do not seem to have a separate organisation that they can effectively “insure” their disciplinary costs with).

Ignoring India where the cost of living is a lot lower, note that an Australian Fellow currently pays 46% more than a US CAS Fellow. And a US SOA Fellow seems to have to pay about 9% more than a US CAS Fellow.

An interesting question is what do members get for these amounts, and how to the costs of those benefits add up to the total? Indeed, do members receive tangible benefits for each of those costs?

I haven’t had time to analyse the other organisations, but I’ve tried to do this for the IFoA, using the (relatively little) information they publish on the breakdown of where member subs/dues are spent. See Just what do IFoA Fellows and Associates get for their annual subscriptions of £765 and £570? and Time to unbundle the services that actuarial organisations provide to their members?.

I’d be interested in your comments from an US perspective, and in particular do you think you are getting value for money? I don’t think IFoA members are.

ComparingFellowshipFeesByBroadlyComparableOrganisationDec2024|690x296

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The CIA in Canada does what the AAA does in the US PLUS what the SOA and CAS do for their American members after qualification.

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I think of them as union dues

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I think of my CAS dues as guild dues. (The SOA/CAS are more guild-like than union-like, I think.)

Sadly, I think of AAA dues as a very expensive magazine subscription. (I’m not a member.)

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We’re like the Hanseatic League!

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I dropped my AAA membership as soon as it was not required for my work. However I have kept the SOA and CIA memberships to continue receiving their newsletters, etc. For retirees they are both cheap, under $100 annually.

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I feel like the SOA does a lot of research that a medium size company like mine benefits from. We are large enough to do pricing and reserving in house, but not large enough to have fully credible experience when we start slicing and dicing.

MAAA is required for most of our positions bc we are signing stuff.

ETA: The company pays & they think it’s worth it. I probably won’t bother when I retire unless I have some kind of board position that benefits from having the credential.

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I don’t sign anything, and pretty much all the actuarial work I do is with actuarial orgs (except a few things I do every so often for due diligence purposes).

But, if you’re going to do volunteer work for the AAA, you gotta be MAAA. So I am. It’s one of the better ways to influence insurance regulations, I find. (and a lot of things are going on right now… please volunteer, y’all!)

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