Meet the Candidates - Len Llaguno

Education:

University of Toronto
Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science and Computer Science
Summa Cum Laude
May 2006

Current Employment:

Founder and Managing Partner at KYROS Insights

CAS Activities and Publications:

• Reserving with Machine Learning: Applications for Loyalty Programs and Individual Insurance Claims, CAS e-Forum, Summer 2017
• Loyalty Rewards and Gift Card Programs: Basic Actuarial Estimation Techniques, CAS e-Forum, Summer 2012
• A Structural Simulation Model for Measuring General Insurance Risk, CAS e-Forum, Summer 2010

Other Professional Designations:

MAAA, 2009

Employment History:

KYROS Insights

• 2017 to Present – Founder and Managing Partner

Willis Towers Watson

• 2015-2017 – Global Co-Leader for Loyalty Analytics
• 2013-2015 – Sr. Consultant
• 2006 to 2013 – Analyst/Consultant

Membership and Activities in Other Organizations:

Len is a lecturer at the Loyalty Academy, the leading loyalty trade group focused on educating loyalty practitioners and other professionals that support customer loyalty programs. Len teaches introductory and advanced loyalty program liability management (available here and here).

Awards and Recognitions:

Towers Watson Chairman’s Award, February 2013

I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the CAS Board of Directors.

My goal is to help incorporate today’s breakthroughs in machine learning into the modern actuary’s toolbox. I want to serve on the Board to help empower our members to create these new methods and to foster the innovation and entrepreneurship needed to make them available to the global actuarial community.

For the past 10+ years I’ve been working to combine actuarial theory with machine learning. I founded a company to deploy these innovations to help loyalty programs predict redemptions and reserve for their points liability. Through this work, I’ve seen how powerful these methods can be to solve a wide range of problems and provide insights that traditional methods cannot.

I believe my non-traditional actuarial experience will bring a unique perspective to the Board and allow me to have a meaningful contribution in advancing our toolbox. I would consider it an honor and privilege to serve the CAS community.

Issue 1: Building the Skills for the Future

The proliferation of data, advances in the scalability of cloud computing and breakthroughs in machine learning (ML) are creating a tremendous opportunity for our profession. I believe that weaving machine learning into our actuarial tools will enable us to achieve better business outcomes than our current methods can deliver.

However, broadly speaking, our profession lacks the technical skillset to capitalize on this opportunity. We risk being left behind if we let data scientists and other professions take the lead in leveraging these advances in the insurance industry.

I believe that coding skills and the ability to use cloud computing to build sophisticated ML models will be critical to our profession’s future. I would like to see more actuaries learn these skills and use them to create a modern actuarial toolbox that integrates machine learning with the foundations of actuarial theory.

The CAS has certainly made progress in emphasizing advanced analytics over the past few years, and I intend to build on those successes. If elected to the Board, my goal would be to empower our members to integrate machine learning into our tools, and to foster the innovation and entrepreneurship needed to make them available to the global actuarial community. I believe my experience building a company that blends actuarial theory with machine learning will position me to have a meaningful contribution to this initiative.

Issue 2: Expanding the Profession to Non-Traditional Roles

I have worked for the past 10+ years doing actuarial work for loyalty programs. My team and I have developed novel actuarial methods to solve many business problems that are far from the traditional insurance context. This experience leads me to believe that the actuarial perspective can add business value in many areas beyond the typical actuarial roles and outside of the insurance industry entirely.

If elected to the Board, my goal would be to bring awareness to these non-traditional roles to both our membership and externally to businesses that could benefit from our perspective.