The Ethical Development of Actuaries

While there have been a number of actions taken in the last several years to establish professional standards and to provide some form of discipline regarding these matters, there remains much more to do in the development of actuaries who act ethically. Our focus will be on actuaries and actuarial managers though much of what we discuss can be applied to personal ethical issues and to ethical issues arising in other professions. We will discuss some underlying ethical concepts and pressures on actuaries not to act ethically (along with some examples). Next, we will outline a procedure for ethical decision making and provide an actual example of the procedure in use. Finally, we will outline some methods for use by actuarial managers and supervisors to help promote and teach ethics to actuarial students and others.