Organizational Update - September 2011

Management

Leadership Update- In a special meeting of the CCA Board of Directors on July 22nd CCA's Vice President of Practice Areas, Dale Yamamoto was nominated and approved as CCA President-Elect, effective August 5th, following the close of CCA's August Executive Committee meeting.

Dale fills the unexpired term of Donald Fuerst, who heads to Washington D.C. as the new senior pension fellow for the American Academy of Actuaries. Don will represent the U.S. actuarial profession on retirement security issues, a position that required him to voluntarily recuse himself from concurrent service on the CCA Board.

Dale is the founder and President of Red Quill Consulting, Inc. and has over 30 years of experience in providing employers with actuarial and strategic consulting to support their employee benefit programs. He has testified before Congress on the topic of healthcare and Medicare reform, and in 2010 he spearheaded efforts to address the actuarial implications of healthcare reform legislation in a three-part audiocast series jointly sponsored by the Conference of Consulting Actuaries and Society of Actuaries, and co-sponsored by the American Academy of Actuaries.

Dale has served and continues to serve the CCA in many capacities. Currently, he is Chair of the Seminar Committee – which plans the series of audiocasts sponsored annually by the CCA, and is a member of the Budget and Finance Committee and Healthcare Reform Steering Committee.

Continuing Education Offerings

Annual Meeting – The Conference's Annual Meeting takes place for the first time in Las Vegas. We'll be at the JW Marriott Las Vegas Resort and Spa from Sunday, October 23rd through Wednesday, October 26th. Early registration has been robust. Ahead of the meeting we will debut a mobile program application on the Apple app store, which in conjunction with an enhanced meeting name badge may reduce our future reliance on printed programs and their associated expense.

On the first full-day of the meeting we will cover healthcare with one of the nation's experts, Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs. She is also an on-air correspondent with PBS NewsHour, where she leads an award-winning unit dedicated to providing in-depth coverage of healthcare, health policy and Social Security.

This year's meeting also continues our collaboration with the American Academy of Actuaries. As in previous years, most recently in 2008, the Academy Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon takes place within the CCA Annual Meeting. The Academy keynote speaker, statistician Nate Silver, who developed the baseball Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA), applies his proprietary prediction models to US Electoral College results, among other topics at his New York Times blog http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com. Mr. Silver's insights are sure to be of particular relevance as our meeting takes place concurrently with Major League Baseball's World Series and the onset of the US 2012 Presidential primary season.

As a member of NAAC, you and a guest are invited to attend the CCA Annual Meeting with complimentary registration, and we encourage you to do so.

Traveling Seminars – The Conference is holding two Traveling Seminars in 2011. On September 13th in Chicago, at the American Dental Association Conference Center on the Magnificent Mile and on November 15th in Atlanta, at the Terry College of Business Executive Education Center in Buckhead. With recent modifications to the JBEA actuarial accreditation maintenance process necessitating "formal" in-person CE, the Conference is extending our trial effort, begun in New York City in November 2010, in offering multiple CE sessions on a single day in major US regional business hubs.

The full-day seminar includes three sessions addressing, pension, professionalism, and healthcare reform.

Seminars following our Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada– The Conference presents two seminars following the Annual Meeting:

The Future of Retirement, a seminar that aims to address the following question, "Knowing what we know today, how we would design an entirely new and workable private retirement system from scratch?"

Healthcare for Pension Actuaries, a seminar for rounding-out actuarial healthcare benefits consulting skills; focusing on issues of plan design, valuation, accounting and pricing.

Audiocasts -Demand remains high for CCA audiocasts. Beyond expectations, and without mention in our marketing, subscriptions are continuing to be purchased as recently as August, for the four remaining sessions this season:

*All audiocasts are cosponsored by the American Academy of Actuaries, Canadian Institute of Actuaries, and at our June 2011 meeting, the CCA Board approved the addition of CONAC to the roster of CCA Audiocast sponsoring organizations.

Member Communities

These communities meet by conference call during the year and in person at the Conference Annual Meeting. In addition, they provide input into the Conference's slate of audiocasts and seminars

Public Plans Community – Working groups within the PPC analyze certain exposure drafts of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and prepare targeted responses. Presently they are responding to GASB 27 exposure on accounting and financial reporting for pensions. On May 17th the Committee issued a response to the US House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means to address a hearing on the transparency and funding of State and local pension plans. The PPC is comprised of over fifty actuaries, responsible for the majority of actuarial services to US public sector retirement systems.

Small Firms Community–The purpose of the Smaller Actuarial Consulting Firms Community is to assist smaller actuarial consulting firms to meet their business and educational needs.

Healthcare Reform Community – The HRC promotes sound actuarial considerations for healthcare reform at the national and state level, and provides an open forum for the exchange of ideas among actuaries concerned about reform efforts. The highly regarded healthcare track at the Conference's Annual Meeting is derived in part from the Community's assessments.

Special Initiatives:

Actuarial Foundation Partnership - The Conference continues to match member contributions to the Foundation's Building Your Future financial literacy curriculum that introduces the essentials of personal finance to high school students. Since the program was announced at our 2010 Annual Meeting, the Conference has matched over $11,000 in donations.

Bylaws Ballot – On August 11th the Conference began balloting on a bylaws revision to amend our disciplinary process to collaborate with the Council of US Presidents (CUSP) on a Joint Discipline Agreement. Votes will be tabulated on September 25th.

Intellectual Property - On July 5th the Official Gazette of the US Patent and Trademark Office published notice of the CCA's trademark registration of the phrase, "Advancing the Practice®." It is in use in all CCA marketing correspondence and CE handout design.

Social Networking - The CCA LinkedIn group is the first implementation of a series of new initiatives suggested by the CCA Young Leaders Council. It follows-up on CCA's social networking outreach begun on Twitter.

Website Redevelopment – Our Board and Member Communications Committee have each been presented preliminary demonstrations of an all-new CCA web presence. We aim to deliver a more a seamless user experience by combining our CE tracking instrument, with our e-commerce and event registration systems, along with a new member directory. A first-quarter 2012 debut is planned.