IFRS 17 contractual service: a life insurance perspective

The Moderator (Ms O. N. Gaughan, F.I.A.): This is a sessional event run by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) on the topic of the “IFRS 17 Contractual Service Margin: a Life Insurance Perspective”. The panel members are Wijdan Yousuf (Aon – UK); Natalia Mirin (Mazars – UK); Brendon Thorpe (Discovery Life – South Africa); Joanna Stansfield (Lloyds Banking Group – UK); Kruti Malde (ICICI Prudential Life – India); Rob Walton (PwC – UK); and Leong Tan (Swiss Re – Australia). I am Olive Gaughan (Mazars – Ireland). I have been a member of the IFoA since 1990, and I feel privileged to have been invited to preside over this event today. I have been involved in IFRS 17 for a few years now and have been involved with a number of panels, both asking questions and answering questions. The working party was set up in the summer of 2018 (around a year after IFRS 17 was first published) with work being undertaken in the context of a period where the standard had not bedded down. Indeed, it is only in recent months that we have a final version of the standard, but work had to begin as we knew what most of it was going to look like. The working party came together to analyse the standard, look at methodologies to think about what actuaries need to know, to think about it from a technical perspective, and produce some papers to benefit all of us. The working party has produced a lot of content so far, particularly LinkedIn articles. The culmination of all those efforts is today’s sessional paper.