This year, the 2008 Halmstad Prize will be awarded to the best actuarial science paper published in 2006.  The selection committee makes its determination taking into account the originality and thoroughness of the ideas expressed in the paper, the readability of the paper, and the timeliness and relevance of the research.

Nominations for papers on pension-related topics are being sought.  Please send a brief email that includes the name of the paper, the journal (with volume number) in which it was published, and a few sentences explaining why the paper should be considered to kelley.mckeating@sympatico.ca before June 15, 2008.

Nominations for the 2009 prize (for the best paper published in 2007) are also welcome at this time.

For more information on the Halmstad Prize, click here.  

In the January issue of the Pension Section News (PSN), we asked you to give us some information about the type of organization in which you work. If you worked for a consulting firm, we also wanted to know if your firm had internal research capabilities and whether you were based in the United States or Canada. 176 members responded. Their answers, along with some information about all section members, are summarized in the chart below.



Our hope is to learn more about you and to deliver relevant and interesting content. Of the approximately 3,900 Pension Section members, about 1,600 opened the January PSN and clicked on at least one article. Approximately 10 percent of those who opened an article answered the survey.
 
About 55 percent of our members work for consulting firms with internal research capabilities.  Of the readers that responded to the survey, 41 percent were employed by such firms. One of the PSN’s tenets is that section members are looking for practical professional information and view the PSN as a source.  Given the section census, more than half of the Pension Section members have access to such information through their firms’ internal research units. If the survey can be considered representative of the PSN readers, more than half of them come from firms that don’t have some type of internal unit responsible for research.  These readers may still view the PSN as a resource, perhaps an important resource.

This raises an interesting question, and I invite you to write to me with your thoughts. Should the Pension Section News, as a service to readers who do not work for firms with internal research capabilities, focus on providing practical profession information?  Or, should the PSN have a broad focus that includes a wide variety of pension-related information?

Art Assantes, FSA, MAAA, FCA, EA is editor of the Pension Section News, and also president of Hooker & Holcombe in West Hartford, Conn.  He can be reached at PSN.Editor@pensionedge.com.

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