Our team recently joined health actuaries from across the industry for the SOA Health Meeting in Washington, DC. Lauren Scalzo and Lauren McKee represented Ezra Penland across a few days full of big ideas, from the objective function missing in US healthcare to the psychology behind why smart people twist data.
We left with a lot to think about, from the data side of the profession to the human side of it.
Sessions Attended
Lunch Keynote: Longevity as the Missing Objective Function
Speaker: Dr. Ashwin Vasan, physician and epidemiologist
Dr. Vasan opened with a provocation: longevity isn’t an aspiration, it’s the objective function our health system has never actually optimized for. Most of what determines health outcomes happens outside the clinic entirely. Genes, environment, behavior, and socioeconomic factors do the heavy lifting, while the system spends most of its money on care rather than health. The data backs this up in an uncomfortable way. The US spends the most and lives the shortest, and even the gains we do see are gains in lifespan rather than healthspan. In 2022, US life expectancy partially rebounded while comparable countries stabilized, which sounds like good news until you ask what kind of years we’re adding back.
Dr. Vasan framed the fix as an optimization problem: maximize healthy life-years, subject to two binding constraints, equity and affordability. Equity, in his framing, is really a pricing problem, concentrated and under-reserved risk that needs targets and goals to organize action around. He was also candid about where the money is chasing the wrong signal. The buzz around raw wellness and longevity hype carries a lot of risk for not much reward, while the real returns come from investment in GLP-1 therapies and in the steadier, less glamorous work of behavioral health and AI.
For a room full of actuaries, it was a useful reframe. The tools for pricing and reserving are already built for exactly this kind of concentrated, under-addressed risk.
SOA Overview and Industry Facts
A quick tour through where the profession stands right now. Aging populations are becoming a global crisis, and the SOA is leaning into that, partnering with other countries to expand actuarial resources and university curriculum abroad. AI is showing up everywhere in the learning pipeline too, with new content on AI in healthcare operations and analytics, AI applications for actuaries, managing bias and responsible AI, and where AI opportunities in actuarial practice are headed next.
A few numbers worth remembering: actuary is currently the #11 job in the US, over half of actuaries are involved in their communities, and more than 15% volunteer. On the exam side, the SOA has moved from two sittings a year to three and is increasing how many exams candidates can sit per year, which is shortening the pathway to FSA.
Keynote: The Psychology of Decision-Making
Speaker: Dr. Tali Sharot, MIT and UCL, director of the Affective Brain Lab
This was the session our team is still talking about. Dr. Sharot studies why people, including highly analytical people, process information the way they do, and the findings cut against a lot of assumptions about data and persuasion. People with stronger math and analytical skills aren’t more likely to reach the truth. They’re more likely to use those skills to find fault with data they don’t like. Confirmation bias doesn’t go away with expertise, it gets better resourced.
A few threads stood out. People are more likely to seek out positive information than negative, and the brain is simply more receptive to good news than bad. That has a direct implication for how to communicate difficult findings: start with common ground, focus on where you agree, and highlight the opportunity for progress rather than the decline. An impartial third party reviewing the data can also help, since people lose a little confidence in their own view the moment they learn others disagree.
Social influence plays a bigger role than most of us give it credit for. When people learn what the majority is doing, the amygdala lights up, and the more it’s activated by positive actions of others, the more likely someone is to conform. Underneath a lot of this is a drive for agency. Our brains are wired to expand control, especially under uncertainty, which is part of why the happiest people during COVID were the ones who felt they still had some. Choice matters too. When people choose an option themselves rather than have it chosen for them, they become more committed to it and the reward center of the brain actually activates, something that doesn’t happen with imposed decisions.
Stress changes all of this. Under stress, people focus far more on negative information and optimism bias disappears, and stress itself tends to peak in midlife before easing, tracking closely with a dip in happiness that bottoms out around the same time and recovers after. One finding got a laugh of recognition from the room: happiness peaks the day before a vacation, higher than the vacation itself. The anticipation does more work than the event. Building anticipatory moments into the future, for teams and for clients, is a genuinely practical takeaway.
Looking Forward
The SOA Health Meeting reinforced a few themes our team is watching closely: the shift toward longevity and healthspan as the real measure of success, AI’s growing footprint in actuarial practice and education, and a sharper understanding of the psychology behind how people actually receive data and change their minds. We’re glad to have been in the room and look forward to bringing these ideas back to our work.
If you’d like to discuss any of these topics, reach out to our team. We’d love to connect.