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IACA Conference
At the beginning of June Adrian Waddingham and Danny Wilding represented Barnett Waddingham at the International Association of Consulting Actuaries (IACA) biennial conference.
The conference was based in Hershey "the sweetest place on earth", a town built from scratch around the chocolate factory of real life Willy Wonka and paternal employer Milton S Hershey.
Besides participating actively in the conference (IACA committee member Adrian spoke on early retirement issues and Danny on the DB v DC debate), it was an excellent opportunity to meet consulting actuaries from around the world to share ideas and discuss developments in local markets.
Central Pennsylvania was also an interesting base from which to explore Amish country and the famous civil bar battlefield of Gettysburg as well as Hershey itself.
The IACA 2000 programme
Consulting actuaries from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and Continental Europe discussed a challenging programme of subjects including:
The proper presentation of statistics to non-mathematicians
The future of the actuarial profession
Property and casualty insurance
Pensions for multi-national companies
The actuary as expert witness in litigation
Early retirement issues
International accounting standards
Multinational pooling of insurance risks
Defined benefit (DB) pension plans and defined contribution (DC) individual retirement accounts
Operating successful consulting practices
Public sector retirement benefit issues
Maintaining professional standards and responding to complaints
The most important issues facing consulting actuaries in the future
For information on any of these topics please contact Adrian or Danny.
About Gettysburg
Considered by most historians to be the most significant event to determine the outcome of the American civil war, the battle of Gettysburg lasted just three days in July 1863. The war started by accident when opposing armies ran in to each other by chance, and then over the course of the battle involved a total of 97,000 Northern soldiers under General Meade and 75,000 Southern troops under General Lee.
The South had been out-numbered and out-resourced by the North throughout the war, and Gettysburg became the last chance for the South to force a compromise from the North before the greater force overwhelmed. The South had won many against-the-odds battles and came very close to victory during the course of Gettysburg before some misdirected cannon fire left the Southern army over-exposed during the big push on the final day (Pickett's charge) and the ensuing massacre ended in surrender by the South. Lee escaped (ensuring that Meade would be remembered for his lack of aggression rather than his important victory), and the war rumbled on for two more bloody years, but the result had become inevitable.
There were 51,000 human casualties at Gettysburg from the 570 tons of ammunition expended. Allowing for pre-battle casualties (thousands more died from dysentery and diarrhoea before they ever made it to the battlefield) the 3-day battle accounted for more American lives than the whole 10 years of the Vietnam war.
Inexperienced but eloquent, and president against all odds with only 40% of the vote because the Southern electorate managed to split their vote, Northener Abraham Lincoln made his famous address at Gettysburg a few months after the bloody battle. Most of the audience were just settling themselves for another marathon monologue (the style of the day) after the previous speaker (a local governor) had rambled on for two hours, and hence many missed Lincoln's address, which lasted only two minutes. It became noted only afterwards in the press coverage.
The war had started because Lincoln refused to extend slavery licences to new states. This was perceived by the South as a restriction on the expansion of the powerful cotton industry who wanted to colonise new areas and were still committed to slave labour. However the Confederate states' ultimately-doomed revolution broke the constitution - which gave the astute Lincoln the perfect excuse to revoke their slavery licences and free their workers during the course of the war. Unfortunately though his assassination at the end of the war meant he did not see the end of slavery in the US - as there were four further states not in the Confederacy whose licenses were not revoked until two years later.
About Hershey
Officially called Derrytown, PA the town of Hershey was built by "MS" around his chocolate factory. The location was convenient for farms (he could use lots of milk) and so he built houses for his workers and a transport system to get them to the factory.
The town became known as Hershey when the railroad stopped there and that was the name given to the station.
The town is still dominated by the chocolate factory, and the Hershey Corporation still owns most of the land and property and employs most of its residents. Even the amusement park, which nowadays hosts some distinctive wooden-built roller-coasters, was originally set aside by MS as a relaxation area for factory workers to spend their break times.
MS and his wife could not have children so he set up a school for orphan children and left his fortune to that institution - a fortune which currently amounts to billions of dollars.
All in all, fun...
...but exhausting.
Danny Wilding, June 2000.