Editorial

Thank you to our members who recently completed our Actuaries.Digital Survey which asked various questions on the magazines style, content and new delivery mode. 

The Actuaries magazine had a change in format in April 2015 with the move to an online version.

Many new volunteer members have joined the Editorial Committee over the past 12 months, including myself, so now is a great time to reflect on what improvements can be made to the magazine in the year ahead.

The magazine remains a fantastic platform that promotes collegiality and a sharing of stories and relevant issues in the profession, as well as a platform for other professionals to view the wide ranging of work of actuaries.

Going digital was always going to appeal to some of our members more than others. With the move to digital, the  format and publishing cycle of the magazine has necessarily changed. We now operate on a continuous publishing cycle (rather than a monthly print cycle) and the way we layout images and text has shifted. We now include links to more information, as well as multimedia.

Supportive comments from the Survey, including what content readers enjoy were:

• Variety, timeliness and accessibility
• Enjoy the video content, the puzzles
• Reasonably up to date, easy to read
• Variety of articles, personal profiles and ‘ I am an actuary’
• Helps keep in touch with what’s going on in the actuarial community, and up to date with the financial services industry
• Easy to access

Suggestions for improvements included:

• More articles of ‘facts’
• Consider easier to navigate ‘look’
• Consider subtitles for videos (so can view easily without disturbing others)
• Encourage more people to write

The Editorial Committee will be continuously discussing these ideas for improvement, especially the focus on variety, and will investigate the following:

• A refreshed look for the online magazine – it is always important to trial different options to make navigation and reading easier;
• a continuation of light- hearted articles focused around key national events (sporting events, Valentine’s Day etc);
• bringing back the regular column focused on advice for professional career and study dilemmas for the 21st century actuary (in the past known as “Ask Gae”); and
• looking at delivering an annual publication of the magazine with a layout akin to a hard copy magazine, leveraging many of the year’s popular online articles. This will appeal to a subset of our readers who prefer to print articles for reading.

Please let us know what you think by droping an email to ActuariesMag@actuaries.asn.au, particularly if you missed the chance to respond to the Survey during October.

CPD: Actuaries Institute Members can claim two CPD points for every hour of reading articles on Actuaries Digital.