Pinnacle has enjoyed a highly successful 2017. We have added ten new full-time employees this year and now have 28 credentialed actuaries on staff, with another two actuarial analysts anticipating earning their Associate credential of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) in the spring of 2018. 

Pinnacle recently hosted the 4th annual Pinnacle U event in our Bloomington office. Pinnacle U is a collaborative effort between Illinois State University (ISU) and Pinnacle that provides a wide array of training and development opportunities for its participants. The event is also a tangible response to the strategic plan of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), which lists improving communications and relationships with candidates and academics as a top priority.

Insurance companies need better tools to effectively underwrite cyber liability risk, including data-driven approaches for underwriting using publicly-available data. The CAS Cyber Risk Task Force is an excellent place from which to start finding ways to help insurance companies manage this growing risk, both as potential victims and as insurers.

The strategic plan of the Casualty Actuarial Society includes a directive to “Develop strong relationships with academics and increase awareness among academics of the CAS career path.” Recognizing there are currently just over 3,000 four-year degree-granting institutions in the United States, a question arises as to how far this outreach extends. With this in mind, I’ve gone back to my roots and visited the two academic institutions that have most impacted my life.

Pinnacle’s growth has been spectacular during the past 12 months. We recently hired two highly-experienced credentialed actuaries, Linda Brobeck in San Francisco and Terrence Wright in Atlanta. Two of our Actuarial Analysts, Daniel Teuma and Nick Alicea, were conferred with the Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society (ACAS) credential at the November 2016 CAS Annual Meeting. Pinnacle currently counts 28 credentialed actuaries among our staff. At the start of 2016 we had 20, and in 2003, when Pinnacle was founded, we had 10.