The IFoA defends Female Genital Mutilation against criticism, claiming mention of it within Islam is “offensive, inflammatory and insulting to Muslims”!

Female Genital Mutilation is a terrible, vile practice (often carried out against young girls) which I have always condemned wholeheartedly, no matter who carries it out, and irrespective of the age of the victim. Despite its duty to act in the public interest and its Royal Charter, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) seems to take a very different attitude.

Over two years ago (in May 2020), I tweeted (in a personal capacity)

You’ve seen the two hadith in which Mohammed tells people to perform the vile practice of #FGM. Is it your position that these Bukhari hadith are fake? Here is an imam saying that all scholars agree that #FGM is sunnah (in line with Islamic practice) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM23QsE7Rd4

In their Twitter bundle for the disciplinary case they are bringing against me, the IFoA claim that this tweet is “inflammatory and insulting to Muslims”. In sloppy behaviour that is reminiscent of the Garden Court Chambers treatment of Allison Bailey (see here), the IFoA didn’t copy and paste my tweet, but altered it. They misspelt Bukhari as “Bukari” and they also removed the link which I included in that tweet. Why did they remove it? To suit their case? If not why remove it? (There are several similar examples of partial quotation, removal of links, or misquotation of my tweets by the IFoA in their case documents).

With the link included, you can judge for yourself whether my tweet is accurate:

At around 4 mins 50 seconds the imam says:

“It is the consensus of all (Muslim) scholars that female circumcision is sunnah”.

Sunnah means habitual practice, see https://www.google.com/search?q=meaning+of+sunnah+in+Islam&oq=meaning+of+sunnah+in+Islam.

https://www.google.com/search?q=meaning+of+sunnah+in+Islam&oq=meaning+of+sunnah+in+Islam&aqs=chrome..69i57.6622j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

At around 7.40 to 8 minutes he refers to the Bukhari hadith, saying that Mohammed says “it is better for the husband if the wife has undergone cutting if not very deep”.
He refers to 4 hadiths which say that women should be circumcised.

He repeats at 12:33 that all of the scholars agree that it is sunnah.

My summary of key points in Allison Bailey’s witness statement in her Employment Tribunal case v Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers

Background

Allison Bailey is a black lesbian barrister who is currently suing Stonewall and her chambers, Garden Court Chambers (GCC), alleging that they discriminated against her because of her gender critical views.

She has overcome significant adversity and had built up an excellent reputation for her criminal law work until the current dispute with Stonewall and GCC put her career on hold. Because of public interest (in particular from many women and supporters of gender critical views, including the importance of single sex spaces for girls and women) she has managed to raise over half a million pounds to crowdfund her case.

Her summary on her website of why she is taking legal action is:

I am suing Stonewall Equality Limited to stop them policing free speech.
I am a barrister and I helped to set up a new organisation for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, the LGB Alliance, to provide an alternative to Stonewall. In retaliation, Stonewall had me investigated by my chambers, in an attempt to cost me my livelihood.

Her witness statement is here. It is long (167 pages) and it seems clear to me that many people have been commenting on it without having read all of it, or perhaps without realising the full extent of its astonishing allegations.

Here is my summary of what appear to me to be the key points, with a focus on Garden Court Chambers’ role. I am not so surprised by the allegations against Stonewall, but GCC are expected to uphold very high standards of behaviour, including the Bar Standards Board’s Core Duties for barristers – and of course their own motto (“Do right. Fear no-one”).

Stodgy Institute and Faculty of Actuaries forces Actuarial Tutor to remove joke from Linked In

An Acted tutor posted yesterday on Twitter:

“Following a request from the IFoA, I have removed my Chris Rock/Will Smith meme from LinkedIn and Twitter. “

The meme (shown at the top of this post) is still available (for now) at https://actuarialtutor.substack.com/.

I was appalled by Will Smith’s assault on Chris Rock, and I think he should be prosecuted for what seems to be an act of violence.

Having said that, I think the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has once again overstepped the mark significantly in this case: almost all readers will have seen the subsequent post as what it was, a joke. And any reader who somehow thought that the post was an incitement to violence, or somehow “brought the IFoA into disrepute” seems to hold value judgments far from the norm, and so could just as well take offence at almost anything posted by anyone, including the IFoA.

The stodgy, humourless bureaucrats at the IFoA should back off, in yet another assault on #FreeSpeech.

Formal Complaint against Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) actuaries involved in loyalty penalty/price walking

(For ease of reading/reference, this sets out in full – within this blog post, rather than as a pdf attachment – the complaint I submitted to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries on 6 September 2021, see https://improveifoa.org/2021/09/06/formal-complaint-allegations-of-misconduct-against-ifoa-members-involved-in-loyalty-penalty-price-walking/).

Abstract

The use of loyalty penalty / price walking over many years appears to have been a gross breach of trust (violating Treating Customers Fairly and very many parts of the Actuaries’ Code) and is arguably the biggest scandal in the UK insurance industry in decades: larger than the failure of Equitable Life, and potentially as bad as the pensions mis-selling scandal. Millions of policyholders (many elderly or otherwise vulnerable) look to have been overcharged by at least £5 billion in total. The conduct of actuaries with significant involvement should be investigated. In my view the IFoA should also help organise compensation for policyholders to whom harm was done.

Formal complaint: Allegations of Misconduct against IFoA members involved in loyalty penalty / price walking

(IFoA is a reference to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in what follows.)

Many insurance companies have engaged in recent years in the practices known as loyalty penalty or price walking (“the practices” in what follows). I allege professional misconduct by possibly many IFoA members working at (or who previously worked at) such companies, if they had any significant involvement in the approval, implementation, calculation, compliance, documentation, or policyholder/regulator communication aspects of the practices, with the degree of misconduct varying according to the degree of seniority, involvement with, knowledge of and degree of leadership responsibility for the practices.

Open letter to Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Council members 3 Mar 2022

I sent the following by email on 3 March 2022 to the Council email address:

Open letter to IFoA Council

To members of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) Council that I was on for most of the previous decade:

What have you let the IFoA become?

None of the following are right, yet you have stood by and said nothing to your members or the public:

The IFoA has consistently refused to investigate the “loyalty penalty”/”price walking” scandal under which millions of policyholders (often older or otherwise vulnerable) were massively overcharged (“eye watering premium increases”) by a total of several £ billion, despite IFoA actuaries’ duty to ensure their insurer employers upheld the regulators’ Treating Customers Fairly principle and the Actuaries’ Code. Why if not because of group think and its conflicts of interest here? (The IFoA having not only tolerated the practice for so many years but actively taught price walking techniques to student actuaries, and it seems being unwilling to confront insurers as major employers of actuaries).
The IFoA claims to be open and transparent and to “put members at the heart of everything we do”. So why haven’t you published the results of the 2020 membership survey, despite saying (Member Pledge) “Each year the IFoA measures how satisfied its members are through an independently administered survey. This provides a measure of member satisfaction and engagement, which is then published.”? It seems likely that you don’t like the results? Why ask members to complete a new survey for 2021 when you haven’t disclosed the results of the last one?
For years your website proclaimed that any member could contact any member of Council in confidence by emailing @council@actuaries.org.uk .Yet, like the claims that membership survey results would be published, that was a false statement, wasn’t it, with mounting evidence that instead critical comments were intercepted, and in a clear conflict of interest dealt with often by those being criticised?
The IFoA’s treatment of legal disputes, including Employment Tribunal, Assessment Regulation and Disciplinary cases, seems remarkably similar to that of morally dubious students that the IFoA (rightfully) disciplines: if the exam (legal case) is easy/straightforward everything is above board, but if it is at all difficult, all sorts of rules are bent: evidence that is inconvenient is ignored or not disclosed, different things are said to different people, mistakes are made in evidence (most, sometimes all, favouring the IFoA’s case), the Disciplinary Board/Committee makes decisions that consistently amend the member contract against accused members (disclosure: I am one, but I have supplied documented evidence of Board/Committee decisions that affect all members) without such changes being discussed/agreed with members. The IFoA has consistently hidden evidence of its own “negligent/improper” handling of at least 2 cases (as found by Tribunal Panels) from members and the public it claims to serve.
In the “exam cheating ring” scandal, the IFoA seems to have concealed in late 2019 and 2020 from Council (of which I was a member at the time) that the ringleader (a tutor) was apparently a member of the IFoA and Career Ambassador for the IFoA. Is it true that no action was taken against that ringleader member while hundreds of students were disciplined (including being banned from exams for up to 2 years)?

Estimating the financial impact of “Assessment Regulation” suspensions on actuarial students: more severe than disciplinary penalties?

IFoA (Institute and Faculty of Actuaries) students who have been accused by the IFoA of plagiarism or collusion have in some cases had bans/suspensions from taking the exams imposed on them.

In cases of plagiarism, suspension periods of six months have been mentioned. For collusion bans of up to 2 years have been mentioned. (Unfortunately no statistics seem to have been published by the IFoA to show the numbers affected – as others have mentioned, the IFoA should be transparent about this.)

A challenge was issued to estimate the financial loss to students from such suspensions.

I attach an Excel file in which I have tried to estimate the financial loss – see

EstimatedCostToMemberOfIFoAAssessmentRegulationTemporaryBans(v1).Download

The likely financial loss will depend on lots of factors, including the age of the student, how long their career is likely to last (and whether it includes a break), and of course how likely they are to reach Fellowship.

My calculations show that the financial loss of a two year suspension to a student who was very likely to qualify could easily exceed £100,000 (allowing for loss of earnings up to age 60). For a student with only a 20% probability of qualifying the loss could easily exceed £20,000.

Similarly, the financial loss of a six month suspension to a student who was very likely to qualify could easily exceed £15,000. For a student with only a 20% probability of qualifying the loss could easily exceed £3,000.

This means that for students with probabilities of qualifying greater than 20%, the financial penalty of imposing a six month suspension are probably higher than those imposed by Adjudication Panels imposing fines for misconduct.

For students with high probabilities of qualifying (and there have been instances of such suspensions being imposed on such students in the past) the financial consequences of the Assessment Regulation penalties seem to significantly exceed fines imposed under the Disciplinary Scheme by both Adjudication Panels and Disciplinary Tribunal Panels. (And that is just the financial consequences – the other aspects, including possible stress and stigma from being unable to sit the exams while peers are doing so, without being able to explain why if an appeal process is being undergone – should not be underestimated).

This reinforces the need for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries to be fully transparent about how many students are accused of plagiarism, and of collusion, what processes are followed, and what the outcomes of those investigations are.

Update: mortality is ignored in the Excel file, but it can be implicitly allowed for via including it in the real discount rate.

My candid thoughts on the Disciplinary Committee’s reply to my open letter to it: extraordinary statements that inspire little or no confidence

I share my candid thoughts on receiving the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ Disciplinary Committee’s response to my open letter of 9 December 2021 to it. For ease of reference, I show my letter below in full, with the Committee’s response put below each of the 5 questions I raised (in sections starting “Committee’s”, in blue and enclosed within brackets), followed by my reaction (in sections starting “My Reaction”, in red and enclosed within brackets) exactly I as I would give it and share it with other Council members had I received it in a Council meeting:

Public and non confidential

Dear Disciplinary Committee of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) (cc IFoA Council for information, please will both the Disciplinary Committee and the Council acknowledge receipt?)

(Disclosure: I am a former IFoA member currently defending myself against a disciplinary case. But what follows relates to other cases and general principles, and is what I would have asked you irrespective of that. I was a member of IFoA Council from July 2012 to June 2018, and July 2019 until early September 2020, and a member of IFoA Management Board from July 2016 to June 2018).

(Committee’s introductory remarks in their response letter

I refer to your letter and on behalf of the Disciplinary Committee respond to your questions as follows:)

Question 1: do you agree that your predecessor, the Disciplinary Board, violated the Nolan Principles? If not, why not?

From page 7 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/554817/Striking_the_Balance__web__-_v3_220916.pdf:

Regulators play a key role in public life, across a vast range of sectors and professions. From doctors to bankers, and energy suppliers to hospitals, regulators protect and promote the interests of the public. This requires regulators to act according to the standards expected of public office holders.

It follows from the above that, as a regulator and a Royal Chartered body, the Nolan Principles apply to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and hence to the Disciplinary Committee and its predecessor, the Disciplinary Board. (If you disagree that the principles apply, please explain why.)

The Disciplinary Committee’s reply to my open letter asking it about compliance with the Nolan Principles

Yesterday I received a reply from the Disciplinary Committee to my open letter of 9 Dec 2021.

Their reply is as follows:

Dear Mr Lee

I refer to your letter and on behalf of the Disciplinary Committee respond to your questions as follows:

Question One

The Disciplinary Committee, formerly the Disciplinary Board, supports and recognises the Nolan principles in its oversight of the Scheme’s operation. I do not agree that the Board acted contrary to these principles

The outcomes of the 3 cases you refer to are not in the public domain. In all of the cases the Respondents were given the opportunity to have the determinations published anonymously but elected for no publication.

The Committee is satisfied that disciplinary processes had been properly followed in these cases and that appropriate reference was made within its Annual Report. Without citing any reference you refer to the “negligent and/or improper” operation by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries of 2 out of 6 Disciplinary Tribunal Panel cases during 2020/2021 which the IFoA lost and had costs totalling £69,000 awarded against them.” You also refer to “reprehensible behaviour” and poor behaviour. ” Again you have not cited any reference to this.

As with any public interest Regulator not all cases brought will result in findings of misconduct. That does not mean the Regulator has been negligent or has acted improperly in its investigation of the matter. Where potential conduct issues are accepted for investigation the decision on whether or not the conduct in question amounts to misconduct is taken by judicial panels which are independent of the investigation process. It is an example of the fairness and independence of the judicial decision making process that a Regulator is sometimes unsuccessful and that costs may be awarded against it.

Question Two

I disagree with your comments. The Board received regular process updates on the progression of cases and copies of all determinations were provided and scrutinised by the Board.

It is incorrect to say that the IFoA lost 3 cases. The cases were dismissed but there is no evidence that the IFoA acted negligently or improperly. As I pointed out earlier not all cases brought by public interest regulators will be successful.

Question Three

The Disciplinary Committee recognises the principles in its oversight role so I do not accept the premise of your question.

Question Four

The Disciplinary Committee will continue with its independent oversight of the disciplinary process in a manner that is consistent with the Nolan principles. Following the governance changes set out below in answer to Question 5 it will report to the Regulatory Board on its oversight work and the Disciplinary Committee will continue to publish an annual report.

Question Five

The change in name from the Disciplinary Board to the Disciplinary Committee arose as a consequence of governance changes approved by Council, and it became a Committee reporting to the Regulatory Board, which is now structured to be independent from Council. There was no change in membership. By early next year the Committee’s membership will have a lay majority.

Your e mail and this response have been shared with all members of the Committee.

Yours sincerely

[Name]

Chair of the Disciplinary Committee

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries is breaking its Member Pledge: where are the results of the 2020 Member Satisfaction Survey?

The IFoA’s Member Pledge page says:

Measuring the IFoA’s performance

Each year the IFoA measures how satisfied its members are through an independently administered survey. This provides a measure of member satisfaction and engagement, which is then published.

The 2020 Member Satisfaction survey ended over a year ago. Isn’t the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries breaking its member pledge by still not having published the results of that survey?

They have asked members to complete a new (2021) survey, telling them that their opinions are important. But how can members and the public trust this, when the IFoA has broken its commitment to publish the results of the previous survey?

It seems likely that the results of the 2020 survey were not to the IFoA’s liking. Maybe, but if so, then not publishing the results is just another instance of the IFoA’s “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” hypocrisy, is it not?

Open letter to the IFoA Disciplinary Committee: do you agree that the Disciplinary Board violated the Nolan Principles? Will you abide by them?