We are finishing our 17^th year as Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, although we’ve played a major role in the profession much longer with our predecessor organizations. In fact, eight of our actuarial professionals worked together for more than 20 years, and have made countless material contributions to the growth and success of Pinnacle’s clients and our profession.

In 2018, the NCAA introduced a new tool to help evaluate and select teams for its annual NCAA tournament, March Madness. The NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) and metric was designed as a way to rank NCAA basketball teams using various criteria such as strength of schedule and quality of wins or losses (akin to rating variables). It replaced the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) that the NCAA had used for almost 40 years.

Two industries not typically associated with innovation are insurance and agriculture. Today, it’s an inaccurate perception. Agriculture is perhaps the world’s original story of innovation. For millennia, agriculture’s history has been one of resourcefulness, and finding ways to grow food through every form of peril, from pests to drought. The modern agricultural industry, agribusiness, has continued that story of innovation with new products and novel approaches that save water, reduce crop disease and increase crop yields. Farmers are even relying on technological advancements like drones, robots and gene editing in their operations.

On Pinnacle’s September 2019 APEX webinar, “Digging Into the Modeling Lifecycle,” we discussed the importance of understanding all of the steps involved in the modeling lifecycle—far beyond simple model construction. That includes understanding the business question, anticipating the potential constraints of implementation, and staying ahead of model usage from a change management perspective. Management of those issues are among the most critical contributors to the model’s best chance for success.

This past May I was able to attend the SAS Global Forum in Dallas, Texas. Like many in our industry, I work in SAS software every day. SAS is considered by some an industry standard data and analytics application. I was grateful to be able to attend the sessions in Dallas alongside thousands of other users, and learn so much more about SAS software tools and approaches.