NEWS RELEASE

November 21, 2025

New IAA Paper Highlighting the Role of Actuaries in Pandemic Risk Assessment

The International Actuarial Association (IAA) is pleased to announce the publication of the paper Implications of COVID-19: Data and Modelling a Pandemic, developed by the IAA’s Pandemics Task Force.

The paper examines key lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis and explores how actuaries can contribute to better data collection, modelling, and decision-making in future pandemics.

A pandemic can create a global health and economic emergency, requiring rapid, evidence-based responses. This paper highlights how the quality, consistency, and coordination of data are critical to supporting effective action by governments, public health authorities, insurers, and other stakeholders. It also emphasizes the importance of robust models that can provide reliable assessments of risk and guide decision-making under uncertainty.

Actuaries, with their expertise in data analysis, risk modelling, and scenario testing, are well positioned to enhance the understanding and management of pandemics and related risks. The paper identifies specific areas where actuaries can add value — from helping design and interpret models to providing independent review, developing scenario analyses, and supporting sound model governance in line with practice standards.

Among the key lessons from COVID-19 is the importance of preparedness — both in ensuring data is available and suitable for analysis and in identifying how actuaries can contribute during future crises. The paper encourages actuaries and their professional associations to strengthen collaboration networks and engage in research and model development, even in non-crisis periods, to improve readiness for the next pandemic.

This publication is intended for actuaries, supervisors, insurance industry professionals, epidemiologists, and public health experts, and aims to promote greater collaboration and professionalism in pandemic data and modelling.

This activity advances the IAA’s mission and strategic objectives, to provide key supranational institutions with actuarial expertise on issues of relevance in global forums and to promote the advancement of scientific knowledge and skills of the actuarial profession.

To learn more about the work of the IAA on this topic, contact the Director of Technical Activities at the IAA Secretariat.

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The IAA is the worldwide association of professional actuarial associations, representing over 90,000 actuaries in more than 115 countries, with six special interest Sections for individual actuaries. The IAA was founded in 1895 and exists to encourage the development of a global actuarial profession, acknowledged as technically competent and professionally reliable, which will ensure that the public interest is served. The IAA has 74 Full Member Associations and 23 Associate Member Associations.

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