Then at the end of the day, she discovered she was giving a speech at a public event. The professor who organized her seminar was asked to appear on TV. On the last day of class, Miller was surprised to find that her class had become hot business news in Uganda. Miller’s whippet, Lucy, in her winning run when she won the American Sighthound Field Association’s Best in International Invitational in April 2013. It’s really cheap, but the benefits are really minimal.” However, in the next three to five years, insurance limits will increase dramatically, and companies will be allowed to set their own rates. While auto insurance is required in the country, Miller says, “It’s like a sticker that you buy to stick on your car. Much of the buzz in class centered on sweeping changes to auto insurance in Uganda - changes that could provide new opportunities for actuaries. When she met her students, Miller discovered that some had travelled from as far away as Kenya to attend the seminar.
“And on the reserving side, how to tell what your ultimate costs are going to be, not just what’s been reported so far.” “My idea was to provide some really practical training on how to figure out whether you’re collecting the right amount of money on the ratemaking side,” she says. She was there to teach a three-day seminar on ratemaking and reserving to college graduates who were working for insurance companies and starting the exam process. The unpaved streets of Kampala were coated in red dust and motorcycle taxis zoomed around the roundabouts as Miller toured the capital city. She left the spring of Nashville behind and embarked on a two-day journey to reach Uganda, where the dry season was just ending. In March, Miller volunteered for Actuaries Without Borders, a section of the International Actuarial Association that provides training for actuaries and actuarial technicians in countries where the profession is just getting off the ground. The seminar was conducted by Actuaries Without Borders and The Actuarial Association of Uganda. It all grew from there.” Postcard from Uganda Students from the three-day seminar in Kampala, Uganda. “Then I started to get involved internationally for the CAS. “I really fell in love with the city,” Miller says.
But what began as a series of business trips turned into a romance. “If there was a risk you could write in the ’80s and ’90s that was bound to lose money, and a lot of it,” she recalls, “they would write it.” One of Miller’s clients suffered huge product liability losses in the bankruptcy, and she began traveling to London several times a year to resolve the financial issues. In the early 1990s she began working on the liquidation of a consortium of small insurance companies in London that had gone bankrupt. It was actuarial work that turned Miller into an international traveler. We get to touch a lot of different things that way.” With clients ranging from hospitals dealing with medical malpractice claims to the school district pool of the state of Colorado, Miller explains, “We’re a little bit of a niche player. “Our clients tend to be Fortune 1000 companies that only buy insurance for catastrophes,” says Miller. She cofounded Select Actuarial Services in 1999 and continues to work there as a senior consulting actuary, specializing in risk management consulting. Photo courtesy of Mary Frances Miller.Īt home, Miller cheers on the Nashville Predators hockey team at every home game and races sighthounds, counting two whippets, two Salukis and a greyhound as part of the family. Miller visits Thailand’s Erawan Museum in Samut Prakan.
And in March 2015, her volunteer trips to Uganda, Malaysia and Thailand yielded not just a few more stamps in her passport, but a batch of fresh insights on emerging markets as well. Along the way, she has gained a front row seat to global trends in the business.
Mary Frances Miller has visited more than 30 countries, many while working or volunteering as an actuary. She has snacked on fried crickets in Mexico, haggled over silk in India and reviewed Emperor Qin’s terra cotta troops in China. Traveling is a truly symbiotic relationship for Mary Frances Miller: She imparts her knowledge and gains new found wisdom through the course of her journeys.