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Principles for Actuarial Spreadsheet Design with Mary Pat Campbell
Spreadsheets are one of the largest workhorses in actuarial work and business work in general, but few of us have serious, rigorous training in their use and design. Various bodies have developed lists of best practices for spreadsheets, but these best practices lists are often developed for accountants and financial analysts, and do not necessarily fit with actuarial needs.
This session will cover high-level principles of spreadsheet design with a special focus on actuarial needs and issues, as well as specific practical implementation tips.
Specific topics to be covered include:
- Considering why one should (or should not) do certain things, not only how.
- How to structure the flow of information through your spreadsheet together with appropriate documentation
- Building spreadsheets with future changes in mind
- Why using the INDEX/MATCH combination is preferable to VLOOKUP
- Considerations on the use of Named Ranges
About Your Instructor
Mary Pat Campbell, FSA, MAAA, PRM
Mary Pat Campbell, is Vice President of Insurance Research at Conning in Hartford, Connecticut. In the past, she also taught courses on computing (Excel, Access, and VBA) and business writing for actuarial science students at the University of Connecticut. Mary Pat has had a long interest in spreadsheet best practices in actuarial work, writing for SOA publications on the topic since 2007. She has also spoken for SOA webcasts and at meetings on spreadsheet issues, such as at the 2015 SOA Annual Meeting: "Session 30: How to Keep Your Spreadsheets Out of the Headlines". Over the past two years, she has written a series of 5 articles on data visualization for CompAct, the newsletter of the SOA Technology Section. She is a member of the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group and on the SOA Modeling Section Council (2015 - 2018).