Earlier this year, ACOPA members voted and approved the revised Joint Discipline Council (JDC) agreement with the other U.S.-based actuarial organizations. So, now we are working on getting the American Retirement Association (ARA) discipline procedures amended to reflect the new JDC agreement. There is an ARA Board meeting this weekend in Nashville at which Judy Miller will be presenting the following to the ARA Board for its approval:
- Separate, new discipline procedures for actuaries – These procedures outline when an actuary will go through the JDC process and when an actuary will go through the ACOPA process. This document was approved by the ACOPA Leadership Council (LC) earlier this month.
- ARA discipline procedures for non-actuaries – These procedures are the existing ARA procedures with references to the handling of complaints regarding actuaries removed.
- A request that the ARA board delegate to the ACOPA LC the authority to amend the actuarial disciplinary procedures in the future – Since we cannot foresee all of the possibilities that might necessitate a change to the actuarial disciplinary procedures or predict what future changes will be made to the JDC agreement, we believe it is most expedient and appropriate that the ACOPA LC have the authority to approve changes instead of going back to the ARA Board each time.
We are optimistic (but cannot guarantee) that the ARA board will approve this. We have already laid some groundwork by involving ARA staff and sharing the proposed modifications with the head of ARA’s professionalism committee, Sue Perry. So, while we are anticipating some discussion, we are not expecting there to be an issue.
Once the ARA board approves these changes, there will be one more membership vote either before or as part of ACOPA’s annual elections. When the vote is scheduled, we will provide membership with the new discipline procedures for actuaries and the conforming changes in the ACOPA operating principles so that members can review these documents before the vote.
The ACOPA LC is looking forward to completing the disciplinary procedures project so that we can work on other important projects for ACOPA’s membership. We will let you know how the vote at the ARA Board goes!
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