Actuarial Standards of Practice

Actuarial standards of practice are the professional expectations that guide credentialed actuaries when they use data, build models, and communicate results. Data, Risk, and Actuarial Science in Insurance highlights ASOP 23 on data quality, ASOP 41 on actuarial communications, and ASOP 56 on modeling as especially relevant to actuaries and to non-actuaries who work with actuarial data.

The source treats these standards as practical discipline rather than paperwork. Mary Pat Campbell says the data-quality standard does not require a full audit of every dataset, but it does require actuaries to understand how data can go wrong and to make reasonability checks before relying on it.

Key Claims

• Standards make actuarial work accountable when data, models, and business decisions are uncertain.
• ASOP 23 turns data quality into an explicit professional responsibility.
• ASOP 41 makes communication part of the work because model limits and data caveats must be explained.
• ASOP 56 links actuarial modeling to assumptions, controls, and model-use judgment.
• Non-actuary collaborators can work better with actuaries when they understand these expectations.
• Standards do not eliminate judgment; they structure the checks, disclosures, and reasonability tests that judgment must cover.

Connections

• Mary Pat Campbell and American Academy of Actuaries - source speaker and professional context.
• Actuarial Science and Actuarial Data Quality - field and data-use context.
• Insurance Model Regulatory Constraint - regulated use of actuarial and data-science models.
• AI Verification, Domain Expert Alignment, and Human Judgment Under AI - broader professional-review context.