Why Actuaries Who Aspire to Become Leaders Need to Have a Point of View (w/Jessica Leong, CEO Octagram)

If you are an actuary or lead actuaries or data scientists in your organization, this is episode is for you!

Jessica Leong is the CEO of Octagram, a consultancy that brings together a deep knowledge of commercial insurance and data analytics to drive results. Octagram focuses on pricing for P&C carriers, making sure that insurers getting value out of data analytics and AI.

Jessica says building AI models isn't that hard, it's just about math and coding. But learning new behaviors, changing ways of working and driving value for the organization is much harder. She has been exploring how to measure and replicate successes in making part of the organization successful.

Jessica expresses that having a point of view as a leader is what brought her from contributing team member to team leader. She focused solely on the business problem whether such as improved premium, reduced loss and expense ratios to drive a successful team, unlike most carriers who let their actuaries and data scientists build models. Then it's down to the company's leadership to decide whether they value solving problems more than shiny models, and the durational patience over years to measure success and failure and turn those into learnings.

Jessica previously led Data & Analytics at Zurich North America and was also President of the Casualty Actuarial Society serving over 9,000 members. There she understood how actuaries were reserving and helping point the development of the actuarial profession to solving business problems. 

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