Following the Morris review of the UK actuarial profession (2005), the FRC became responsible for technical actuarial standards (“TASs”), professional matters remaining controlled by the actuarial profession. A previous TAS regime was implemented from July 2017, the target being the delivery of appropriate advice as opposed to being about regulations.

That regime has been updated with the Framework Reliability Objective being incorporated into the glossary of TAS 100 (General Actuarial Standards, version 2 published in March 2023) and with TAS 300 (Pensions, version 2, published in December 2023) also updated.

As before, two points are particularly interesting.

First, the reliability objective still requires transparency of assumptions together with the communication of any inherent uncertainty.

Secondly, provision 2.3 of the updated TAS 300 still requires that actuarial communications shall explain comparisons between the discount rates used (or proposed) against the expected assets return according to the stated investment strategy, including any anticipated changes in that strategy.

How can scalar assumptions or results comply with the above?