Roseanne Harris

Immediate Past President, International Actuarial Association

Roseanne Harris served as President of the International Actuarial Association in 2021. In 2022, she serves as an Officer of the IAA as Immediate Past President, Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee, member of the Executive Committee, and Vice-Chair of the Nominations Committee. Since 2014 she has been a member of the Health, Education and Social Security Committees. From 2018 to 2020 Roseanne served on the Executive Committee. She served as Council delegate for the Actuarial Society of South Africa for 2016 and 2017.

Roseanne was born in Cardiff in the UK in June 1971 and moved to Johannesburg, South Africa with her family in 1976. She was educated in South Africa and has an honours degree in actuarial science from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Roseanne started her career with the Southern Life Association in 1993 and was seconded to their health division initially under Amalgamated Medical Administrators and later as part of a joint venture with United Healthcare from the USA.

She completed her qualification as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1996 and simultaneously become a Fellow of the Actuarial Society of South Africa.

In 1997 she set out as an independent consulting actuary and built a practice working in healthcare, employee benefits (pensions) and general actuarial consulting. She also joined the University of the Witwatersrand as part-time staff in 1998 and is currently an adjunct professor in the School of Statistics and Actuarial Science.

As an independent consultant as well as through her role in the health committee of the Actuarial Society of South Africa, Roseanne was involved in policy and regulatory developments in South Africa relating to health and social security. She also worked on the development of the South African actuarial education framework with particular focus on health practice.

Roseanne has presented numerous papers and presentations at various actuarial events locally and globally on topics including on topics including managed care, HIV impacts on medical schemes and retirement funds, medical scheme solvency, making healthcare accessible to the poor and cost indexation. She has made presentations to the International Actuarial Association Health Section events on topics including the indexation of prices for medical services, expanding access to health insurance to the poor and the impact of fitness activities on healthcare claims costs. Her role at the University of the Witwatersrand includes postgraduate teaching and research supervision.

Roseanne has held a number of leadership roles in the Actuarial Society of South Africa including chair of the health committee from 2001 to 2005, president from 2016 to 2017 and chair of the education committee from 2018 to 2020. Roseanne is also principal examiner for health and care principles and course leader for health fellowship.

From June 2017 Roseanne has taken up a position with Discovery Health as Health Policy Actuary which entails providing actuarial input to regulatory processes and supporting strategic responses and engagements with industry stakeholders. This role enables her to continue with her activities in education as she has a keen interest in supporting development of the profession and also assisting students in building their careers. During her presidency of the Actuarial Society of South Africa she made transformation of the profession a key focus and introduced programmes to provide additional support to black actuarial students.

Roseanne lives in Johannesburg with her husband, Noel. She is the proud mother of two daughters, and her eldest is also an actuary.