Society of Actuaries members are much more likely to tell the SOA about their gender than to tell the group about their race or ethnicity.
The SOA has included that finding in its first diversity report.
About 97% of the U.S. SOA members have disclosed their sex, but only 26% have disclosed their race or ethnicity, the SOA says in the new report.
The SOA found that 68.5% of its members are men and 31.5% are women.
Here's how the members who did disclose their race or ethnicity break down by race and ethnicity:
- White: 73.8%
- Asian: 19.1%
- Black: 2.7%
- Hispanic/Latino: 1.9%
- Native American, Other or Mixed: 2.5%
About 5.3% of the SOA's elected leaders and 5.2% of its volunteers are Black or Hispanic.
The SOA is a group for about 32,000 life, health and annuity actuaries.
The SOA board agreed in June 2020 to start conducting detailed membership analyses twice a year, to maintain transparency and track diversity initiatives, according to the SOA diversity report.
The SOA reports that the percentage of people who are Black or Hispanic is 27% for the entire U.S. population ages 25 and up; 24.1% for insurance industry employees; and 21.5% for people who earned bachelor's degrees in science, technology, engineering and math topics in the United States 2019.
Women
The SOA also broke out SOA member survey data for women.
Over the past five years, about 31% of the organization's elected leaders have been women, but, over the past three years, only 27% of the conference presenters have been women.
