Pricing, Python and personal lines: Sam Baker's take on the GIRO Conference

I thoroughly enjoyed last week’s IFoA GIRO Conference 2025 in Liverpool, along with the rest of our general insurance actuarial team. These events are always a great opportunity to catch up with everyone in my network, especially those who are largely remote or rarely in the City. Here are my thoughts from the conference.

Python key to pricing

It was really interesting to discuss how everyone within the personal lines market is looking to drive technological changes, and the extent to which Python is being integrated into their pricing approaches.

As a relatively easy programming language to learn that can handle almost any data analysis task, Python remains crucial to actuarial professionals. Our Actuarial UK Skills and Workplace Attitudes Survey revealed that Python is the number one upskilling priority for actuaries in order to do their roles, selected by 37.9% of respondents. As handling large datasets and managing pricing strategies become increasingly important for insurers, we’d expect this to continue.

We’re seeing a really interesting debate between those fully investing in machine learning and looking to move end-to-end pricing to Python, and those who are looking to maximise the capabilities of traditional software, considering the benefits of conducting pricing transformations to be lesser than the resources needed to make them happen.

Personal lines uncertain

The landscape of the personal lines market has been uncertain with the large mergers and acquisitions this year, leading to hesitation to hire. However, there seems to be more confidence heading into Q1.

Most recruitment in personal lines is happening around the junior management level. As businesses focus on developing their risk pricing capabilities, there’s demand for actuaries with experience in building gradient boosting machines (GBMs), as well as a push for portfolio management or portfolio pricing experience. It will be interesting to see whether this continues as we enter the new year.

Get in touch with us

Nothing gives you quite the same feel for what’s going on in the industry as meeting with hundreds of actuarial professionals, many of whom we’d never met before in person. Many thanks to everyone who took the trouble to stop by and talk to us. If you’d like to talk about hiring an actuary for your team, are on the lookout for your next actuarial role, or want to request a copy of our Actuarial UK Skills and Workplace Attitudes Survey, please get in contact with me.