Fidelis steps up call to halt actuaries merger

ACTUARIES are again being urged to reject long-standing plans for the merger of their professional bodies operating in Scotland and England.

Members of the Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland and the Institute of Actuaries have been e-mailed this week by Fidelis, the Edinburgh-based group spearheading opposition to the proposed merger. Fidelis wants a "no" vote in the 25 May poll so that its alternative plan for a "unification" can be considered.

The faculty and institute are pushing to create a single body known as the "Institute and Faculty of Actuaries". They say a new, larger organisation would have more influence and be less burdened by bureaucracy.

Fidelis says such a move would be a "needless act of professional self-destruction". It claims the merger would increase confusion about professional designations, while also eradicating the faculty, one of the world's oldest actuarial bodies. Fidelis spokesman Ronnie Sloan said getting rid of the faculty would run contrary to the trend for increasingly devolved government powers in Scotland.

He said though Fidelis supported a merging of functions between the two groups – which have effectively been moving in that direction for several years – there was no justification for the loss of the 154-year-old faculty. "It seems a folly to scrap a body which could and should continue," Sloan said.

Under the Fidelis unification plan, a slimmed-down faculty would operate within the institute, carrying out "broadly" the same functions as intended for the Scottish Board that would be created under the merger proposals. All faculty members would join the institute, which would become the sole regulatory professional body.

Fidelis said it had secured an undertaking from faculty president Ronnie Bowie that if the merger vote fails, the unification option would be one of the alternatives up for "serious discussion" at the next faculty council.