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Words by CEPAR Chief Investigator Professor Michael Sherris
It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Professor Ermanno Pitacco, after a short illness. Ermanno was an Associate Investigator and an active supporter of CEPAR since its early days. He regularly visited and presented at our Longevity Risk Workshops and was looking forward to his upcoming visit in November. He and his wife, Carla, who also only recently passed away, loved to visit Sydney, and enjoyed staying at Coogee and interacting with the actuarial research group at CEPAR.
He was past Professor of Actuarial Mathematics at the University of Trieste and the Academic Director of the Master’s in Insurance & Risk Management Program at the MIB Trieste School of Management. Ermanno was very active in research, teaching, and the actuarial profession. He was an internationally recognised actuary, particularly for his work on life and health insurance, and his academic involvement included his role as an editor of the European Actuarial Academy series (Springer), co-editor of the “European Actuarial Journal”, and associate editor of the international journals: "Insurance: Mathematics & Economics”, “Decisions in Economics and Finance”, “Insurance Markets and Companies: Analyses and Actuarial Computations”. In the actuarial profession Ermanno was a member of the Groupe Consultatif Actuariel Europeen, and, with the International Actuarial Association (IAA), he was a member of the Education Committee, a member of the Mortality Working Group, and a member of the IAA Health Section Committee. His research won many prizes including the 1996 INA Prize for Actuarial Mathematics, from Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and the 2011 Bob Alting von Geusau Memorial Prize, together with Annamaria Olivieri, for the best paper published in the ASTIN Bulletin on an AFIR (Actuarial Approach for Financial Risks) related topic.
I came to know Ermanno well over the years, through his visits to UNSW as well as from both of us serving on the IAA AFIR Section Board and the Mortality Working Group and regularly meeting up at the IAA meetings. He was not only a colleague but a friend to many here at UNSW and internationally. He will be missed.
Image: Ermanno Pitacco at the CEPAR Public Lecture, in 2012