Open-Source Tools R: Extending the Toolbox of the Actuary

Einleitung/Dauer

Over the last few years, typical data science tasks like data manipulation and modelling have gained a stronger foothold in the day-to-day professional life of the actuary. Open-source languages are renowned to be especially equipped to deal with these kinds of tasks, but can also be tricky to get started with, especially without a proper introduction. This workshop offers the opportunity to become more familiar with the open-source environment and its applications, illustrated in detail by means of several hands-on modules, thereby enabling the actuary to tackle the data science tasks in an elegant manner.

Open-source tools like R, Python and more recently Julia have gained a lot of momentum in recent years, not just in popularity but also in the amount of contributed code. Their respective communities are nowadays no longer exclusively composed of academic researchers and scientists, but also of professionals of all sorts of backgrounds, especially since the industry and corporate world have understood the added value of ‘community driven software’ and started to plug open-source tools into their processes and corporate tissue.

On top of this, actuaries are confronted with the same issues as academic researchers and scientists: the production of readable, shareable and reproducible code and results. This workshop will only focus on the 'scientific stack' of R.

This session is Part 1 of the full series 'Open-Source Tools R & Python: Extending the Toolbox of the Actuary', scheduled for 23/24/30 November and 1 December 2026, from 8:30 to 13:00 CET and may also be attended as an independent part of the series. The sessions on 23 and 24 November will cover R, while the sessions on 30 November and 1 December will cover Python. The training fee for the full series already includes a 10% discount. You can book the full series here.

Preliminary Programme

Monday, 23 November 2026
08:30-10:00 R Basics
10:00-10:15 Break
10:15-11:45 Importing and manipulating your data in R
11:45-12:00 Break
12:00-13:00 Showing (off) your work: how to visualize and report in R

Tuesday, 24 November 2026
08:30-10:00 Actuarial applications
10:00-10:15 Break
10:15-11:45 Exercise session in R
11:45-12:00 Break
12:00-13:00 Exercise session in R

All the above times are given in CET (Central European Time).

Vorgehensweise und Ziele

The goal of this two-day training is to introduce the participants to the R open-source ecosystem and to give them a good understanding of this language. However, since this ecosystem is way too vast to be covered in merely two days, the participants will be asked to go through the basics of this language themselves, prior to the web session. During the first web session of this language, these basics which will be shortly revised, but at a higher pace. The course material, containing the basics of this language, will be provided by the organizers several weeks before the beginning of the web session, such that the participants will have plenty of time to go through the material at her/his ease.

As such, less time needs to be spent on the basic elements of R, thereby enabling us to organize the following hands-on exercise session to more easily assimilate the course material. Note that the participants need to bring along a laptop on which R is installed. Instructions on how to do so will be provided by the organizers at the same time as the course material of R basics, hence several weeks in advance.

As a result, a jump-start on how to truly use this language in practice will be provided to the participants, by focusing on solutions for problems that they will surely regularly encounter in their day-to-day job, by handing over lots of links to online resources and very rich course material and by even organizing hands-on exercise sessions.

Teilnehmer

This training is suited for all actuaries who like to broaden their existing IT toolset. Basic knowledge regarding data analysis and/or development of actuarial tools is useful yet not required.

Attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop computer with R installed (*). One can install R from https://www.r-project.org/. As the editor we’ll be using ‘RStudio’, which can be installed from https://posit.co/.

(*) prior to the training, we will supply the participants with an exhaustive list of packages/libraries that need to be installed additionally to the above tools, as well as a description of how to install them.

Technical Requirements
Please check with your IT department if your firewall and computer settings support web session participation (the programme Zoom will be used for this online training). Please also make sure to join the web session with a stable internet connection.

Dozierende

Robin Van Oirbeek
Robin Van Oirbeek, after having worked as a statistical/actuarial consultant for different companies and as an invited lecturer at UCLouvain and UAntwerp, is now working as a Senior Data Scientist at Ageas Re. He uses R and Python, amongst others, on a daily basis and this for almost 20 years now.

Sprache/Kurztitel

The language of the web session will be English.

CPD Credits
For this web session, the following CPD credits are available under the CPD scheme of the relevant national actuarial association:

• Austria: 8 points
• Belgium: 8 points
• Bulgaria: 8 points
• Croatia: individual accreditation
• Czechia: 8 hours
• Denmark: 8 credits
• Estonia: 8 hours
• Finland: 6 points
• France: 48 points
• Germany:  8 hours
• Greece: 11 points
• Hungary: 8 hours
• Iceland: 8 credits
• Ireland: 8 hours
• Italy: individual accreditation
• Latvia: 8 hours
• Lithuania: 8 hours
• Netherlands:  approx. 8 points (individual accreditation)
• Norway: 8 points
• Poland: 8 hours
• Portugal: 8 hours
• Serbia: 5 hours
• Slovakia:  individual accreditation
• Slovenia:  individual accreditation
• Spain: CAC: 8 hours, IAE: 8 hours
• Switzerland:  individual accreditation
• USA: SOA (Section B): up to 9.6 hours

No responsibility is taken for the accuracy of this information.