Auditor Networking Experience

Sona Sefcikova attended her first insurance networking and educational conference two months after she started her audit career at JLK Rosenberger. We take insurance industry exposure and training seriously—even our youngest auditors can speak the language of the insurance clients they serve. Read about her experience below:

“The day started with two consecutive lectures about STAT Update. The lecturer, Connie Jasper Woodroof, was knowledgeable and managed to deliver countless updates to the annual statement in 100 minutes. Honestly, as a first-year hire in the insurance audit group, it was hard to follow this very technical presentation, but I came away with a better idea of what our clients are faced with in preparing their annual statements.

A panel discussion I attended about insuring cannabis is very relevant in California today. One of the panelists, Camille Dixon, is the director of Cannabis Insurance Policy Initiatives and the Low-Cost Auto Insurance program at the California Department of Insurance. In 2017, Insurance Business Magazine named her an Elite Woman of the Year.

In the afternoon, I had to make a choice of whether to attend a finance session devoted to GAAP update or the non-finance one regarding catastrophic events. My mind was telling me to prioritize the accounting profession and attend the GAAP update. However, the speaker for catastrophic events, Patrick Owens, is currently the National Catastrophe Claims Manager for Property and Auto for Farmers Insurance and has been in the insurance industry for over 20 years. Even though the length of these lectures was great in regards to staying focused, in this case, I wished his presentation was longer.

Loss reserving was my favorite presentation from the whole conference. By using a very simple example of a track-and-field competition, the presenters explained the basic methods of predicting losses so even people with no mathematics degree could get a better understanding of the complex actuarial science when the actuaries apply rigorous mathematics to model matters of uncertainty.”