Such biases might exist because Academy members work for employers and clients with interests in how some issues the group reports on play out, he contends.

Kenneth Kent, vice chair for the Academy's Council on Professionalism and a former chair of the joint committee on the Code of Professional Conduct, disagrees.

When actuaries volunteer to work on behalf of the Academy, they leave their employers' interests at the door–putting the interests of the Academy first, and building Academy analyses and recommendations around a consensus view, he said, explaining why the Academy won't change the wording or disclose member business affiliations.

“We work on a committee basis and a consensus basis,” he said, adding that when the Academy puts forth a position, it is approved by committee, not by any single individual.

Beyond that, he said members take their obligations to adhere to the Academy's conflict-of-interest policy seriously. In fact, he reported there are times when a committee member “may back off” or even leave the room if the committee is working on an issue that directly involves the member's employer or client.

Coaxed to share examples based on his own committee experiences, Mr. Kent, a pension actuary who has served as vice president of the Academy Pension Practice Council, said that when the Academy is called upon to provide clarification of news events, such as those related to pension issues at United Airlines, actuaries having client relationships with United excuse themselves.

Likewise, there are members of the Academy who are actuaries at the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corp., he said, noting that when the Academy is asked to report on PGBC reports, it does so, although “certain care and approaches [are taken to] make sure that we're not in conflict.”

Mr. Kent also said that all information about business affiliations is available to anyone seeking it. “We publish committee members in our yearbook and on our Web site,” he noted, adding that exceptions might be ad hoc task forces that sometimes don't make it into the yearbook because they don't last more than a year.

The Web site also has a directory allowing visitors to identify members' employers. “Nothing is intended to be hidden or avoided,” said Mr. Kent, who is listed as a pension actuary for Cheiron, a McLean, Va.-based consultancy.

But a list of members wasn't available for a TRIA subgroup that issued a Dec. 1 statement recommending “permanent federal legislation to make terrorism coverage widely and readily available,” according to Mr. Hunter. “I called the [Academy] press office and they could only come up with two names. It took two days to get a full list, and they put it on the Web site some time later.”

Even in instances where member names are available on the Web site, “I don't think senators and staffers ought to have to do that kind of research. It's a burden,” said Mr. Hunter, who for months has been a vocal critic of what he considers a public subsidy provided by TRIA.

The unwillingness of Academy members to comply with his repeated requests for disclosure prompted Mr. Hunter to take matters into his own hands. On Dec. 13, he sent a letter to four members of Congress, Treasury Secretary John Snow and Alesssandro Iuppa, president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, with an attached list of TRIA subgroup members and business affiliations. The letter also stated his belief that the Academy's analysis of TRIA was not independent.

“This has been going on since last February,” he told NU, explaining a 21-page fax of copies of 12 back-and-forth correspondences with Academy officials that he forwarded to NU's offices a few days after sending his December letter to lawmakers. Disclosure is “simply the right thing to do,” he urged Academy executives in the letters.

In his first letter last February, Mr. Hunter expressed particular concern about a medical malpractice committee that reports to Congress. “Ninety percent of the members of that committee either work for medical malpractice companies or have such companies as [consulting] clients,” Mr. Hunter told NU. “So if you're getting a consensus among them, what have you really got?” he added, attacking the notion that a consensus view obviates the need for full and immediate disclosure.

Mr. Hunter noted that the chair of the TRIA subgroup works for a large commercial insurer that was on the record as seeking a particular outcome with respect to extension. Lawmakers ought to know that so they can judge for themselves whether an individual who works for the insurer for 364 days and on the committee for one day can put forth an objective analysis, he said.

Mr. Kent said “all major employers understand that members are expected to wear a different hat when they work on the committee than they do when they work for an employer. They also know the Academy is not a means for them to publicize contributions to volunteer efforts.”

While Mr. Hunter argues that one or two members typically set the tone of volunteer committees, Mr. Kent believes the Academy delivers independent analysis through consensus, “and if that cannot be achieved, we may turn around and say this is something we can't answer. We would prefer to do that” when the membership says there are far too many conflicting answers to a question–”and that membership includes government actuaries or actuaries on both sides of an issue.”

Alternatively, “we may comment demonstrating the various different views,” he said, noting that this was the case when the Academy tried to come up with a recommendation on pension funding reform two years ago. “We got so many different views that we ended up with a 60-page paper on principles rather than specific reforms,” he added.

“These are not closed committees,” he said, noting that committees often put their questions out to a broader audience of actuaries for additional input.

Mr. Kent told NU that the Council on Professionalism recently reviewed and edited the Academy's guidelines for issuing public statements, noting that recommended changes are now being reviewed by the Academy Executive Committee. However, none of the changes relate “to a mandate to disclose business affiliations, he said, “because we feel strongly that…we want [committee members] to be standing on their own without a business affiliation.”