In this joint Insurance Institute of London (IIL) event with CISI, Lord King and Professor Kay examine the uncertainty that pervades big decisions we all make in our lives.

How much should we pay into our pensions each month? Should we take regular exercise? Expand the business? Change our strategy? Enter a trade agreement? Take an expensive holiday?

We do not know what the future will hold, but we must make decisions anyway. So we crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have. But humans are successful because they have adapted to an environment that they understand only imperfectly. Throughout history we have developed a variety of ways to coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives.

Lord (Mervyn) King, former Governor of the Bank of England, and Professor John Kay, two of the world’s most eminent economists, have spent their professional lives considering and discussing these themes.

In an incisive and eye-opening new book drawing on biography, history, mathematics, economics and philosophy they highlight the most successful – and most short-sighted – methods of dealing with an unknowable future.

By the end of this lecture members would have gained an insight into:

• a greater understanding of the role of uncertainty in finance
• why the prevalent method of prediction falls short
• why it results in giving us a false understanding of our power to make predictions, leading to many of the problems we experience today

Chair:
George Littlejohn MCSI, Senior Advisor, CISI