Employee Benefits Courses and Certificates

Bruce D. Schobel has been an independent consulting actuary since retiring from full-time employment in 2012 after over two decades as vice president and actuary of New York Life Insurance Company. Before that, he was a principal of William M. Mercer, Inc., an actuarial consulting firm. From 1979-88, Schobel was with the U.S. Social Security Administration in various actuarial and policy-development positions, including senior policy advisor to the commissioner of Social Security and staff actuary to the National Commission on Social Security Reform (the “Greenspan Commission”). He was assigned to assist the House Committee on Ways and Means during the drafting of the Social Security Amendments of 1983. A frequent speaker and writer on tax and Social Security issues, Schobel’s papers and articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Policy Review, The Journal of International Taxation and numerous actuarial publications. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Schobel is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, a Chartered Life Underwriter®, a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist® (CEBS®) and a Founding Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He served on the board of directors of the Society of Actuaries during 2001-10, including as president during 2007-08. He has also served on the boards of directors of the American Academy of Actuaries and the Conference of Consulting Actuaries. For more than a decade, he chaired the Social Security Committee of the American Council of Life Insurers. He remains active in the Social Security field, writing a regular column for the Journal of Financial Service Professionals and speaking at various meetings and seminars. He is currently serving his third three-year term on the council of the Society of Actuaries’ Social Insurance and Public Finance Section. He also serves as a Trustee of the Winter Garden Police and Firefighters Pension Board, appointed by the city commission.