Monica Allanach

Allanach's father died when she was four,^[2] and she was brought up by her widowed mother.^[2] She was educated at Wimbledon High School from 1931–1938.^[2][3] She was good at mathematics at school, and her teachers suggested that she become an actuary.^[4]

Allanach joined the Prudential Assurance Company in 1938 as an actuarial trainee.^[5] She qualified as an actuary in 1951.^[2] Women had been permitted to gain membership of the Institute of Actuaries for thirty years, but by 1951, less than one dozen women had become fully qualified.^[2] Allanach was moved to the male salary scale at Prudential in 1960, several years before the company introduced a single, non-gendered salary scale.^[5] She was appointed as the Deputy Actuary at the Prudential Assurance Company in 1970, thus becoming the first woman to reach management level at the company.^[5][6] In 1974 she was promoted to Actuary (UK),^[7][8] and held that position until her retirement in 1981.^[2]

She became a member of the council of the Institute of Actuaries in 1968, the first woman to be elected to the council.^[2][9][10] She was its honorary secretary from 1972 to 1974^[11] and its vice-president from 1976 to 1979.^[2][12][13]

In 1977, Allanach was appointed by the Secretary of State for Trade, Edmund Dell, to his panel of insurance advisers.^[2][14][15] She retired from the panel in 1980.^[16]

In 1954 she and Pat Merriman and others began a series of informal meetings, such as tea-parties or wine and cheese parties, for the small minority of women in the profession,^[2][17] from which developed the Lady Actuaries Dining Club (LADS).^[2] LADS was wound up in 2011, by which time the Institute of Actuaries had its first woman president, Jane Curtis.^[18]

• Allanach, Monica (May 1982). "Women Actuaries in the UK" (PDF). The Actuary. 16 (5): 4–5. Retrieved 15 November 2019.

Allanach's writing, including a 1964 paper 'The treatment of expenses in the calculation of ordinary branch premiums', was required reading for exams at the Institute of Actuaries.^[2] In 2015, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries held a Monica Allanach lecture.^[19]

Allanach was a member of the Friends of the Girls' Public Day School Trust, serving as its Honorary Treasurer from 1962–1972.^[2][3] She lived near Wimbledon, and had a keen interest in tennis.^[2][5] She did not marry, and believed that she would not have been promoted to senior positions had she done so.^[4] In July 1981, she was made a Freeman of the City of London.^[2]