Life

OUR LIFE TEAM excels in each of the three distinct roles of valuation actuary, financial actuary, and marketing actuary.

VALUATION ACTUARY
Responsible for seeing that the organization retains sufficient assets in reserve to give reasonable assurance that future obligations to policyholders can be met. By performing this function, the valuation actuary is responsible not only to the organization’s board of directors and senior management, but also to the organization’s regulators and ultimately, its policyholders. Regulators refer to this actuary as the Appointed Actuary, and in a sense, this actuary is a “referee” who makes sure that the insurance organization follows the rules established by insurance laws and regulations.

  • Statutory, tax, and GAAP reserves    
  • Monthly, quarterly, and annual valuations    
  • “X factor” testing to support lower deficiency reserves       
  • Audit support (internal or external)   
  • State exam support (risk focused exams)    
  • Cash flow testing (multi-scenario)   
  • Independent actuarial review and opinions  

FINANCIAL ACTUARY
Helps an organization achieve its financial objectives by monitoring the various programs the organization pursues and recommending the allocation of resources to those programs most likely to succeed. Financial actuaries are exclusively responsible to the organization’s owners, and seek to maximize the organization’s value. For fraternal benefit societies, value is also meant to include membership growth to sustain viability. The financial actuary is also referred to as the corporate actuary, and oftentimes assumes the role of chief risk officer of the organization.

  • Risk based capital – beyond regulatory scrutiny, is your surplus working for you?
  • Enterprise risk management – what risks may be lurking that have yet to be identified or quantified?           
  • ROI – are you meeting your return objectives?        
  • Value added – is your organization worth more today than a year ago?     
  • Actuarial appraisals and due diligence         
  • Budgeting and forecasting    
  • Reinsurance solutions          
  • Strategic planning     

MARKETING ACTUARY
Considers the reserve requirements of the valuation actuary, the economic requirements of the financial actuary, the realities of the market, and strives to design marketing programs that will add value to the organization. This role includes more than just product development. It starts with a clear understanding of the organization’s market, competition, and distribution system. Products that balance value to the policyholder, compensation to the producer, and profits to the organization generally have the best chance of being sold and remaining in force, hence adding the most value to the organization. Although this role is closely aligned with management, insurance regulations require an Illustration Actuary to certify that consumers are protected by allowing only supportable illustrations of non-guaranteed elements.

  • Pricing and profit testing to balance objectives       
  • Competitive analysis
  • Compensation analysis        
  • In force profitability analysis
  • Dividend review and revisions          
  • Monitoring actual versus expected experience        
    • Mortality studies (Monte Carlo simulation)
    • Persistency studies
    • Expense studies
    • Investment strategies