COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group
Teams

Members

Avatar photo

Matthew Fletcher

Senior Consultant - AON

Matt has over 20 years’ consultancy experience, including over 10 years as a specialist in mortality and longevity. He works in Aon’s Demographic Horizons team, advising insurance companies and pension funds on setting best estimates and evaluating risk for longevity and other demographic assumptions, both in the UK and overseas.

Matt chairs the CMI Self-Administered Pension Schemes (SAPS) Committee, which produces mortality tables that are used extensively in the pensions and insurance industries.

Avatar photo

Stuart McDonald

Stuart is Head of Longevity and Demographic Insights at the consultancy Lane Clark & Peacock (LCP). He works across the Actuarial and Health Analytics teams, helping clients understand and manage the long-term
health and economic implications of the pandemic.

Prior to joining LCP he was responsible for demographic assumptions at Scottish Widows and previously led Munich Re’s longevity pricing team.

Stuart plays an active role within the actuarial profession, and is Deputy Chair elect of the Continuous Mortality Investigation. Early in 2020 he founded and co-chairs the COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group.

Stuart was awarded an MBE for services to Public Health in the 2022 New Year Honours.

Avatar photo

John Roberts

Independent Consultant

John is an independent consultant who has spent 37 years in the life industry, including 17 years at Canada Life and more recently 8 years at Zurich Insurance Group, where he was part of the team that established its corporate risk business, now well established in the market. Following that he was Head of the Life Pricing team at Zurich for 5 years, overseeing a wide range of wealth and protection propositions.

At Zurich he helped establish its small pension scheme longevity swap proposition, which involved setting up simultaneous reinsurance transactions to mirror the client contracts. He has most recently continued with this line of interest as a consultant, supporting Lloyds Banking Group in establishing its first longevity swap transactions.

John is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

Avatar photo

Louis Rossouw

Segment Head of Research & Analytics - Gen Re

As Head of Research and Analytics in his segment Louis Rossouw is based in Gen Re’s Cape Town office and him and his team support life insurance clients in the UK, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with research and analytics. He has previously worked on individual pricing and product development, group pricing and reserving. Louis joined Gen Re in 2001. He has also worked for two years in Gen Re’s Singapore branch as Regional Chief Actuary. He currently serves on the Actuarial Society of South Africa’s Continuous Statistical Investigation Committee.

Avatar photo

Nicola Oliver

Director of Life & Health - Medical Intelligence

Nicola is considered a leading expert in Public Health and associated Mortality, Morbidity & Longevity risk.

Areas of specialist knowledge include; public health policy, socioeconomic disparities, impact of risk behaviours on life expectancy & future infectious disease risks.

Nicola supports actuaries from many of the leading consultancies, pension & insurance companies in Europe and the US, with underwriting, annuity pricing, product development as well as internal model calibration to fulfil regulatory requirement.

She leads a small research team within Medical Intelligence and continues to regularly present her work and speak at events for and on behalf of clients and to wider public audiences.

Prior to co-founding Medical Intelligence in 2007, Nicola worked for the NHS for 19 years specialising in Public Health, this followed many years in senior roles in Intensive Care Nursing and Paediatrics.

Nicola trained as a nurse and subsequently studied at Homerton College University of Cambridge, graduating with a PgDip in Neonatal Special and Intensive Care followed up with a BSc (Hons) in Public Health (Specialist Community).

Nicola has also studied Epidemiology with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Statistics.

Avatar photo

Matthew Edwards

Actuary & Director - Willis Towers Watson

Matthew Edwards is an actuary working at Willis Towers Watson, where he leads the life insurance practice’s demographic risk work, focusing on mortality, longevity and associated analytics.

He has a particular interest in the interface between actuarial work and medical science.

Before his (circa) twenty years at Willis Towers Watson (via legacy Watsons and Towers Watson), he worked for Aviva, including several years in Italy, and for the Actuarial Education Company tutoring life and mortality courses.

He is Chair of the CMI, Editor of the IFoA’s Longevity Bulletin and chaired the profession’s Antibiotic Resistance Working Party.

Avatar photo

Adele Groyer

Research and Analytics Actuary - Gen Re

Adele Groyer is a Research and Analytics Actuary at Gen Re. She was previously responsible for the UK and Ireland pricing team, conducting general research and producing client-specific quotations for Life, Disability, Long Term Care and Critical Illness business. She is a member of the CMI Assurances Committee. Before joining Gen Re in 2008, she worked for Old Mutual in South Africa. Adele holds a Bachelor of Business Science degree from the University of Cape Town and became a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in 2005.

Avatar photo

Dan Ryan

Chief Science Officer - COIOS Research

Dan is an epidemiologist and digital demographer with 25 years experience in the insurance industry.

He led global multi-disciplinary research teams at Swiss Re and Willis Towers Watson in diverse areas including forward-looking risk models, behavioural science and the rapid development of digital ecosystems that will transform how insurance is distributed and how risk is assessed, managed and mitigated.

Dan is an internationally recognised expert on demographic trends, emerging insurance risks and digital innovation. He pioneered the concept of disease-based models of mortality using electronic health records and was a key contributor to the development of the Pandemic Emergency Facility with the Institute of Medicine, WHO and World Bank.

Dan has an MA in Medical Sciences from Cambridge University and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University. He is currently engaged in a DHealth at the University of Bath that is examining the role of medication adherence in improving the management of hypertension in stroke.

Avatar photo

Gordon Woo

Catastrophist - Risk Management Solutions

Dr. Gordon Woo is an architect of the RMS LifeRisks pandemic risk model, which was developed in 2006, at the time of the H5N1 avian flu crisis.

He has contributed widely to the IFoA literature on pandemics, including writing an actuarial perspective on pandemics for the special pandemics edition of the 2015 longevity bulletin, and an article on the age-dependence of the 1918 pandemic.

His IFoA talk on extreme pandemic scenarios in September 2016 included an alternative more transmissible version of MERS, which has similarities with COVID-19.

Trained at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, he is a visiting professor at UCL, and a visiting professor at NTU, Singapore.

Avatar photo

Joseph Lu

Director of Longevity Science - Legal & General

Joseph Lu leads a multidisciplinary team of experts to research mortality and longevity risks of international populations. He works for Legal & General, one of the UK's leading annuity providers.

His work is relevant to insurance products such as annuities, life protection, lifetime mortgage and pension de-risking solutions such as Pensions Buyouts and Buy-ins as well as Longevity risk solutions.

He is active in research & development with the Actuarial Profession which includes being the co-author of 2 prize-winning papers ‘Longevity in the 21st Century’ and ‘Two Dimensional Mortality Data: Patterns and Projections’ presented to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

He has been voted Life Actuary of the Year by the actuarial community through the Actuarial Post.

He has been working with the Longevity Science Panel, bringing together experts from various disciplines to understand the implication of scientific development on longevity.

Avatar photo

Josephine Robertson

Health & Care Actuary

Josephine Robertson is a Health and Care actuary with keen interest in the interplay of demographic risk, public health, policy, health systems and insurance industry.

Working with pension schemes, insurers and reinsurers, Josephine has experience in the ongoing management of demographic risk, including longevity, mortality, and morbidity. Josephine applies this expertise, alongside public health knowledge, when working in the public interest on the provision and sustainability of universal health coverage.

Josephine has a MA in Economics, a Master of Public Health, is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary.

She is an active volunteer within the actuarial profession including the COVID-19 Action Taskforce, professional education process and the Population Health Management research working party.

Avatar photo

Adrian Baskir

Chief Commercial Actuary
Bupa Insurance

Adrian has over 30 years experience in the insurance industry with over 20 years’ experience specifically in health insurance. He has worked at Bupa for over 9 years and has been in his current role since 2019 having previously been Chief Actuary in International Markets. He previously held senior roles at Old Mutual both in South Africa and UK.

He has been very active within the actuarial profession where he is currently Chair of the International Actuarial Association Health Section (IAAHS) and a Member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) Health & Care Board. He was President of the Actuarial Society of South Africa in 2006/7 and also served 3 years on the IFOA Council.

Adrian obtained his B Bus Sci (Hons) degree from the University of Cape Town in 1985 and qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1991. He moved from South Africa to the UK in 2009 and lives and works in London.

Avatar photo

Adrian Pinington

Director - TSAP Consulting

Adrian is an actuary and director of TSAP Consulting, providing support to the Life Assurance sector.

His career includes direct insurance, reinsurance and consultancy. TSAP has a particular focus on database applications needed for mortality. morbidity and longevity, Adrian co-ordinates a specialist team focusing on software and risk management with an emphasis on experience analysis, longevity swap administration and data transformations. TSAP’s EASui and PAXmin systems are highly regarded industry standards for Experience Analysis and Longevity Swap administration. He is a regular contributor and speaker at industry forums, helping decision makers to understand the narrative that data is revealing so that better-informed decisions are made.

Prior to founding TSAP in 2005, Adrian headed up reinsurance pricing operations for Revios, Life and Group Risk technical pricing terms for Swiss Re and Group Risk management for Southern Life.

Adrian studied to become an actuary at UCT in South Africa where he qualified as an FIA. During the early 1990’s he was at the forefront of research into Life Office implications of the HIV epidemic.

In 2008, working with a team of industry colleagues, he demonstrated how causes of mortality were signalling a marked slow-down for mortality improvements within 5 years.

Avatar photo

Andrew Gaches

Partner, Head of Longevity - Hymans Robertson

Andrew has 25 years consulting experience, advising pension funds, insurers and reinsurers, and leads Hymans Robertson’s award-winning longevity services for insurance clients.

His expertise was central to the establishment of Club Vita and he now focuses on guiding clients through the process of recognising, quantifying and managing the longevity risk they face.

Andrew is a regular speaker at conferences, has written articles and authored papers on longevity, and is a long standing member of CMI committees and working parties.

Avatar photo

Tan Suee Chieh

President - Institute & Faculty of Actuaries

Tan Suee Chieh is the President of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

Suee Chieh has been a senior leader in a variety of organisations, and his focus has been on innovation and transformational change.

Past roles include Group CEO of NTUC social enterprises (cooperatives), CEO Executive of NTUC Income, President Asia Pacific of the SHL Group Ltd, a British psychological assessment firm, and Regional MD, CEO and actuarial roles in Prudential plc in UK and Asia.

Suee Chieh has a number of qualifications and interests spanning actuarial science, psychology, philosophy, governance and organisational transformation.

His awards include “Outstanding CEO of the Year 2012”; “Lifetime Achievement Award" from Institute of Advertising Singapore (2012) ; Outstanding Young Malaysian of the Year 1987” ; and
“Leader of Tomorrow” award in Malaysia (1976).

Avatar photo

Stephen Kramer

Emerging Risks Research Lead - Swiss Re Institute

Stephen researches Emerging Risks for the Swiss Re Institute focusing on Life & Health issues. He is a mathematical demographer. His work in infectious diseases began when he joined Metropolitan Life in South Africa at a time when HIV-related mortality was growing rapidly. Modelling was essential to understanding the risk and he developed what ultimately became the Actuarial Society models, based on some earlier model concepts. They were sufficiently robust for use in insurance pricing but were then further developed to give insights into social questions such as HIV-related orphanhood, and the costs of an HIV treatment program, for the country.

In late 2005 Swiss Re approached him about their need for a pandemic flu model, and he joined Swiss Re in 2006. The model was built, described and after a protracted approval process by the Swiss regulator, adopted as Swiss Re's mortality shock model.

When the Catalyst Unit was set up, he rejoined Swiss Re, moving to Underwriting and then Swiss Re Institute.

Recent projects include the Bio-innovation Risk Reduction Initiative, work with Public Sector Initiatives on a World Bank feasibility study assessing the use of data and models to target funds & eliminate the risk of famine, behaviour modification to minimize exposure to ambient air pollution, and now of course, the fast moving pandemic of coronavirus.

Follow us

Don't be shy, get in touch. We love meeting interesting people and making new friends.

Most popular