Presentation

Actuarial Consulting Services form the heart of our risk management activity and are OPTIMIND’s reference business. OPTIMIND’s actuaries, all members of the Institut des Actuaires, represent one of the largest concentrations of skills in actuarial consulting  services on the French market.

On behalf of insurance companies, OPTIMIND takes care of all possible actuarial issues. From product pricing to stochastic modelling of insurance assets and liabilities, OPTIMIND’s actuarial consulting services use a communication-based approach: an actuary, specialised in quantitative risk management, is also a project manager who has to be able to communicate with ease.

For insurance firms, OPTIMIND carries out consulting assignments for personal insurance, savings, retirement, contingency funds, health, property & casualty insurance and finance. The main focuses are:

• Valuation of liabilities, planning of regimes, asset/liability management
• Technical funding, inventories and technical accounting
• Product pricing, design and modelling
• Behavioural analysis, experience tables
• Project management: information system, organisation, risk strategy
• Prudential, fiscal and accounting regulations

OPTIMIND’s actuarial consulting services can be summed up by high-level professional expertise combined with formal methodology.

Areas of intervention

• Accomplishment and assistance with inventory processes
  • Company inventories: steering, assistance, development of calculation and/or control tools, verification of coherency
  • Calculations of technical provisions
  • Statutory statements
• Quantified responses to planning requirements
  • Simulation & stochastic modelling of liabilities
  • Embedded Value EEV / MCEV, economic capital
• Database steering & operation
  • Elaboration & modelling of statistics
  • Assistance in managing data organisation projects
  • Implementation and operation of data warehouses
• Pricing and actuarial elaboration of products
  • Life insurance, contingency funds, health and retirement
• Standards & regulations
  • Insurance & tax codes
  • Solvency II / IFRS: implementation of changes in regulations

Case studies

Case study 1: stochastic modelling

Assignment

• Study and stochastic modelling of a portfolio of accidental death insurance

Objectives

• Carry out a prospective survey to determine the evolution of the product’s technical result depending on different hypotheses
• Analyse historical mortality and create a stochastic model of the mortality of the insured parties
• Stochastic simulations and summary of distributions obtained, analysis of quantiles

Results

• Distribution of product portfolio value
• Modelling of historical mortality: experience table
• Analysis of catastrophic scenarios
• Deliverables: survey report and associated simulation software

Case study 2: inventory work

Assignment

• Actuarial assistance in inventory work
• Rationalisation of calculations of technical provisions

Objectives

• Enable the insurer’s teams to carry out inventory work in given timeframes
• Provide external expertise on the calculation of certain provisions
• Document and organise technical closing procedures
• Automate the calculation of complex technical provisions

Results

• Inventory made in the given timeframes
• SAS and Excel/VBA tool to calculate technical provisions valid for several products
• Documentary base on inventory methodologies
• Recommendations concerning organisation of inventory work

Case study 3: solvency II and in-house models

Assignment

• Provide assistance and consulting services within the framework of the Solvency II directive

Objectives

• Monitor regulations of the draft standard and train up technical teams
• Provide assistance in carrying out specific Solvency II work
• Opportunity surveys on the Embedded Value / Solvency II / IFRS modelling

Results

• Full training cycle achieved: standard, ERM and in-house models
• Assistance in QIS and verification before sending to the ACAM (insurance and mutual fund inspection body)
• Actuarial report on the impact of the in-house model compared to the standard formula

Recommendations concerning the target “Risk” organisation