Presentation

Corporate actuarial services are one of OPTIMIND’s reference skills. OPTIMIND 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 companies, OPTMIND takes care of all possible actuarial issues regarding partnership liabilities, retirement and contingency plans or financial management.

For companies, OPTMIND focuses on three main skills’ areas:

• Assessment of social commitments
• Audits of retirement, contingency, health and save-as-you-earn schemes
• Financial optimisation

Areas of intervention

Our work mainly involves the following topics:

• Assessment of social commitments
  • Assessment and reporting of social commitments according to applicable accounting standards: French, IFRS/IAS, US-GAAP, etc.
  • Merger and acquisition operations – due diligence: identification and quantification of schemes that may have an impact on transaction prices
  • Co-ordination of international projects: setting up methodology for accounting consolidation, definition and control of assessments made for subsidiaries, harmonization of reporting methods
• Audits of retirement, contingency, health and save-as-you-earn schemes
  • Writing of catalogues of available tools and market practices
  • Analysis of existing contracts: study of guarantees, of pricing, of results and how they fit in with the company’s and employees’ expectations
  • Implementation, modification and optimisation of schemes: definition of guarantee and pricing objectives, driving bids
  • Harmonisation of schemes in the event of company mergers
  • Participation in negotiations with social partners and organisation of information to employees
• Financial optimisation
  • Analysis of assets/liabilities enabling investment policies to be defined in order to finance a company’s partnership liabilities and to restrict the volatility of its income statement and its balance sheet
  • Improvement of performances and diversification of risks

Case studies

Case study 1: Actuarial assessment of liabilities

Assignment

• Identification and assessment of the social commitments of a group in the clothing sector

Objectives

• Identify the commitments to be assessed
• Determine internal and external hypotheses: rate of turnover, discount rate, mortality tables, etc.
• Review and validate documents used as a basis for assessments: stability of data from one financial year to another, data consistency, etc.
• Provide assistance in implementing data extraction tools
• Assess commitments per employee, analyse awareness of the hypotheses, write accounting appendices required by the IAS19 standard

Results

• Identification of the cost of each scheme and its future development
• Assignment report certified by OPTIMIND
• IAS19 accounting treatment

Case study 2: Actuarial audit of a health plan

Assignment

• Improve health expense cover and control the budget of a group in the IT sector

Objectives

• Analyse existing contracts: compulsory/optional, technical results, statistics
• Improve cover in accordance with employees’ expectations and the group’s financial constraints
• Write and monitor bids
• Present the surveys and results to social partners
• Take part in writing new contracts

Results

• Improvement of cover considered important by employees
• Lower annual contributions
• Assignment report certified by OPTIMIND
• New contracts accepted by social partners

Case study 3: Analysis of financial performances

Assignment

• Independent analysis for the management of save-as-you-earn funds for a listed company

Objectives

• Build and analyse portfolio and benchmark risk indicators
• Analyse the evolution of allowances in the sector and diversification of lines
• Calculate the over/under performance of the level of risk taken

Results

• Verification of management constraints set down in the mandate
• Detailed analysis of the financial management in the period studied
• Presentation to the Works Council