Actuarial Product Specialist

Momentum Corporate, Cape Town, South Africa
February 2023 – Present

  • Product development for the local institutional market, covering mainly with-profit funds and LDI strategies.
  • Developed robust actuarial models and analytical frameworks for the product suite, enabling informed risk assessments and data-driven decision-making. Presented insights and recommendations to governance forums.
  • Acted as Subject Matter Expert on with-profits modelling, including developing and maintaining models for: reserving for embedded options, cross-subsidy modelling, behavioural modelling, portfolio backtesting, and reporting. Includes migrating existing models from Excel/VBA to Python or Julia.
  • Acted as peer reviewer and model validator of newly developed and existing models within the team, ensuring accuracy of internal models and assisting with the improvement of identified shortcomings.
  • Automated monthly reporting processes using Python; reduced manual effort and improved auditability. Gained practical PostgreSQL and Git skills during implementation.
  • Collaborated with wider teams to evaluate business opportunities, produced compliant marketing literature, trained the wider team on product details, and resolved complex client queries.
  • Responsible for product management activities including SARB reporting, fund fact-sheet review, back-tested bonus preparation, database maintenance and ad-hoc product investigations.

Actuarial Analyst

Santam Reinsurance, Cape Town, South Africa
February 2022 – January 2023

  • Led the reinsurance pricing development team as agile Product Owner; managed the project team and backlog.
  • Acted as Subject Matter Expert regarding reinsurance pricing and translated existing models into actionable IT requirements.
  • Guided developers in understanding and debugging actuarial calculations, and ensured that the resulting outputs were accurate.
  • Engaged closely with diverse teams and management, fostering alignment, securing buy-in, and enabling informed decisions that drove meaningful change. Presented on project progress to executive management.
  • Improved existing pricing models using VBA, RMS RiskLink, and MS Access.
  • Developed an reinsurance portfolio optimisation tool using ReMetrica and Python.
  • Provided ad-hoc actuarial support for data analytics, risk management, and reserving.