Robert Berendsen is a partner in the Toronto, Ontario office of Oliver Wyman. He has over 25 years of experience in the life insurance industry. He provides senior level actuarial advice primarily to insurers, reinsurers, investment banks and law firms.
Robert has experience in many aspects of life insurer financial management, including pricing, valuation, financial reporting, risk and capital adequacy assessments, risk management and business securitizations and appraisals.
Robert's professional experience includes:
- Performing appraisals of life insurance businesses
- Supporting expert witness testimony in cases involving insurance business appraisals and variable annuity class actions
- Assisting insurers to design, implement and embed an enterprise risk management (ERM) or economic capital (ECap) framework
- Helping life insurers improve the asset liability management (ALM) or hedging of their more complex lines of business, including universal life and variable annuities
- Building, directing the building of, reviewing and using models for life insurance businesses, and particularly for variable annuity products with investment guarantees – including economic scenario generation, fund mapping, setting policyholder behavior assumptions, related hedging strategies, etc – in support of the product development, pricing, risk management, performance measurement, hedge strategy development and assessment, etc.
- Supporting insurers’ submissions to obtain approval from Canadian insurance regulators to use internal models for capital determination purposes, and to obtain credit/recognition for hedge programs in regulatory capital requirements
- Performing peer reviews of insurance valuation and risk models and of risk management frameworks more broadly
Prior to joining Oliver Wyman, he was Director, Asset Liability Management at Metropolitan Life Canada, responsible for developing, implementing and monitoring the company’s asset liability management strategies.
Robert is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.