European Actuarial Services - Ernst & Young - United Kingdom

Ernst & Young's Global Actuarial Services practice, with over 650 actuarial professionals, ranks in the Top 3 actuarial services practices in the world. In Europe we have over 300 actuarial professionals across 17 countries. By partnering with other practices across Ernst & Young, we aim to provide truly integrated services across all disciplines in the Insurance and Financial Services industries. Through our deep knowledge of the global insurance industry, local regulatory requirements and our understanding of the industry, we have built a strong reputation as a leading actuarial and insurance advisor.

Our areas of focus include:

Employee benefits

Audit
We provide assurance on valuation and accounting treatment for pension plans and other long-term employee benefits plans under local, international or US accounting standards. This may include review of balance sheet as well as review of the income statement on an annual or a quarterly basis. We also assess processes used in the classification or valuation of such plans.

Advisory
We advise our clients on design, valuation and reporting issues related to their employee’s compensation package, including pension, health and equity compensation benefits. Our target is to optimize the benefit delivery by focusing on the management of financial and accounting costs and risks while achieving the business objectives.

Transactions
We assist both corporate and private equity organizations to identify and understand the costs and risks inherent to a given transaction, whether it is from the sell side or the buy side. We also provide post-merger integration assistance with the objective of minimising disruption to the business.

Insurance

Asset Management
We support insurance companies with the management of their assets. From an actuarial perspective, the focus of this advice is on asset valuation methodologies, asset-liability modeling techniques and the tools needed in the ALM field (such as ESG's and replicating portfolio generators).

Capital and Risk
We advise our insurance clients on emerging quantitative risk and capital management techniques, and help them to design and implement Enterprise Risk Management frameworks. These techniques are needed for internal management reporting, meeting regulatory requirements such as Solvency II, and rating agency and external disclosure purposes.

Financial Reporting
We help our insurance clients in understanding and implementing new financial reporting requirements (including IFRS and Embedded Values), in close partnership with our accounting advisory and audit teams.

Growth
We advise our insurance clients on strategies for enhancement of new business profit, either through improved margin or premium growth. This includes advice on improvements to the pricing and underwriting processes, as well as strategies for organic growth through product innovation or entry into new markets.

Reserving and Audit
We advise our insurance clients on reserving issues, with a focus on technical provisions. This includes providing assurance on a number of additional disclosures such as embedded values, as well as providing external actuarial peer review or regulatory actuarial certification.

Transactions
We provide actuarial advice and valuation services for insurance transactions, including M&A's (buy and sell side), capital restructuring, demutualization and post-merger integration. We also provide advice to insurance clients on the purchase of P&C run-off companies and defined benefit pension schemes.

Transformation
We develop and implement strategies for improving the effectiveness of the back-office actuarial functions, through process redesign, outsourcing and shared services. We support the transformation of accounting systems and processes in partnership with our accounting advisory teams.

We have identified and developed solutions that assist our clients to meet their actuarial needs. Our insurance offering includes the following current focus areas: