Head of Actuarial Research and Development at Reinsurance Group of America

Position Overview

• An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced senior actuary to lead the research and development activities in the pricing team. Reporting to the Chief Pricing Actuary, this broad role is primarily responsible for setting and maintaining pricing basis for all key product lines as well as providing actuarial research on emerging trends. This role provides input on a wide range of life insurance risk products including mortality, disability and critical illness sold on both an individual and group basis.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and execute an efficient and effective basis development framework for RGA’s key product lines.
• Perform technical and strategic actuarial research that supports various internal clients and elevates RGA’s research capabilities externally.
• Collaborate with the In-Force Management function to understand the emerging performance of the deals on the books and recommend appropriate strategic actions.
• Collaborate with the Global Data Analytics and Global Experience Studies teams to ensure the South African office has access to appropriate tools and expertise.
• Collaborate with the regional pricing actuary to ensure basis development proposals are well considered.
• Participate in RGA’s various global research forums and collaborate with peers to ensure continuous sharing of expertise.
• Regularly derive value adding business insights from RGA’s various data sources.
• Stay abreast of market trends, products and participate in professional industry committees.
• Coordinate the South African office’s actuarial knowledge forum.
• Support the development and maintenance of the infrastructure (dashboards, scripts and data pipelines) used to monitor emerging experience.
   

Requirements

• Qualified actuary with at least 15 years of life insurance experience.
• Experience in developing pricing or valuations basis for life insurance risk products.
• A sound actuarial knowledge base in pricing and product development.
• Ability to work with large datasets using SQL, R and Python.
• Experience with data visualization systems such as Tableau and Power BI.
• Experience building automated large data pipelines for repetitive tasks.
• Experience using advanced statistical modelling techniques such as Generalised Linear Modelling
• Knowledge of risk products in the South African market.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to work simultaneously on different projects
• Strong investigative, analytical and problem-solving skills
• Flexibility and ability to adapt to a changing environment.
• Ability to lead and take ownership of the team and its deliverables.
• Innovative, proactive and improvement oriented.
• Highly advanced oral and written professional communication skills.
• Ability to liaise with individuals across a wide variety of operational, functional, and technical disciplines
• People management experience.