Actuary Expert Witnesses
Actuarial judgments underlie the reserves of insurers, the funding of pension plans, the pricing of insurance and benefit products, and the valuation of long-tail liabilities, so they frequently become the subject of high-value disputes. Reinsurance arbitrations, insurance company acquisitions, pension funding and withdrawal liability cases, and regulatory proceedings over rates and reserves all depend on assumptions about future claims, mortality, investment returns, and policyholder behavior. Disputes also arise when an earnout, purchase price adjustment, or indemnity turns on actuarial estimates of liabilities assumed in a transaction. Because those estimates rely on judgment as much as calculation, sophisticated parties often reach materially different conclusions from the same data.
An actuarial expert helps attorneys test whether assumptions, methods, and conclusions were reasonable when made and consistent with professional standards. The expert can evaluate reserving and pricing methodologies, experience studies, mortality and morbidity assumptions, discount rates, and the treatment of uncertainty, measuring them against the Actuarial Standards of Practice and regulatory requirements. In transactional and reinsurance disputes, the expert can determine whether reported liabilities were fairly stated and whether later developments were foreseeable. That analysis supports liability and causation arguments and allows the expert to quantify damages based on properly calculated liabilities rather than hindsight.
Actuarial testimony carries weight when it comes from credentialed actuaries who have signed opinions and defended them before regulators, auditors, and boards. Round Table Group can introduce Fellows of the Society of Actuaries and the Casualty Actuarial Society, members of the American Academy of Actuaries, and former chief actuaries, including professionals whose careers involved major insurers, consulting firms such as Milliman, and agencies such as the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. That experience allows an expert to explain to a tribunal how actuarial judgment works and where it was exercised reasonably or not. Our more than 75,000 expert searches for litigators help us match the right actuarial specialty, whether life, health, property and casualty, or pension, to your matter. We invite you to discuss your case by calling us at (202) 908-4500.
