Tutor Biographies

Steven Baxter

Steven is a Partner and Longevity Consultant at Hymans Robertson. He spent the first eight years of his career with Hewitt before joining Club Vita in October 2007. Having spent the early part of his career working with a wide variety of private sector clients, Steven now balances his time between leading the development of longevity analytics within Club Vita and providing advice to a wide variety of pension schemes, insurers and banks on managing longevity risk.

Steven is a regular speaker at professional conferences and led the Sessional Meeting of the Institute of Actuaries on the subject of applying a minimum level of improvements to mortality projections.

Matthias Boerger

Matthias Boerger is a Researcher in the field of mortality modelling and the management and securitization of longevity risk at Ulm University. He also works as an Actuarial Consultant for the IFA Ulm where he applies his research results in practice. He holds a diploma degree in actuarial mathematics from Ulm University and is currently studying towards a PhD degree. His scientific work has earned him membership of the German Society for Actuarial and Financial Mathematics and his current paper has been awarded by the German Society of Actuaries.

David Epstein

David Epstein is an Executive Director in the Pension ALM Advisory team at JPMorgan, responsible for strategic risk management and asset-liability management for corporates and financial institutions. Most recently, he has focused on longevity and mortality modelling and risk management, working on the launch and roll-out of LifeMetrics. David holds a DPhil in applied mathematics from Oxford University and is a visiting research fellow in the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He has published a wide range of articles in academic and industry journals and has contributed to books by Risk, Euromoney and Wiley.

Soren Fiig Jarner

Soren Fiig Jarner is Chief Analyst in the Quantitative Research Unit at The Danish Labour Market Supplementary Pension Fund (ATP). The unit is responsible for the design of ALM-policies and has been involved in the development of risk measures, strategic investment policy, bonus policy, pension products and mortality models. ATP has received numerous international awards based on this work, including the Risk Award 2006 for best pension fund and the IPE Award 2005 for best European pension fund. Soren Fiig Jarner holds an M.Sc. degree in Statistics from University of Copenhagen (1998) and a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from Lancaster University (2002).

Farzana Ismail

Farzana is a Consulting Actuary with the London office of Milliman. She joined the firm in 2004. Farzana has provided consultancy services to a range of multi-national clients across Europe and the US.

In the past few years, Farzana has been involved in the area of longevity risk and insured annuity transfers. Previous industry experience includes advising sellers of blocks of annuities, reviewing mortality projection models and reviewing the longevity basis and illustrative payouts on several longevity risk securitisation structures for major investment banks in the UK and Europe.

Joseph Lu

Joseph Lu is the Mortality Risk Actuary at Legal & General, involved in the management of longevity risks of annuity businesses. He has been active in the research and development of longevity risk management in the industry with the following organisations:

  • Life and Longevity Market Association (LLMA)
  • CMI Mortality Projection Working Party (2009)
  • Mortality Research Working Group of The Board for Actuarial Standards (2008)
  • Research committee of 4th Society of Actuaries' Living to 100 Symposium 2011 in the USA
  • Committee to develop a new basis for individual annuity valuation 2010, Society of Actuaries (USA)

Philip Simpson

Philip is a Principal and Consulting Actuary in the London office of Milliman.

Philip specialises in life insurance. His consulting assignments include longevity, mergers and acquisitions, company reconstructions, new company launches, product design, pricing and financial reporting. In the last few years he has run a wide range of longevity projects. These include advising buyers and sellers of longevity risk on pricing and structures as well as working with a wide range of clients developing and implementing capital market solutions for longevity risk.

Prior to being a consultant, Philip was a professional reinsurer for 12 years.

Tiziana Torri

Tiziana Torri, Ph.D., wrote her doctoral dissertation from the title “Assessment and Transfer of the Longevity Risk: new methods and applications” with the main focus of her work being mortality forecasting with applications on the insurance market. Her research is reported in Torri and Vignoli, Genus, 2007, Levantesi and Torri in New Frontiers in Insurance and Bank Risk management, 2009 and Menzietti, Levantesi and Torri in Pension Fund Risk Management: Financial and Actuarial Modeling, 2010.