Advisory Board meeting, 10/23/2012: Eric Weibel, Brett Horoff, Loren Nickel, Richard Manship and Ben Flores.

Advisory Board meeting, 4/26/2013: Sitting: Tom Terry, Richard Manship, Janet Duncan and Raya Feldman
Standing: Ian Duncan, Gerald Lalande, John Xu, Loren Nickel, Will Kane and Brett Horoff.

Amy Yao, FSA, MAAA 

Vice President and Chief Actuary, Blue Shield of California

Amy Yao serves as Vice President of Actuarial Department and Chief Actuary, where she manages the pricing and risk adjustment process for all lines of business (individual, small and large employer groups, Medicare, dental/vision/life, and stop-loss), reserves and trend developments, financial forecasting, rating model development, as well as provider network trend and analytics. Her team uses actuarial analytics to provide actionable insight which informs and influences business strategy, as well to improve the predictability of business performance. It is this improved predictability that helps to support Blue Shield’s mission to provide Californians access to high quality healthcare at an affordable price. 

Prior to Joining Blue Shield in 2006, Amy spent 12 years with PacifiCare in various leadership roles, including Vice President of Medicare Pricing and Director of Large Group & Enterprise Wide Pricing. Amy has also worked for Milliman & Robertson, Pacific Mutual, and Aetna Life & Health Plans.

Amy has a Masters of Applied Mathematics from the University of Connecticut and a Bachelor of Computer Science from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA).

Brett Horoff '91, ASA,ACAS, MAAA 

Principal & Consulting Actuary, Perr & Knight, Santa Monica.

Brett Horoff is a Principal & Consulting Actuary with Perr & Knight. Brett is responsible for the overall management of Perr & Knight's consulting practice, which includes Actuarial, Competitive Intelligence, Data Services, Insurance Technology and Regulatory Compliance. He has extensive ratemaking and reserving experience on a wide range of personal and commercial lines insurance products. In addition, he has also provided reserve, funding, cost allocation, equity allocation, retention level and captive feasibility studies to many captive insurance companies and self-insured public and private entities.

Prior to joining Perr & Knight's Santa Monica, California office in 1997, his previous employment included Advanced Risk Management Techniques, Inc. (An Aon Company), the Auto Club of Southern California and 21st Century Insurance Group. His actuarial experience includes personal auto (preferred and non-standard), motorcycle, boats including personal watercraft, homeowners, personal umbrellas, commercial auto, general liability, workers compensation, auto and motorcycle warranty, professional liability, medical malpractice, directors & officers and many other product lines. Brett has provided property & casualty actuarial services to insurance and reinsurance companies, captive insurers and self-insurers since 1992.

Brett graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Economics in 1991. He has since become an Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society, an Associate of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Cary Franklin '75, FSA, EA, MAAA 

Actuary & Managing Consultant, Horizon Actuarial Services LLC

Cary Franklin is one of the three principals of Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC. He is a senior consulting actuary and the managing consultant of the Los Angeles office. Cary has over 30 years of experience consulting with multiemployer and single-employer plans, including pension, 401(k), and retiree medical plans. His experience ranges from plan administration to actuarial cost projections to compliance issues to labor negotiations. Cary is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars, such as with the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans (IFEBP), and he has authored several papers on actuarial issues. He served as the chairman of the IFEBP's Actuaries and Consultants Committee for 2005. Cary is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and an Enrolled Actuary under ERISA.

Casey Hahn ’12, FSA, EA

Senior Associate, Fidelity Investments

Casey Hahn currently works in San Francisco as an actuary for Fidelity Investments in the Benefits Consulting / Retirement Practice. Him and his team provide actuarial services, research, and analysis for 401(k) and Defined Benefit Plans. Prior to Fidelity Investments, Casey worked for Willis Towers Watson in San Francisco from 2012 – 2017.

Casey grew up in Santa Barbara and graduated from UCSB in 2012 with a B.S. in Actuarial Science. He is an Enrolled Actuary (EA) and Fellow in the Society of Actuaries (FSA).

Diane Amarante '92, FSA, MAAA

Regional Vice President & Actuary, UnitedHealth Group, Trumbull, CT.

Eric Weibel '94, RPLU

Founding President, Alta Financial & Insurance Services, San Jose.

Eric Weibel founded Alta in 2008, focusing his brokerage on new economy insurance products covering patent infringement, cyber risk, content and media liability, E&O, and other professional liability exposures. In addition to brokering these products, Eric develops and helps to manage insurance products. Presently he is working on a new patent insurance product that may help with today's patent troll problem. He is also in the process of developing a commercial automobile program. He will also be working soon on a research project being funded with a prestigious grant from the Casualty Actuarial Society. 

Eric is a published actuary. His paper, Territory Analysis with Mixed Models and Clustering was published in the Casualty Actuarial Society's 2008 Discussion Paper Program on Predictive Modeling. Eric also recently published an article on patent insurance for the IP section of the California bar association in its periodical New Matter. Prior to Alta, Eric was a founder, Vice President, and Chief Actuary at Cabrillo General Insurance Agency of San Diego. He served as product manager at Tower Hill Insurance Group, and also was Arrowhead General Insurance Agency's first commercial actuary. He began his career as an actuarial trainee at ICW Group. He worked as a statistician in the corporate quality department of a large silicon valley software company on breaks from college. Eric has a degree in Statistical Sciences from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and did graduate work at San Diego State University. He is also a Registered Professional Liability Underwriter (RPLU).

James Xia, FCAS, CFA

Associate VP, Personal Line Product Analytics, Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, OH

Jinjie Duan, FCAS

Head of Claims Actuarial & Advanced Analytics, Farmers Insurance Exchange, Woodland Hills

Jinjie Duan serves as Head of Claims Actuarial & Advanced Analytics, where he is building a best-in-class team that provides actuarial analyses, advanced analytics, and predictive modeling to the Claims organization within Farmers Insurance. His team, consisting of data scientists, actuaries, application developers, business analysts and project managers, supports the Claims Department in optimizing Claims handling and operations by building models using machine learning techniques, assessing technical offerings of the vendor solutions, and providing catastrophe claim counts and paid loss projections. Jinjie's more than 11-year career with Farmers Insurance Group began as an Actuarial Assistant in Product Management and has grown to the current position he holds today.

Jinjie has a Bachelor of Science in Material Science and Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, and Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS). 

John Alltop ’88, FCAS, MAAA

Chief Actuary, CSAC Excess Insurance Authority , Folsom, CA

John Alltop is the Chief Actuary at the CSAC Excess Insurance Authority.  John has 29 years of experience in the actuarial field, primarily in the casualty area.  John brings extensive knowledge of insurance, underwriting, and claims operations to his work. He is a past member of the Casualty Actuarial Society Reinsurance and Ratemaking Committees and is a current member of the Reserving Committee.

Before joining the EIA, John spent five years at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, two years at CalFarm Insurance Company and 15 years as the president of Bickmore’s Actuarial and Risk Management Consulting practices.  Prior to his actuarial career, John wrote targeting software for the Navy’s first digital imaging Sidewinder missile.

John has a B.S. in Mathematics from UCSB and is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Joshua Taub '04, FCAS

Vice President, Product & Pricing, Swyfft NY

Instructor for CAS exams 5 & 8, The Infinite Actuary

Josh Taub graduated from UCSB in 2004 with a BA in Math/Economics and a BS in Statistics with an emphasis in Actuarial Science. Josh worked at the UCSB Economic Forecast Project between 2002-2004 to gain his initial work experience in using Microsoft Office (Excel/Powerpoint/VBA) and making statistical forecasts. After working as an actuarial intern at Farmers Insurance in the summer of 2003, he worked full-time for Farmers between 2004 and 2012 in various actuarial and product roles in Homeowners insurance, claims, and Commercial insurance. Since 2013, Josh has taught over 3,500 actuarial students basic & advanced insurance pricing and basic reserving in his role with The Infinite Actuary.  At Swyfft, he is using innovative data sources and proprietary analytics to provide accurate rates only based on a property address. Josh obtained his FCAS designation in 2008 from the Casualty Actuarial Society.

 Larry Stern, FSA, MAAA

President, Canterbury Consulting, LLC, Charlotte, NC

Larry Stern is the President at Canterbury Consulting, LLC, Charlotte, NC, working as a consulting actuary and reinsurance intermediary for last 17 years. He is primarily involved with annuity and life insurance products. Larry is a very strong volunteer for the SOA; he chaired number of SOA committees. Larry also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of CFMAR (Center for Mathematics and Actuarial Research at UCSB).

Loren Nickel '96, FCAS, MAAA

Director, Business Risk and Insurance, Google Inc., Mountain View, CA

Loren Nickel is a Director at Google and leads the business risk and insurance team. Nickel is responsible for leading the team that provides risk advisory, captive management, insurance placement, and analytical support to Google teams.

Loren has nineteen years of experience in the risk and insurance industry, including fifteen years as an actuary and four years as an underwriting manager with Aon and Fireman's Fund Insurance Company. The underwriting role has presented him with a unique position of seeing the impact of actuarial analysis on a range of business professionals. He has been called on to explain in-depth actuarial and underwriting concepts to a variety of audiences including CEO's, CFO's, Executive/Managing Directors and Risk Managers.

He is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and Charterholder of the CFA Institute. Loren is 2011 Business Insurance - Innovation of the Year Award Recipient.

 Michael Adams ’12, ASA, MAAA

Actuarial Associate (Enterprise Risk Management), Hannover Re, Orlando FL and NYC

Michael received his B.S. in Actuarial Science from UCSB in 2012 and his ASA designation in 2016.  He has experience at Hannover Re and Odyssey Re, in both roles building and maintaining books of Accident & Health reinsurance business specializing in Employer Stop Loss, Medical Excess, Managed Care, and ACO Aggregate covers.  Out of school he worked as an actuarial analyst at Milliman.

 Ryan Purcell '12, FCAS, MAAA

Senior Actuary, Kaiser Permanente.

Ryan Purcell is a Senior Actuary at Kaiser Permanente. Ryan works in the Corporate Risk Management department and is responsible for reserving and actuarial analysis for Kaiser’s workers’ compensation and medical malpractice self-insurance programs. He also works on capital adequacy models for Kaiser’s captive insurance companies.

Ryan graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science in 2012. He is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS).

Stephen Underhill '97, FCAS

Vice President & Senior Risk Economics Manager, Marsh & McLennan Companies.

Stephen Underhill is currently a Vice President & Senior Risk Economics Manager, Marsh & McLennan Companies. In his current role, he supports Claims where he is responsible for improving the actuarial reserving function, managing Claims predictive modeling projects and improving Claims performance metrics. In his 15-year actuarial career, he has been responsible for pricing multiple personal and commercial lines of business within property/casualty insurance along with experience in Reserving, Price Governance and Claims. Steve has also worked abroad within the Allianz Group having spent two years each in the German and Australian Allianz subsidiaries where he performed pricing, predictive modeling and reserving functions. 

Steve is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS). He holds a B.A. in business economics and a B.S. in statistics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Timothy Wilder, FSA, MAAA

Principal and Consulting Actuary, Milliman, San Diego.

Tim is a principal with the San Diego office of Milliman. He joined the firm in 2001. Tim specializes in helping clients assess the risks and financial implications associated with their healthcare products, reimbursement systems, and risk-sharing arrangements. Tim has worked with insurance companies, TRICARE (USFHP), HMOs, PPOs, BCBS plans, and provider organizations for all populations --Commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE populations. 

Tim has significant experience in: Healthcare benefit plan design, pricing, feasibility studies, and financial modeling; working with public and private organizations in the cost evaluation of their current and proposed benefit programs; developing expected utilization and cost benchmarks for commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid populations; providing regulatory filings for health carriers and projecting healthcare claim reserves; negotiation of rates for USFHP (TRICARE) and Medicaid populations; provider contract negotiation; preparation of Medicare Advantage bids.

William Kane '02, FSA, EA

Consulting Actuary, Total Compensation Systems, Westlake Village.