Delivering specialist actuarial capacity in Europe
Case Study
Delivering specialist actuarial capacity in Europe
How Outsized placed a South African Prophet expert to implement a complex cashflow model upgrade for a global management consulting firm in Europe.
The background
Oliver Wyman GmbH, the German arm of the global management consulting firm, needed specialist actuarial support for a client engagement in Dusseldorf. The work involved implementing dynamic premium increases within a client’s cashflow model using Prophet, the industry-standard actuarial projection software. It was a technically specific brief: not a generalist actuarial role, but a hands-on Prophet implementation requiring someone who could work directly inside the model, test the output, and document the changes to a consulting-grade standard. The engagement needed to be in place by February 2022. Oliver Wyman turned to Outsized to identify and deploy the right specialist.
The challenge: A rare technical skill set, needed quickly.
What made this brief genuinely difficult:
Prophet expertise is a narrow specialism
Prophet is used widely across life insurance and consulting, but practitioners with deep implementation experience, including coding, testing, and model integrity work, are a small pool. Oliver Wyman needed someone who could operate at a senior level without a hand-holding period.
The scope required both depth and rigour
The work was not exploratory. The consultant would be implementing future dynamic premium increases within an existing Deutsch Library cashflow model, then testing and documenting the output to a standard that would hold up in a client-facing consulting context.
Cross-border deployment
The engagement was based in Germany, with the consultant working directly within Oliver Wyman's client project. Outsized needed to find someone who could integrate into a professional consulting environment from day one, operating to the firm's standards rather than as an external resource.
Timeline
With a start date only a couple of weeks from when Outsized received the request and a five-month engagement, the placement needed to be confirmed as soon as possible.
“Finding a Prophet specialist with the right level of experience for a live client engagement is not straightforward. Outsized understood what we needed and moved quickly”
– Oliver Wyman Team, Dusseldorf
The solution
Outsized identified a South African Fellow Actuary and Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary with extensive Prophet experience built across life insurance and consulting roles at AllLife, Sanlam, Deloitte Actuarial, and Absa Life. Across more than a decade in actuarial roles, he had developed hands-on Prophet capability that covered the full range of what the Oliver Wyman engagement required.
Implementation and coding
Creating and modifying Prophet models, including coding new product features, regulatory changes, and bespoke model adjustments.
Testing and documentation
Working methodically through scope changes, grouping and ordering changes into logical sets to allow for model integrity and impact testing at each stage.
IFRS 17 and SAM experience
Modifying Prophet models for IFRS 17 compliance while preserving SAM and IFRS 4 results, an indicator of the precision required when working inside live actuarial models.
Cashflow and capital work
A track record in reserving, technical provisions, SCR and capital management, and stochastic run structures using economic scenario generators.
Beyond the technical match, the selected consultant brought the professional credibility and communication skills to operate effectively in a consulting environment. At Deloitte Actuarial he had worked directly with regulatory bodies and life insurance clients. At AllLife and Sanlam he had led teams and managed deliverables at committee level. He was accustomed to bridging the gap between technical actuarial work and senior stakeholder expectations.
A trusted source of specialist actuarial talent
For Oliver Wyman, working with Outsized meant gaining access to a pre-vetted specialist who could be placed quickly and deployed directly into a live client engagement, without the overhead of a conventional recruitment process or the risk of a generalist hire. The engagement demonstrated what Outsized does best: identifying genuinely rare expertise within the independent professional community and deploying it with the speed and rigour that consulting firms require. Actuarial specialists with deep software implementation experience do not advertise widely. Finding them, assessing them, and placing them into demanding professional environments is where Outsized adds the most value.
If your team needs specialist actuarial or technical consulting capacity quickly, Outsized can help you find the right operator in weeks, not months.
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