Chief Actuarial Officer

Company Details

Berkley Mid-Atlantic Group (BMAG) is a property and casualty insurance provider serving the Mid-Atlantic. We are a member of W. R. Berkley Corporation, one of the largest commercial lines property and casualty insurance holding companies in the United States. With the resources of a large Fortune 500® corporation and the ability to operate with the closeness and flexibility of a small company, we exclusively work with select independent agents to insure the future of business.

Our culture is one that empowers employees to question the status quo and seek innovative ways to continue to exceed the expectations of our customers. We practice collaboration, creativity, and teamwork on a daily basis, with a commitment to innovation and high performance.

Company URL:  https://www.wrbmag.com/

The company is an equal opportunity employer.

Responsibilities

Lead the enterprise actuarial, analytics, and portfolio intelligence agenda so that pricing, reserving, capital, reinsurance, planning, and growth decisions consistently improve risk-adjusted returns. The Chief Actuarial Officer translates complex risk into clear choices, builds trusted decision systems, and develops the next generation of actuarial and analytical leadership.

Reporting to the President, the Chief Actuarial Officer is a member of the executive leadership team and the senior actuarial voice for the operating unit. The role owns the integrity and strategic application of actuarial work across pricing, reserving, forecasting, portfolio management, capital and reinsurance support, regulatory matters, and data-enabled decision making. The leader partners closely with the President, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Underwriting Officer, Chief Claims Officer, distribution leaders, and corporate actuarial stakeholders.

Over the five-year horizon, success requires moving beyond production of actuarial indications and reports toward an integrated decision-intelligence model. The Chief Actuarial Officer will establish governed, explainable, repeatable analytics; accelerate feedback loops; identify emerging risk early; and enable leaders to act with confidence while preserving actuarial standards, sound judgment, and appropriate human oversight.

Enterprise Strategy and Executive Decision Support

• Serve as a strategic partner to the President and executive team, connecting actuarial insight to operating strategy, growth priorities, geographic expansion, product appetite, expense management, and risk-adjusted return objectives.
• Frame choices through scenarios, ranges, sensitivities, trade-offs, and leading indicators rather than relying only on point estimates or historical summaries.
• Own the actuarial narrative for quarterly results, annual operating plans, reforecasts, and corporate reviews, with clear explanations of performance drivers and corrective actions.
• Create a multi-year actuarial and analytics roadmap aligned with enterprise priorities, technology capabilities, talent needs, and governance expectations.

Pricing, Portfolio Steering, and Product Economics

• Lead pricing adequacy, rate-level, trend, loss-cost, retention, mix, and new-business analyses across Small Commercial and Middle Market package products, Commercial Auto, Workers Compensation, Umbrella, and other assigned lines.
• Build portfolio steering capabilities that connect indicated need, achieved rate, underwriting action, exposure change, retention, claims emergence, and profitability at actionable segment levels.
• Partner with underwriting and distribution leadership to define profitable growth guardrails, market and segment priorities, and measurable action plans.
• Provide actuarial leadership for product development, coverage changes, filings, and experimentation, including disciplined test design, monitoring, and post-implementation evaluation.
• Advance risk segmentation and price optimization practices while protecting fairness, explainability, regulatory compliance, and sound underwriting judgment.

Reserving, Financial Insight, and Prospective Risk

• Own the operating unit reserving process and recommendations, including methods, assumptions, diagnostics, documentation, peer review readiness, and communication of uncertainty.
• Connect reserve analysis with claims operations, underwriting actions, social and economic inflation, legal environment changes, catastrophe activity, and shifts in exposure or mix.
• Develop prospective views of loss emergence and profitability using actual-versus-expected diagnostics, early-warning indicators, scenario analysis, and stress testing.
• Partner with Finance on premium, loss, expense, cash-flow, and earnings forecasts; annual planning; and explanations of material variances.
• Maintain readiness for auditors, regulators, rating agencies, corporate actuarial reviews, and other authorized oversight.

Capital, Reinsurance, Catastrophe, and Emerging Risk

• Provide actuarial insight for capital allocation, risk appetite, volatility, accumulation, and return-on-equity decisions at line, segment, product, and portfolio levels.
• Partner on ceded reinsurance strategy, structure evaluation, renewal analytics, exposure data quality, and assessment of retained volatility.
• Advance catastrophe and climate-related risk analysis appropriate to the portfolio, including geographic concentration, hazard change, model uncertainty, and mitigation opportunities.
• Establish a repeatable emerging-risk process covering cyber, autonomous and connected technologies, supply-chain disruption, litigation and social inflation, economic regime shifts, and other material exposures.
• Translate stress and scenario results into practical underwriting, claims, product, reinsurance, and growth recommendations.

Data, AI, Decision Systems, and Model Governance

• Own the actuarial data and analytics strategy in partnership with technology, data, underwriting, claims, finance, compliance, and corporate stakeholders.
• Create governed data products and a consistent source of truth for pricing, reserving, plan, actual-versus-expected, rate and retention, exposure, and portfolio performance reporting.
• Sponsor responsible use of predictive analytics, machine learning, generative AI, and automation where they improve speed, quality, insight, or scalability.
• Implement model inventory, ownership, validation, documentation, change control, performance monitoring, bias and fairness review, explainability, access controls, and human-judgment standards proportionate to model risk.
• Ensure automated outputs are reproducible, auditable, secure, and appropriately reviewed before they influence material decisions.
• Modernize workflows to shorten decision cycles and redirect actuarial capacity from manual production toward interpretation, challenge, and action.

Qualifications

Required

• Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS).
• Bachelor’s degree in actuarial science, mathematics, statistics, economics, data science, finance, or another relevant quantitative field, or equivalent experience.
• Significant progressive property and casualty actuarial experience, including leadership of pricing and reserving work and senior-level influence on business decisions.
• Demonstrated experience leading teams, developing talent, managing change, and partnering across underwriting, claims, finance, technology, compliance, and distribution.
• Ability to communicate complex analysis, uncertainty, and strategic choices clearly to executive and nontechnical audiences.
• Working knowledge of applicable actuarial standards, insurance regulation, rate filing considerations, financial reporting, and model governance.

Preferred

• Membership in the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA).
• Experience with commercial package, Commercial Auto, Workers Compensation, Umbrella, Small Commercial, or Middle Market portfolios.
• Experience with reinsurance, catastrophe modeling, capital analysis, portfolio optimization, and emerging risks.
• Fluency with modern actuarial and analytical ecosystems such as SQL, Python or R, visualization tools, cloud data platforms, and governed AI-enabled workflows.
• Experience modernizing actuarial processes, implementing model governance, or building enterprise decision-support capabilities.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic enterprise thinking: Connects actuarial evidence to long-term competitive advantage, capital deployment, and operating priorities.
• Commercial and underwriting acumen: Understands how product, appetite, distribution, claims, expense, and price interact to create sustainable returns.
• Quality decision making: Balances rigor and speed; distinguishes what is known, uncertain, assumed, and actionable.
• Influence and communication: Creates clarity, earns trust, constructively challenges, and turns analysis into commitment and action.
• Technology and AI stewardship: Recognizes high-value use cases and establishes proportionate governance, controls, and human oversight.
• Talent multiplication: Builds successors, broadens capabilities, and creates an environment where diverse perspectives improve decisions.
• Execution and accountability: Sets priorities, simplifies work, assigns ownership, monitors outcomes, and closes the loop.

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