Simon Laurie – Actuarial Contractor
About
Simon started his actuarial career as a graduate in 2001. His first role, with Skandia (now Quilter), was in the model development team, testing new MoSes models for unit linked life and pension products. He also designed and built data processes to run before and after MoSes.
After two and a half years Simon moved to the capital modelling team at Zurich general insurance, helping to produce ICAs for eleven legal entities, requiring the development of stochastic models. He also worked on quarterly financial reporting and introduced process improvements to reduce errors and shorten the reporting time.
In 2007 Simon started contracting, specialising in designing, building and testing models across a variety of actuarial teams for multiple insurance companies.
Simon has worked on a number of actuarial change initiatives in finance transformation programmes. He has contributed to the design of actuarial modelling processes, to ensure the transformation results in the most efficient and user friendly process flow possible.
Simon has worked on multiple model migrations, including from MoSes to AXIS, MoSes to Mo.net and Excel to MoSes. He particularly enjoys the problem solving nature of investigating and explaining differences between modelling approaches.
As part of model migrations Simon always pushes for the most efficient process flow and aims to minimise the number of user steps. He does this in order to reduce the risk of errors and provide the end user with a smooth and positive user experience throughout the process.
Outside work most of Simon’s spare time is taken up with research and sourcing for a Grand Designs type self build which started in 2023. He also enjoys walking, keeping fit and travelling.