Insurance & Retirement Plans

CRA’s economic and actuarial experts have deep experience analyzing what an insurance company must do to develop policy features (options) that are both valuable to numerous policyholders and potentially profitable for the insurance company.  Our experts have a foundation of academic and professional experience with the economic, financial, statistical, and actuarial modeling insurance companies use to develop these optional features.

Among CRA’s testifying experts are actuaries with decades of experience within the life, pension, and health insurance industries.  These experts have held significant leadership roles in addressing national and international insurance coverage and solvency issues through positions with the American Academy of Actuaries, the Society of Actuaries, and the International Actuarial Association.

CRA’s testifying experts have extensive experience with retirement planning and retirement plans, including both 401(k) and 403(b) plans.  Our experts have real-world experience in retirement plan oversight, including the monitoring of investment performance, the evaluation of vendors and the offering of support and services to retirement plan participants.  Our experts have testified in disputes between plan participants and plan sponsors or suppliers of services to the plans.

CRA’s testifying experts are experienced in numerous areas of insurance policy design and in-force management.  These areas include product development, financial reporting, risk management, investment strategies, experience analysis, legal and compliance functions, accounting and financial reporting, reinsurance, and capital and regulatory standards.

CRA’s testifying experts analyze insurance company practice and consumer decision-making, informed by financial and economic theory that incorporates relevant actuarial principles and practices.  Our experts have opined on individual decision-making in the face of alternative choices that are presented by financial contracts incorporating insurance-type risks and optionality.

Our testifying experts have both litigation and consulting experience with governments related to public retirement systems, as well as with private sector and not-for-profit employer defined benefit plans.

CRA’s testifying experts bring real-world industry experience and rigorous actuarial, economic and financial analyses to litigation involving reinsurance arrangements.  We have participated in the consummation and monitoring of numerous reinsurance transactions.  This participation has included areas such as new product offerings, financial and sales results, pricing assumptions, capital needs, and reinsurer allowances.  Our experts have also investigated and testified in disputes between parties in reinsurance transactions focusing on the economic, actuarial, and financial implications of the contract provisions and compliance of the parties with those provisions and standard practice.

CRA’s testifying experts provide opinions related to insurance product design and the idiosyncratic nature of individual insurance policyholders, informed by financial and economic theory at the class certification stage of class action litigation.  We have also provided expert testimony and consulting support in antitrust and breach of contract class actions involving insurance carriers and brokers/agents.

Our experts conduct rigorous analysis of alleged damages, grounded in their extensive experience with insurance economics, actuarial science, finance, and econometrics.  We provide reasoned, rigorous and understandable presentations of those findings in reports and testimony.

CRA’s experts have provided a range of rigorous and relevant analyses and testimony regarding the use of captive arrangements in insurance.  We have both critiqued and endorsed the use of captives and have opined on the ability of various types of captive structures to meet the economic criteria for insurance under long-established case law principles, fulfill the economic purpose of insurance, and comply with arm’s length provisions and pricing in disputes involving taxes and transfer pricing.

Working with experienced CRA personnel in other practices, CRA insurance economics experts and consulting staff have investigated and provided analyses in matters alleging discrimination on the part of insurers in pricing and underwriting policies to consumers and in agent force restructuring matters.

CRA experts have provided testimony and analyses on the economic function of life settlement transactions, their effect on the decisions of policyowners and insurance carriers, and in disputes regarding the valuation of securitized portfolios of life settlement contracts.