Working with financial institutions

We help insurers, banks, building societies and asset managers make more efficient use of their valuable capital and keep up with the ever changing regulatory environment, through a fresh approach to risk management that we like to call 'Riskology'.

Riskology gives you greater insight into the risks you face and makes you better placed to make informed decisions.  You can find out a bit more about how we can help you crack risk management here.

Our expertise

Hymans Robertson adds value to financial institutions through the provision of specialist risk management services, for example:

Banks and building societies are faced with credit, market, interest rate and liquidity risks embedded in their portfolios.  We help banks to model their capital, liquidity and stress testing requirements for their regulatory assessments, but our philosophy is to go beyond regulatory compliance to generate real value and competitive advantage.  We apply the proven actuarial techniques of asset-liability management to develop capital and liquidity strategies, funds transfer pricing frameworks, and feed the results into product design and pricing regimes.

Life insurers face some very specific risks.  Hymans Robertson and Club Vita are recognised experts in mortality and longevity risk, and can help unlock value in pricing and reserving by using a more granular approach to modelling the diversity of life and annuity portfolios.  We also advise on longevity risk transfer solutions.  In terms of financial risks, our actuarial understanding of life insurance liabilities means we can provide investment risk consultancy services spanning investment strategy, structured products and manager selection, all within an appropriate investment governance environment.

In addition to banks, building societies and life insurers, some of our services span the entire financial services sector, encompassing investment managers and general insurers.

Pension Obligation Risk is the FSA's term for the risk posed to the capital of a bank or insurer by its own staff pension arrangements.  This item now has a higher profile in regulatory capital assessments with Solvency II and Basel III bringing fresh challenges, for example to ensure that internal models properly capture pension risks.  Our balanced team of pension risk experts and regulatory capital specialists has helped guide several banks and insurers through the dynamics of pension risks in an enterprise-wide context.

Effective risk governance requires board-level engagement, so we help boards to genuinely understand their risk exposures, advising them on what the results of technical modelling mean for them in practice.  This builds confidence that risk management is genuinely embedded in the firm, passing the "use test".  The ongoing regulatory changes such as Solvency II, Basel III and the handover of prudential regulation from the FSA to the Bank of England mean this is a fast-evolving area where concise, off the fence advice is paramount.