FCAS, MAAA Principal and Consulting Actuary
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Pinnacle’s Clients Say It Best May 15, 2018
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Derek Freihaut is a principal and consulting actuary with Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, in the Bloomington, Illinois, office. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been in the property/casualty insurance industry since 2002.
Mr. Freihaut has considerable experience in assignments involving loss reserving, funding studies, loss cost projections, captive feasibility studies, risk transfer analyses, and personal and commercial lines ratemaking. He currently serves as chair on the AAA Committee on Property-Liability Financial Reporting (COPLFR).
Prior to joining Pinnacle, Mr. Freihaut was employed at a large insurance company where his responsibilities included personal and commercial lines pricing. His pricing duties included private passenger and commercial auto, commercial multi-peril and rental program lines of business.
January 2021 APEX Webinar Statements of Actuarial Opinion (SAOs) at Year-End 2020 Authored by Derek W. Freihaut and Aaron N. Hillebrandt.
November 2020 APEX Webinar State of the Florida Homeowners Market Authored by Derek W. Freihaut and Arthur R. Randolph II.
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Portfolio Aggregation
A reinsurer wanted to combine the results of their pricing and reserving models for individual treaties - from diverse lines of business and treaty structures - to produce an annual return distribution for the company. This was a part of their ERM framework and the genesis of their economic capital modeling process. After reviewing treaty wordings and pricing and reserving models, we designed a model that reflected dependency amongst the treaties and produced an annual return distribution. Furthermore, the model was designed to allow users of the model output to easily see how sensitive the results were to the assumed dependency structures.
Reinsurance Price Optimization
Pinnacle was approached by an insurance company to provide an independent review of their reinsurance program. The first step was to review historic ceded premiums and losses by treaty layer to determine the overall reinsurer profitability. Pinnacle then independently priced the existing reinsurance program to benchmark the current market pricing. Finally, Pinnacle provided a cost benefit analysis to help the client determine the optimal retention levels for its insurance program. With this information in hand and our support, our client was able to negotiate better terms for their reinsurance program.
Self Insured Loss Reserve Analysis
Pinnacle was approached by a major, national manufacturer to perform a loss reserve analysis of their retained workers compensation, auto liability, general liability and products liability loss exposures. The previous actuary worked for a large broker which the customer felt presented a conflict of interest. In addition, the actuary used industry benchmarks that the customer felt did not accurately represent their loss development behavior. Pinnacle worked with the customer to better understand their loss exposures, claims handling practices, and corporate risk management philosophy. We worked with the company to gather better internal data and refine the industry benchmarks to better reflect their third party administrator, industry focus and geographic mix. These refinements, and many others, led to a more accurate analysis of the company’s retained loss exposures, a reduced provision for unpaid claims on their balance sheet, and reduced collateral requirements from their fronting carrier.
At Pinnacle, we partner with you to explore whatever path it takes to find the answers you need.
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March 15, 2021 CAS Ratemaking, Product and Modeling (RPM) Seminar
March 18, 2021 March APEX Webinar - Reinsurance 101 in 2021 Register