European Solvency Specialist to Lead Milliman

What You Need to Know

Dermot Corry has been president of Ireland's actuarial society.
Milliman hired him when it acquired the consulting firm he was running.
He has been the head of the Milliman life and financial services business.

The board of Milliman — a big, Seattle-based actuarial consulting firm — has picked Dermot Corry to be the firm’s next CEO.

Corry is on track to succeed Stephen White, the current CEO, on Jan. 1, 2022.

Milliman was founded in 1947. It helps the world’s insurers, pension plans and public benefit programs with the math needed to keep their operations going. Serving as the firm’s CEO will make Corry a key player in efforts to keep the clients moving forward in the face of COVID-19, climate change, the aging of baby boomers and other powerful forces.

Corry talked in a comment, included in the CEO appointment announcement, about Milliman’s role in protecting the health and finances of people everywhere.

“We are in an era of unprecedented uncertainty that calls for unique awareness of risk,” Corry said. “Milliman brings a data-driven perspective to these volatile times and will continue to be the leader advising on insurance, retirement, and health care.”

The CEOs

White took charge of Milliman in 2012, as the dust from the 2007-2009 Great Recession was settling. Since then, the firm has increased its revenue to $1.4 billion, from $723 million in 2011.

White began working for Milliman in 1985, soon after he graduated from Notre Dame.

Corry spent 27 years at other companies before arriving at Milliman.

He spent 15 years as an actuary at Irish Life, in Dublin, then worked in business development for two years at Guarantee Reserve, a life insurer in Calumet City, Ill., that Irish Life acquired in 1997.

For about eight years, Corry was managing director of Life Strategies, a consulting firm in Ireland. Milliman acquired Life Strategies in 2009 and brought Corry on board. Corry started out as the head of Milliman’s operations in Ireland and later became the global practice director for Milliman’s Life and Financial Services division.

Solvency II and LDTI

Regulators in Europe have tried to make insurers and investors more aware of long-term risk management needs by adopting the Solvency II standards.

In the United States, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is calling for insurers to implement the Long-Duration Targeted Improvements standards, or LDTI, in 2023. Those standards call for insurers to put estimates of the changes in the value of long-term benefits obligations in current earnings.

Corry has been supportive of the accounting standards update efforts.

In 2015, he expressed optimism about the move to the Solvency II Standards in a speech at a dinner organized by Ireland’s actuarial society.

“This is a welcome development, since it brings a more risk-based approach to the management of insurance companies,” Corry said, according to a copy of the speech posted on the society’s website.

Corry predicted that the new rules would increase the involvement of actuaries in insurance companies’ risk oversight and strengthen the companies’ management.