Vident Partners provides vetted actuarial expert witnesses for cases involving loss reserve adequacy, ratemaking and rate discrimination, life expectancy and annuity valuation, pension and structured settlement calculations, and actuarial malpractice under the Actuarial Standards of Practice. Request a referral today.
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Actuaries quantify future contingent liabilities, and in litigation they are retained wherever the disputed number depends on a projection rather than a historical fact: whether an insurer's loss reserves were adequate, whether a rate was actuarially justified, what a stream of future payments is worth today, or what a pension or benefit plan owed. Their work is governed by a published body of professional standards, which makes actuarial opinions unusually testable against an external benchmark.
That benchmark is the Actuarial Standards of Practice promulgated by the Actuarial Standards Board and binding on actuaries subject to the Code of Professional Conduct 1. More than 50 standards span pension, life, health, casualty, and enterprise risk management practice; the ones most often at issue in litigation include ASOP No. 41 on Actuarial Communications, ASOP No. 43 on Property/Casualty Unpaid Claim Estimates, and ASOP No. 56 on Modeling 1. ASOP No. 41 is the most frequently invoked in cross-examination because it defines what an actuarial report must contain: the actuary should complete an actuarial report if the findings are intended to be relied upon by any intended user, must identify the methods, procedures, assumptions, and data clearly enough that another qualified actuary could appraise the reasonableness of the work, must define the extent of any reliance on others including whether reasonableness checks were applied, and must clearly identify the actuary responsible for the communication 2.
Credentialing runs through two societies. The Society of Actuaries administers the Associate (ASA) and Fellow (FSA) designations, chiefly for life, health, retirement, and finance practice; the ASA alone requires passage of the Probability, Financial Mathematics, Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics, Statistics for Risk Modeling, and Predictive Analytics examinations plus an advanced long-term or short-term actuarial mathematics examination, three Validation by Educational Experience subjects, several modules, the Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice course, and the Associateship Professionalism Course 3. The Casualty Actuarial Society, which describes itself as the global authority advancing property and casualty actuarial science with nearly 12,000 members, administers the ACAS and FCAS credentials covering ratemaking, loss reserving, and estimation of claim liabilities 4. The distinction is practical, not merely formal: an FSA is generally the wrong witness for a property-casualty reserving dispute, and an FCAS is generally the wrong witness for a pension valuation.
The recurring engagements fall into four groups. First, insurance company solvency and reserving disputes -- reserve adequacy, redundancy or deficiency, reinsurance commutations, and receivership and liquidation proceedings. Second, ratemaking and regulatory matters, including whether a filed rate was excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory, and disputes over rating variables and predictive models. Third, damages and valuation -- present value of future medical care and lost earnings, life expectancy and mortality assumptions underlying structured settlements and life-contingent annuities, and pension and deferred compensation valuation in commercial and marital dissolution matters. Fourth, professional liability claims against actuaries themselves, where the standard of care is drawn directly from the applicable ASOPs and the sufficiency of the actuarial report is the central question.
ASOP No. 41 requires that an actuarial report identify the methods, procedures, assumptions, and data used clearly enough that another qualified actuary could appraise the reasonableness of the actuary's work.
Case Types
Loss reserve adequacy, redundancy, and deficiency disputes
Insurer insolvency, receivership, and liquidation proceedings
Ratemaking challenges alleging excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory rates
Present value of future medical care, lost earnings, and structured settlement valuation
Life expectancy and mortality assumptions in life-contingent annuity and viatical disputes
Pension, deferred compensation, and benefit plan valuation in commercial and marital matters
Professional liability claims against actuaries measured against the applicable ASOPs
Qualifications
Related Specialties
FAQ
The credential must match the subject matter. Property and casualty reserving and ratemaking disputes call for a Fellow or Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society; life, health, retirement, and finance matters call for a Fellow or Associate of the Society of Actuaries. Beyond the designation, look for direct practice experience in the specific line of business and function at issue, and for a reporting practice that itself complies with ASOP No. 41.
Actuaries are retained in loss reserve adequacy and insurer solvency disputes, ratemaking and rate discrimination challenges, present value calculations for future medical care and lost earnings, life expectancy and mortality assumptions in annuity and structured settlement matters, pension and benefit plan valuation, and professional liability claims against actuaries.
The ASOPs, promulgated by the Actuarial Standards Board and binding on actuaries subject to the Code of Professional Conduct, supply an external and published benchmark for the standard of care. More than 50 standards cover pension, life, health, casualty, and enterprise risk management practice. In deposition, ASOP No. 41 on actuarial communications is the most commonly used, because it defines what a report must disclose about methods, assumptions, data, and reliance on others.
There is overlap, but the training differs. A forensic economist typically builds earnings capacity and worklife models from labor market data; an actuary applies mortality, morbidity, and discount assumptions under published professional standards and is generally the better witness where life-contingent payments, annuity pricing, pension obligations, or insurance reserves drive the number. In large future-damages cases the two roles are often paired.
In general, insurance expert fees are determined by the expert themselves, based on a variety of criteria. Among those criteria are professional experience, forensic experience, industry certifications, regulatory knowledge, and publications. Vident does have some influence over expert fees by comparing experts within a specialty, but ultimately it is a personal decision by the expert.
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