Local company a game-changer for actuarial consulting

Cape Town based Adi Kaimowitz, founder of Virtual Actuary, is making waves both locally and internationally, with his innovative approach to actuarial consulting. 

After launching the company a year ago, it already has over thirty-five large clients and a revenue that far exceeds that of typical start-ups at this stage, but Adi says that this is only the beginning. ‘We are building a very complex business of actuaries and we are now moving into year two, and so, exactly how the business shifts and moulds…well, I don’t want to say too much about it and give away the game plan, but what we are doing right now is just 5% of where we will be in 10 years’ time.’

Adi, who started Virtual Actuary together with his wife, explains that the company sources actuaries from various sectors (such as life insurance, general insurance, healthcare, pensions, investments and banking) and matches them with clients in a new and more efficient way. ‘Right now, the actuaries work as employees; it is a job. Our goal is to make the actuaries interact with the world in a more immersive experience.

Before founding the company, Adi worked as an actuary recruiter for ten years and, in that time, got a grasp on how the profession operates and what does and does not work. ‘I got to know most of the actuaries in South Africa personally and, so, in looking to the next chapter of how I was going to interact with [them]…I felt that the current consulting model for actuaries could potentially be improved upon. And so… I was able to, with the help of some actuaries, nurture the idea of [the company].

An exciting development is that the company has just opened an office in the US. Virtual Actuary and its partner-company, InsurTech Global, ‘have developed an actuarial modelling software that is thousands of times faster and more efficient than the current actuarial modelling software that is available. 

Adi, who cites Adrian Gore as one of his key South African role models, sums up his company in the following words: ‘We are, ultimately, an organised collaborative of business-astute actuaries, who are serving a global market in the InsurTech and FinTech space and in the traditional insurance and banking space.’

On being asked what his advice is for emerging start-ups, Adi believes that ‘[you should] stop worrying about what other people are going to say about what you do or don’t do. Do it anyway. If you have an idea, stop procrastinating and just do it.

Whether some people think it’s successful or not doesn’t matter. What matters is we’re doing what we want to do, and we believe we’re heading in the right direction and we’re doing it anyway. I think that real success is having a family which lives with Torah. That’s real success.’ 

Click here to download a PDF of the April edition of the Chronicle

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here