2025 CAS Canada Connection

Welcome, Celebration of Canadian New Members

Join us for a celebration of new Canadian CAS members!

Town Hall

Join us for a Town Hall with CAS President Barry Franklin and other senior CAS Canadian volunteer leaders to discuss the 2025 CAS Strategic Plan and the goals for the CAS for the upcoming year. This is your chance to hear firsthand how the CAS plans to drive growth, success, and innovation in Canada and beyond!

Highlights of the Town Hall will include understanding the key areas driving the strategic plan and the desired outcomes for each area.  You will be able to share your thoughts and ask questions to share input on the CAS’s strategic direction in Canada.

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with CAS leaders, ask questions, and understand how this strategic vision will benefit your career and the future of our profession!

Speakers:

Barry Franklin
Barry Franklin is a risk management and insurance executive with more than 40 years of experience in a variety of actuarial and risk management leadership roles. He recently founded Upstate Actuarial LLC, a boutique risk management and actuarial consulting firm, after retiring as Chief Actuary for Zurich North America. Previous roles include Chief Risk Officer for Zurich North America, Director of Corporate Risk Consulting for Towers Watson, Group Managing Director for Aon Global Risk Consulting, and Partner & Consulting Actuary with EY. Barry has provided actuarial and risk management advice to companies across multiple industries and was one of the early pioneers in applying quantitative risk models to help large corporations derive actionable insights from their Enterprise Risk Management programs.

Barry is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst and Member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He has been active in actuarial profession leadership, having served on the CAS board of directors and executive council as well as numerous CAS committees and task forces. Barry holds a Bachelor of Sciences degree from Northern Illinois University, with a major in Probability & Statistics and a minor in Economics.

Barry and his wife Debbie live in the Upstate region of South Carolina and enjoy traveling as well as all the outdoor activities available in the foothills and mountain region. They have four grown children and eight grandchildren

Jason Machtinger
Jason has almost 30 years of actuarial experience in the areas of reinsurance, primary insurance and consulting. Jason works closely with clients, brokers and catastrophe modelers within Canada and the Caribbean across a wide variety of lines of business to develop and optimize reinsurance programs. Jason's continued focus on communicating highly technical concepts and results to business audiences serves to improve the profile of actuarial work to executive audiences. Jason serves on the Board of the CAS and has previously volunteered as a member of the Examination Committee, culminating in a position as Part Chair.

Ken Williams
Ken Williams is a Staff Actuary of the Casualty Actuarial Society, a leading international organization for credentialing and professional education of actuaries. Founded in 1914, the CAS is the world’s only actuarial organization focused exclusively on property and casualty risks and serves over 10,000 members worldwide. In his work with the CAS, Ken is a frequent author and presenter on a variety of actuarial subjects. Prior to joining the CAS, Ken spent 26 years working in the insurance industry in a variety of actuarial practice areas, including pricing, loss reserve analysis, budgeting, and enterprise risk management. Ken was a lecturer in the Mathematics department at Illinois State University for over 20 years. He holds a BS in Actuarial Science from Purdue University and is both a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS), and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA).

Wildfire Risk

More information coming soon!

Speakers:

Ivan O’Neill

Under the Hood: The Mechanics of Pricing Alberta’s Care First Auto Reform

On January 1, 2027, Alberta will introduce a new auto insurance system that will provide better health benefits to Albertans while ensuring long-term auto insurance affordability for citizens and stability for the province’s system.

The new Care-First system will provide improved medical, rehabilitation, and income support benefits for all Albertans injured in an accident, regardless of fault, while continuing to hold at-fault drivers accountable through higher premiums. Albertans injured in an accident will be able to access these enhanced benefits more quickly, with more certainty and without the need to sue in court.

In this session, we will review the Care-First system and its benefits. We will also discuss the approaches used to support the insurance industry in developing rates for Care-First.

Speakers:

Laurie Balfour
Laurie Balfour is the Executive Director of the Alberta Automobile Insurance Rate Board. She has spent over 16 years in Government working in roles regulating the insurance industry. Prior to joining the Alberta Government, she developed her enthusiasm for helping others while working for an Alberta based non-profit organization.

Laurie is passionate about her work and continuously learning from others. She actively participates on numerous national committees for the General Insurance Statistical Agency (GISA) and the Canadian Automobile Insurance Rate Regulators (CARR) and Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators (CCIR), which gives her the opportunity exchange ideas and expand views on regulation of insurance.

Rajesh Sahasrabuddhe
Rajesh (“Raj”) Sahasrabuddhe (Pronounced sa-hasrabud-he) is a Partner with Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting. Raj leads Oliver Wyman’s Regulatory practice, which supports provincial and state regulators in Canada and the United States. He also serves on the Canadian Institute of Actuaries’ P&C Practice Committee.

Raj has provided actuarial consulting services for over thirty years. Prior to joining Oliver Wyman, Raj provided actuarial consulting services to self-insured clients at a national brokerage company and financial advisory and litigation support services at an independent consulting firm. Raj is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Operationalizing Fairness in Actuarial Pricing: From Principle to Practice

Fairness metrics often lack actuarial relevance and are expressed in abstract units, obscuring real-world consequences. For actuaries to intervene, proxy effects and unfair biases must be quantified in insurance-relevant terms: dollars and people. This session will present new research from the CAS Race and Insurance Pricing series, focusing on the unique challenge of establishing fairness in actuarial pricing. We argue that actuarial fairness, solidarity, and causality form the three dimensions of fairness in insurance. These give rise to a five-point spectrum of pricing benchmarks, each reflecting distinct fairness goals and trade-offs. We quantify the monetary impact of unfairness at both the policyholder and segment levels through a large-scale Québec auto insurance case study.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe three dimensions of fairness in insurance pricing: actuarial fairness, solidarity, and causality.
2. Translate these dimensions of fairness into a spectrum of five pricing benchmarks.
3. Diagnose and quantify potential unfairness at both individual and segment levels using actuarially meaningful metrics.

Speakers:

Olivier Côté
Olivier Côté is pursuing a PhD in Actuarial Science at Université Laval, in Québec (QC, Canada), under the supervision of Marie-Pier Côté and Arthur Charpentier. Olivier’s thesis, expected for mid 2027, is titled “A Causal Perspective on Direct and Indirect Discrimination based on Sensitive Characteristics in Insurance Predictive Models”. It is performed in collaboration with one of the largest insurance companies in Canada.

Shayan Sen
Shayan is the founder and lead consultant at Cooperate Consulting, a Canadian actuarial consulting firm focused on P&C insurance pricing. He has led pricing teams at Wawanesa Insurance and Aviva Canada, and has consulting experience with large and small insurers as well as with the Canadian federal government. Shayan has published pricing-related original research in peer-reviewed actuarial journals and is the Chair of the CIA P&C practice committee.

Modernizing Ontario Auto Insurance Supervision to Enhance Consumer Fairness

Ontario’s auto insurance landscape is evolving—and so is how it’s regulated. In this session, FSRA will share how its new supervisory approach is reshaping oversight of rating and underwriting practices to better align with today’s consumer expectations. The updated model focuses on improving pricing accuracy, eliminating unfair discrimination and bias, protecting accessibility, and enhancing transparency—within a more streamlined and modern regulatory approach.

Attendees will gain insights into how FSRA is putting this guidance into action, and what it means for insurers, consumers, and the broader market as the new model moves from concept to execution.

Learning Objectives:

1. Gain insight into FSRA's auto insurance rating and underwriting supervision strategy.
2. Deepen understanding of FSRA's fair consumer outcomes and fairness assessment.
3. Learn about FSRA's principles-based and outcomes-focused regulatory approach.

Speakers:

Cong Wang
Cong Wang is the Chief Actuary of Auto Insurance Operational Risk Supervision at the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA). He earned his Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Actuarial Mathematics from Concordia University in 2006. With nearly 20 years of experience in Ontario’s auto insurance sector, Cong has developed deep expertise in pricing, product development, regulatory frameworks, modeling, and analytics. At FSRA, he leads the rate filing review operations and strategy, drives the implementation of rating and underwriting regulatory reforms, and oversees the design and execution of initiatives that promote fair consumer outcomes. He also leads the development of FSRA’s accreditation framework and the creation of new filing streams. Throughout his career, Cong has held senior roles in consulting, the private sector, and regulatory leadership, bringing a well-rounded and strategic perspective to advancing auto insurance supervision in Ontario.

Michelle Dodokin
Michelle Dodokin is the Head of Auto Insurance Supervision at the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), where she leads the modernization of auto insurance rating and underwriting regulation. Her work is guided by a strategic focus on advancing consumer fairness, transparency, and market innovation.

With over 15 years of executive experience in the property and casualty insurance sector—including senior leadership roles at Intact and Aviva—Michelle brings deep expertise across distribution, operations, finance, and investor relations. She holds an MBA from the Ivey Business School at Western University and is a graduate of the Kellogg/Northwestern Advanced Executive Management Program.

Michelle also serves as an Executive-in-Residence at Ivey, where she mentors and supports emerging leaders across HBA, MBA, and MSc programs. She is a passionate contributor to discussions on regulatory modernization and consumer protection in P&C insurance.

Unlocking Value: From 'Shoe-Box' Models to Actions

In today’s fast-paced environment, developing models is no longer the main challenge for actuaries and analytics professionals. The real challenge lies in unlocking their full potential by integrating them into core business processes to drive measurable outcomes. This session will explore how to move models from theoretical exercises to real-world applications. A key focus will be on cross-functional collaboration between actuaries, data engineers, operational excellence, and ModelOps, discussing strategies to ensure alignment and overcome technical bottlenecks in moving models to production. Real-world examples will highlight successful applications of these strategies in business context. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies to accelerate model deployment and sustain their value over time.

Speakers:

Yelena Kropivnitskaya

Applications of AI in (Re)Insurance

More information coming soon!

Speakers:

Matthew Vega-Sanz

Samir Shah