Raymond Cheung
Chartered Actuary · CRO · Board Adviser · Singapore
Most boards understand they need financial and legal expertise around the table. Far fewer have thought carefully about actuarial oversight — and in an environment of mandatory ESG disclosure, rising catastrophe exposure and capital reform, that gap is becoming expensive.
There is a standard template for board composition in Singapore. A company secretary with corporate governance credentials. An independent director with financial expertise — usually an accountant or banker. A legal representative if the business carries significant contract or regulatory exposure. A commercial operator who has run a P&L. Those are the boxes that most SGX-listed boards and MAS-regulated entities try to fill.
What is consistently missing — and what I see causing real governance failures across insurance, financial services and increasingly across listed corporates — is actuarial oversight. Not necessarily an actuary on the board itself, though that has value. More precisely: board-level access to someone who can translate quantitative risk into governance language, stress-test the assumptions embedded in financial reporting, and challenge management on the adequacy of capital and reserving decisions.
What actuarial oversight means in practice
I have spent two decades in and around actuarial functions — as a practitioner, as a CRO with statutory responsibility for actuarial oversight, and now as a board adviser. The value I bring to a board is not the ability to build models. It is the ability to look at a set of financial assumptions and understand what they are actually saying — and what they are not saying.
- Are the discount rate assumptions embedded in your pension or insurance liabilities realistic, or are they carrying optimism that will eventually need to be corrected?
- What does your reinsurance programme actually protect against, and what scenarios leave you exposed above that protection?
- Are your climate transition assumptions — in your capital planning, your underwriting strategy, your asset allocation — stress-tested against physical scenarios that are now MAS-reportable?
- What is the actuarial basis for your dividend proposal, and does the board understand the capital margin it is consuming?
“A board that cannot challenge the assumptions underneath its financial reporting is not governing the business — it is approving the presentation of it.”
Why this matters more in Singapore now
The regulatory environment in Singapore is making actuarial literacy at board level increasingly consequential. MAS Notice 126 has raised the bar on climate risk governance for insurers. The ISSB sustainability disclosure standards, which MAS has signalled alignment with, require boards to understand and take responsibility for climate-related risk assumptions that have actuarial content. SGX mandatory climate reporting for listed companies from FY2025 means that what was previously a sustainability team's deliverable now requires board sign-off — and the assumptions behind it can be material.
A board that treats these as compliance exercises — approve the report, move on — is carrying real liability exposure. A board that understands the actuarial content of what it is signing creates genuine governance value and, increasingly, competitive advantage.
How I work with boards
When I come into a board advisory engagement, I am not trying to replace the existing expertise around the table. I am providing a specific and currently underserved capability: the ability to sit with a board, look at what management is presenting in the risk, capital, and ESG domain, and help directors ask the questions that the standard governance template does not equip them to ask.
That might be a standing NRC or risk committee advisory role. It might be a specific engagement around a capital transaction, a reinsurance restructuring, or the development of a climate risk governance framework. It might be board education — building the quantitative risk literacy that allows directors to interrogate management rather than simply receive it.
If your board is heading into FY2026 carrying significant insurance, capital, climate or financial services exposure, it is worth asking whether the expertise you have around the table is sufficient to govern what is in front of you.
This is not the same role as your Appointed Actuary
Every MAS-regulated insurer already has an Appointed Actuary, and boards sometimes assume that satisfies the need for actuarial oversight. It does not, and conflating the two is one of the more expensive governance mistakes I see. The Appointed Actuary has a statutory function — signing off reserve adequacy, certifying the ORSA's technical content, reporting to management and the board on the matters MAS Notice 126 prescribes. That role is necessarily close to the numbers the company itself produces, and its accountability runs to the regulator as much as to the board.
An actuarial board adviser sits on the other side of that relationship. The job is not to certify management's numbers — it is to help the board decide whether to accept them, and what to ask before it does. When a chair asks me whether the reserving assumptions the Appointed Actuary has signed off are conservative or optimistic relative to the market, or whether a proposed reinsurance renewal actually closes the gap the last stress test identified, that is a governance judgment, not a technical certification. Boards that only have the Appointed Actuary's sign-off are hearing one voice, produced under one set of incentives, on a question that deserves independent challenge.
“The Appointed Actuary tells you the numbers are correctly calculated. A board adviser helps you decide whether they are the right numbers to be comfortable with.”
What to check before you engage one
- Statutory track record — has this person actually held sign-off responsibility as an Appointed Actuary or CRO, or only advised from outside the seat?
- Independence from product and consulting relationships — is the adviser also selling reinsurance placement, audit, or technology services that create a conflict when they are meant to be challenging management's numbers?
- Board-level fluency, not just technical depth — can they translate a reserving or capital assumption into a question a non-actuary director can act on, in the time a board meeting actually allows?
- Willingness to put a view in writing — an adviser who will only speak informally in the corridor is not giving the board anything it can rely on if the assumption turns out to be wrong.
None of this needs to be a large or permanent commitment. Most engagements I run start narrow — a single ORSA cycle, a capital transaction, a reinsurance renewal — and the board decides from there whether the value justifies a standing advisory relationship. The mistake is not under-committing to a small engagement. It is assuming the gap does not exist because the Appointed Actuary's report already has a signature on it.
Common Questions
What does an actuarial board adviser do in Singapore?
An actuarial board adviser helps Singapore boards understand and challenge the quantitative risk, capital, and financial assumptions that management presents — including climate risk scenarios, reserving adequacy, reinsurance coverage, and ORSA outputs. This is distinct from a company actuary; the adviser operates at governance level rather than in the technical function.
Which Singapore-listed companies need actuarial board advisory?
MAS-regulated insurers and reinsurers have the clearest need, but any SGX-listed company with significant insurance, pension, financial services, or climate-related capital exposure benefits from actuarial oversight at board level — particularly under the new mandatory sustainability reporting requirements from FY2025.
Is an actuarial board adviser the same as the company's Appointed Actuary?
No. The Appointed Actuary is a statutory role that signs off reserve adequacy and the ORSA's technical content, reporting to management and MAS as much as to the board. An actuarial board adviser works for the board itself, helping directors decide whether to accept the Appointed Actuary's assumptions and what to challenge before they do — an independent, governance-level check rather than a technical certification.
How should a board structure an engagement with an actuarial adviser?
Most engagements should start narrow — tied to a single ORSA cycle, a capital transaction, or a reinsurance renewal — rather than an open-ended retainer. That lets the board see the value directly before deciding whether a standing advisory role, such as attendance at risk or audit committee meetings, is warranted.
Is Raymond Cheung a qualified actuary?
Yes. Raymond Cheung is a Chartered Actuary with over 24 years of practice, including statutory CRO roles at AIG Asia Pacific and Basel Medical Group where he held legal responsibility for actuarial oversight.
About the author
Raymond Cheung is a Chartered Actuary, C-suite executive and board adviser with more than 20 years of experience across Asia in risk management, insurance, ESG and corporate governance. He is the CEO of CER Consultancy and an accredited trainer at SMU Academy and the Singapore College of Insurance.