Testimonials

The Red Rose Friendly Society Ltd changed its Appointed Actuary support in the last quarter of 2005 when an existing contract had ended.

We identified a demanding set of criteria to be used in our search for a new company of Actuaries. These included value for money, sound advice, by its nature, a professional relationship with a strong personal connection, timely actions, and simplicity in conversation and dialogue of technical matters.

We looked for this to be extended throughout their entire business, at all levels, especially through all regularly contact individuals. We had a desire that they would join our other professional skills in the support of our business as a 'partner', working in the best interest of our policyholders.

As a result of these criteria and others being met, we appointed OAC Actuaries and Consultants to have responsibility for our needs.

We are delighted to be able to report that our testing demands have been both met and surpassed.

As a result, we have no hesitation in recommending OAC Actuaries and Consultants to all those who wish to operate to the highest of standards at the most sensible of costs.

We use OAC staff for two key functions - Independent Review of PPFM and With-Profits Actuary.

Have now had 4 actuaries in those roles over the past few years.

• Professional and experienced
• Responsive
• Pragmatic
• Keen to assist

Would recommend (indeed, have done!)

OAC have provided sound advice and positive support in helping us to look after the interests of members and achieve our modernisation objectives.

OAC bring great clarity to often complex and challenging issues and succeed every time in communicating clearly to our Board. They are central to all we do and we value their strategic input highly.

It is very helpful to receive advice and communication in a language that can be understood.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for sending through your OAC Topical Article which I found most interesting. As KFDs are close to my heart, the article was of interest.

As ever, I wish you and your colleagues the very best and your demonstration of positive support for institutions like us is, as ever, appreciated.

Your turnaround times are excellent. Attention to detail, outstanding. Desire to help, admirable.

I just wanted to drop you a note to thank your team for the work that you have done for us. I have recommended you in the past to a couple of my peers and would have no objection to you passing this letter on to any of your potential customers.

I've always found OAC's work to be of a high quality, your observations accurate and comprehensive, and your recommendations practical and sensible.

The FSA recently reviewed a sample of the complaints we had dealt with and identified no issues at all with the cases, or our procedures. We have rightly congratulated the team here for this impressive outcome, but I am equally grateful to OAC for producing such a detailed, comprehensive and practical report that clearly matched the regulators' expectations of "good practice" in this field.

You mentioned in our conversation that you were looking to position OAC alongside the consultancy services operated by the major accountancy practices. In my opinion, the quality of the work that you have done for us matches, and, in some cases, exceeds work that we have commissioned from these operations.

May I take this opportunity to say how pleased I was with OAC's service over the course of my role at Aviva. Information was always provided when needed and invoices paid within the agreed timescales.

After passing through OAC's initial screening process I had a technical interview with their Principal Actuary within days.  Shortly afterwards OAC identified an attractive contracting opportunity and I was interviewed by the hirer a few days later. After a short approval process I started work.  It was great to be kept closely in the loop through the process.  During the contract I had access to OAC's actuaries and a range of other support, including full PI insurance cover and paid time off for CPD.  I also received an extremely competitive daily rate.

Winterthur has used OAC for over a year now to provide interim actuarial placements and is very satisfied with the quality and rate competitiveness of the individuals provided.

As a global insurer, AEGON has high expectations of its financial models. For our UK group annuities business we chose Mo.net and OAC because:

• Mo.net gives us power, speed and flexibility.
• We were able to implement Mo.net within our administration and pricing teams to give us information quickly and efficiently yet within a secure and controlled environment.
• OAC delivered high-quality models that give us exactly what we want. Working with OAC, we have been able to implement highly sophisticated capital management tools within Mo.net with a minimum of effort.

We are very pleased with Mo.net's capabilities and how well it has been accepted by our employees.

Mo.net gives me flexibility and capability to meet my modelling needs in an affordable package, backed up by prompt helpful customer support.

We are impressed with the depth of Mo.net's capabilities. Combining these with our Grid computing platform (www.fsgrid.com) and Microsoft's high performance computing (HPC) platform, Mo.net provides a scalable and cost effective solution for even the most complex requirements in the ever increasing regulatory world. The creation of calculations as generated .Net code also allows for rarely seen interoperability possibilities and embedded or service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions.

We had the highest demands when we chose which modelling platform to use: it needed to be flexible and fast enough to give us the versatility to model our business against a range of scenarios, yet sufficiently robust to meet the challenging and evolving demands required of our auditors and regulators.

We chose Mo.net because it gave us exceptional power, versatility and speed in an easy to use package that was straightforward to implement and provided excellent value for money. In addition the team at OAC were committed to delivering high-quality and efficient consultancy support at highly competitive rates that gave us exactly what we wanted.

We have been delighted with our experiences of Mo.net and the invaluable support OAC have provided. We use a single Mo.net model for all our products and modelling requirements: pricing, product development, reporting and capital assessments, and this has delivered significant resource savings for us. Despite the many demands we have placed on our models they remain easy to use and very fast. The support team at OAC is always responsive to our queries.

We have no hesitation in recommending Mo.net and OAC to any other insurer looking at enhancing their financial modelling capabilities.

Mo.net meets my requirements in all respects. It's easy to use, very cost effective and the programming is quite straightforward yet very powerful. It is very fast and can handle considerable data in a matter of seconds. To load and read data is straightforward as is setting assumptions tables and selecting standard tables eg mortality tables.

Independent Actuarial Consultants (Pty) Ltd is a small consulting firm in South Africa providing actuarial services to life and pensions clients. We have been using Mo.net for the past year and it has enabled us to vastly enhance our service and advice capabilities, including valuations, product development, pricing and profit testing. Mo.net provides an excellent balance between a powerful, dynamic platform and affordability and ease of use. It is extremely satisfying to run a hundred thousand policies through a full valuation in the time it takes to take a sip of coffee.

We are delighted with Mo.net which has provided us with the ideal solution to our financial modelling needs. It is easy to learn, quick to implement, powerful and very cost effective.

I've found Mo.net to have an intuitive user friendly interface. It is easy to install, update and renew because of the use of the latest dot.net technology and it comes with simple worked examples; developing a model, setting up policy data and reporting results are all easy to do and a new user can be productive very quickly.

Mo.net is affordable, robust, fast and flexible. It's easy to check at the individual policy and monthly level and it's a system not a spreadsheet so giving complete confidence in the results.

Mo.net is an impressive new generation actuarial projection system.

Mo.net is a powerful and easy to use actuarial software tool backed up by excellent service. We were able to implement sophisticated actuarial modelling tools in a short time due to Mo.net's flexible development platform.

Mo.net has opened up new opportunities for True South and we are truly satisfied with the package.

The application is extremely easy to get to grips with, but where required, the after sales support from the OAC team was very friendly and efficient.

The turnaround time and thoroughness of the solutions presented on the forum board is fantastic.

True South is proud to be associated with OAC and Mo.net and we are recommending it to our clients and partners without hesitation.

I am writing this email to say how reliable and helpful I have found the services of OAC over the many years I have used them. At times members of my team have had difficulty remembering how to use such technical support services as your endowment compensation calculator but they have always been helped through their problems quickly and efficiently. We have equally found your interest rate calculator a great help not to mention your specialist loss services such as the one Dick Crease is working on at the moment. I think from what I have heard about them your technical efficiencies by using Lotus Notes systems and the use of working from home experts has created a very cost efficient and professional business model.

Diligenta - a UK based FSA regulated subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, the world's leading IT consulting, services and business process outsourcing organisation - is a corporate user of the OACis Calculations platform.

As the Manager responsible for use of the OAC calculator, I am writing to say how pleased I am with the software and it performance.

We have been using the OAC calculator for seven months and has enabled us to provide extra and necessary value to the service we provide to our clients. By using the OAC calculator it gives us confidence when recommending offers to clients as it allows us to verify they are correct.

The latest upgrade has made the whole system more user friendly and the enhancements have made training on the system easier.

The service and support has been excellent and we have not come across any issues when using this software.

As a business with an occassional need to tap into actuarial expertise we have found OAC's support to be just what we have required. The free resources have provided us with information to manage potential risks and liabilities, and when we have required an outsourced loss assessment OAC have provided a professional, speedy and personal service. We would not hesitate to recommend OAC.

Despite the Ltd service you refer to, Focus has always found that the e-mail response rarely goes into the next day and is usually received within a couple of hours of the request for assistance. In addition, the response is quite succinct and any instructions are very easy to understand and implement. In short, the OACis support service is first class and is excellent value for money. We never quibble about renewing the service and would not consider doing without it. May we long continue the relationship.

I really appreciate the effort OAC put into fighting our corner in this case.

I believe that one of the things which makes OAC different from other firms is that you do offer a very personal service which demonstrates you are caring and interested in completing a thorough job.

I have been using OAC's endowment redress calculator for a number of years and it has proved accurate, reliable and easy to use. On the rare occasion that I have encountered a problem or required help, OAC have always responded quickly to identify the problem and help me resolve it. This is particularly impressive when you consider that the software is provided free of charge.

I have been using the OAC endowment redress calculation program almost since it was made available. To date I have been able to carry out around 40 calculations which have been invaluable in dealing with endowment complaints. The system is very robust and when challenged by clients the calculations have been accepted by the Financial Ombudsman Service without need for amendment. Although the terms of agreement do not allow phone support this has been very adequately covered by e-mail and no issues have been outstanding longer than 24 hours. I have no hesitation in recommending OAC to new users of their services.

To date we have used OAC to the extent of the calculator package and any queries have been dealt with efficiently and quickly. In today's busy world I would like to state our experience with OAC has been totally "painless". If I could offer one bit of help to others it would be the "peace of mind" on offer.

As the chief complaints handler at our firm, I have found the endowment calculator invaluable. Despite this being a Ltd service, I have always found emails to be handled swiftly, and the support of a first rate service. I know that any problems are dealt with immediately, and the quality of the product is unrivalled. If the level of complaints warranted it, I would not hesitate to utilise other OAC products, and have widely recommended your firm to other IFAs. Thank you to all at OAC for a first rate service with the personal touch.

Excellent response and lightning fast, very impressive. Many thanks

On the whole we have always been very pleased with the service and technical back-up we have received from you and your staff.

I would very much like to say that the help I have received from OAC has been very impressive. Fortunately I have not been required to do many redress calculations but could still need to a few more in the future. Your technical help has been very useful and I would have been lost without it. Many thanks once again and whilst I do not look forward to needing you again in the future - the fact that your support is there is a comfort.

The customer service is very good and responses to queries are dealt with very promptly. I would recommend OAC's endowment software to anyone.

We have always found the OAC software easy to use and does the job we want efficiently, with the minimum of fuss. When we have had the occasional query, OAC have always been quick to respond. Highly recommended.

On the occasions that we have used OAC, we have always found the company to be competitive in price, very customer friendly and extremely helpful. The prompt response they provide is very good and the customer service they provide is excellent. I would have no hesitation in using OAC Actuaries and Consultants again or recommending them to anybody.

OAC recently provided valuable support to RSA in relation to some complaints we received following 'guaranteed growth bonds' issued through our More Th>n brand approximately 5 years ago. We lacked the expertise internally to deal with these & OAC stepped in to provide us support & guidance. We were so impressed that we delegated the handling of the work to them.

OAC assigned Mike Martineau to be our key contact and he was fantastic. We simply passed any complaints to him - he contacted the customers immediately and managed to resolve 80% of the complaints within days. His knowledge and expertise of how the Financial Ombudsman Service viewed these type of complaints meant that a fair outcome was able to be agreed with our customers within FOS philosophy. Mike kept us fully updated & supplied a monthly progress report on the complaints he'd received from us. Just two of the cases were referred to FOS & they supported us on both occasions saying that we had handled the complaint promptly & given a fair offer. Mike even handled a complaint for a staff member in RSA's own complaints team who praised him for the way it had been handled.

I'd have no hesitation in recommending OAC.

This system is easy to use backed up with comprehensive help notes included in the package supported by perfectly efficient email technical help. The savings to the firm have been substantial. I would highly recommend the service. Many thanks.

Swinton are happy with the service that OAC provide. OAC always respond within the required time frames and provide clear and detailed reports. The staff at OAC are fantastic, polite and helpful.

The software seemed daunting at first but after an hour's telephone training I was far better equipped to produce loss calculations quickly and easily. Quirky situations are generally resolved easily by either consulting the user forums or e-mailing OAC direct, which they respond to quickly. I have found it best to 'replicate' before attempting any calculations and this resolved some of my early issues. The help pages are also comprehensive and resolved a number of queries.

Towergate Financial Services have been using the services of OAC for several years and have always found them to be professional, efficient and helpful in all areas of the business.

I've always found OAC to be prompt and patient in dealing with my occasional requests for help.

I have found the package extremely useful and the email support to be prompt and helpful. The calculation tool is an excellent time saver and provides clients with the confidence to know their complaint has been handled correctly.

Whilst so far we have been extremely fortunate in that those who have complained and subsequently taken their case to the Financial Ombudsman Service have not had their complaints upheld, using the tool provided by OAC has enabled us as a firm to have a reasonable idea as to the amount of redress potentially payable, and for me as an individual not to worry about having to try and calculate this.

On behalf of our subsidiary IFA the Society has consulted twice with OAC, each time with a different consultant. I have found that contact either by email or telephone has been very helpful, very courteous and very professional. I would recommend OAC without hesitation.

Excellent response and lightning fast, very impressive. Many thanks

A professional organisation, who painstakingly assisted us through a complex actuarial calculation. Much additional information was required, and their help to us was crucial. I recommend this firm without reservation!

Roger Grenville-Jones was pro-active, accessible and diligent as an expert witness. His report saved the client time and costs as our opponents found it almost impossible to dispute. Roger is highly recommended for financial services disputes.

We required a responsive expert who was able to provide a report quickly. Our expert was in contact with us almost immediately and had digested the paperwork within a very short space of time which was very helpful. In addition, the expert proved very flexible and was able to stand down as negotiations commenced to try and resolve the dispute. These factors meant that it was a very easy experience working with Mr Crease and to the extent that it was possible, the stress of the situation was minimised.

Mr Crease's actuarial skills were, to the extent that we were able to judge, unquestionable. He spoke authoritatively about the matter which gave us confidence that he knew the facts, had grasped the issues and could apply the actuarial rules to the case.

Overall therefore, we found OAC and Mr Crease to be extremely responsive and helpful and would definitely consider instructing them in the future.

I found OAC to be very knowledgeable, professional and responsive.

We instructed OAC having sent out a number of letters in identical form to persons listed in the register of expert witnesses.

The response was poor save for OAC who adopted from the outset a pro active approach.

We found contact with OAC to be prompt and reliable and found the person dealing with the matter there to be extremely knowledgeable and willing to discuss matters in a straightforward way.

We would not hesitate to recommend OAC to others or use them again at some point in the future if we had the need to do so.

We found OAC Actuaries and Consultants to provide an excellent, professional, responsive service on a highly technical area. Their reports were concise, readable yet comprehensive. We would recommend their instruction.

An excellent service delivered quickly.

Prompt, accurate, professional and constructive, OAC delivered everything I demand from an expert witness.

I instructed Mr Crease at short notice to provide assistance in relation to an ongoing civil claim which was shortly to culminate in a High Court hearing.

Mr Crease provided his opinion at great speed in a comprehensive report.

He thereafter assisted both Counsel and myself in the understanding of issues and participated in a meeting with the expert instructed on behalf of the other party to this action.

Throughout Mr Crease was highly professional and extremely competent. I would have no hesitation in instructing him again myself or recommending him to others.

David Lechmere provided sound advice and guidance as an expert witness and was of great assistance at mediation. Conolly Tunnard was also very helpful and professional.