Andrew Gower
Hampton East,VIC
Summary
Senior leader with over 20 years of commercial experience across actuarial, analytics, and finance roles in the life and health insurance industry. Passionate self-starter and innovative team builder who excels at solving broad business challenges to drive positive business performance. Skilled at challenging organizational culture to ensure the business meets its goals while balancing the needs of customers and stakeholders. Excellent communication and analytical skills with a strong ability to build deep relationships and influence all levels of an organization. Continuously focused on leveraging commercial acumen within the financial services sector to address emerging challenges and support community needs.
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience
Work History
Head of Commercial & Provider Relations
Defence Health
- Led the Provider Relations and Benefit Management functions to ensure that Defence Health can met the healthcare needs of our members at an appropriate cost
- This role led 15 staff covering payment integrity, health programs and provider relations
- Defence Health has approximately $650m in revenue and provides health insurance to about 400,000 people
- Selected achievements – Led the claims remediation workstream to reduce claim backlogs after disruption caused by the implementation of a new core PHI administration system
- This reduced claims on hand from over 30,000 claims to normal levels over 4 months through a combination of system enhancements and people in both internal and external claims teams
- Improved the relationship with major Hospital groups after disruption caused by the implementation of a new core PHI administration system
- The improved relationships enabled Defence Health to have over $50m in cashflow support returned as hospitals became more confident with the new system.
Head of Actuarial
Defence Health
2023.03 - 2023.11
- Due to internal organisational changes, my previous role was expanded to incorporate greater executive and board engagement as well as leading the internal actuarial function within Defence Health
- Selected achievements – Developed the road map to deliver ICAAP requirements for Defence Health including developing improved portfolio governance capabilities and alignment between risk appetite and capital requirements
- Improved the forecasting capability to better capture future product performance and enable greater accuracy in a continued complex environment to support improved decision making and enable AASB 17 reporting.
Actuarial Manager
Defence Health
2021.01 - 2023.01
- Managed and led the internal actuarial function within Defence Health across the whole actuarial value chain, including valuations, forecasting, pricing, business performance reporting and capital management
- Selected achievements – Rebuilt the commercial pricing capability by developing improved understanding of market competitiveness
- Rebuilt the forecasting model to improve the speed and accuracy of modelling as well as increasing the model governance framework
- Led the assessment and management of COVID-19 savings to ensure these were prudently managed while continuing to meet community and regulator expectations.
Head of Customer Portfolio Management
GMHBA
2020.01 - 2021.01
- Owned the portfolio management function of the GMHBA Private Health Insurance business
- There were several core focus areas of the role including product profitability, retention and benefit analytics, pricing of health insurance business and competitor analytics
- GMHBA has approximately $650m in revenue and provides health insurance to about 500,000 people under a multi-brand strategy as well as providing health services in Geelong
- Selected achievements – Developed the portfolio strategy for the migration of 35,000 members from one brand to another to create a more sustainable organisation
- This saw margins improve by approximately 30% in the first half year along with an estimated 20% reduction in operating expenses in year 2 post migration.
Product and Pricing Actuary
GMHBA
2018.01 - 2020.01
- Focused on providing portfolio analysis and advice to the Private Health Insurance team to maximise the proposition while balancing financial requirements and risk
- Core focus areas included the delivery of the annual pricing submissions, improved portfolio governance and greater integration of augmented product features into the core PHI proposition
- Selected achievements – Developed and implemented the ongoing portfolio strategy for a large book of white labelled business
- This including product and brand migration of the members along with a range of actions designed to maximise the future value of these members to the broader membership base of GMHBA
- Led the premium submission process to ensure strong commercial outcomes while taking account of a broad range of stakeholder requirements
- This has seen improved organisational engagement along with greater analysis of commercial price positioning
- Developed the framework for assessing distribution approaches through aggregators to account for greater flexibility within recently signed contracts
- This has seen more targeted product selection available on aggregators assisting the margin performance of GMHBA and Health.com.au
- Assessed the financial impacts of Private Health Insurance reforms on the GMHBA business and facilitated several workshops with senior executives to develop our strategic response
- Worked with the Benefit Management Team on the financial assessment of a new funding models for muscular-skeletal health issues
- These approaches have seen increased health prevention support, reduced funding costs for GMHBA, a decrease in out of pocket for patients and additional patients for providers
- Assisted Benefits Management with the analysis of potential savings from a range of benefit leakage areas
- This work has identified savings of between 3-5% being addressable in the short term.
Actuary
CUA
2017.01 - 2018.01
- Providing a broad range of strategic, analytical and financial advice to the CUA health and consumer credit insurance teams to enable profitable growth
- CUA is Australia’s largest credit union, the health business has revenue of approximately $150m with about 40,000 members
- Selected achievements – Extensively rewrote core pricing governance documents for the CUA Health portfolio to increase alignment with organisational risk appetite and industry wide performance
- This enabled improving the competitive position within the CUA product portfolio to allow growth while managing the insurance risks
- Improved the understanding of how the customer proposition compares in the health insurance market via detailed price-value modelling of all products across the industry
- This improved the strategic conversations during the annual price submission to ensure that greater understanding of market positioning was taken into account when setting prices
- Ensured that CUA maximised the value of its extensive investment in data warehousing via gaining actionable insights from both lapsing and claiming experience
- This has seen an improvement in forecasting and faster appreciation of emerging issues
- Developed the stress testing for CUA Health within the broader CUA stress testing framework leading to improved understanding of the capital implications of various stressed scenarios.
Various Analytical and pricing roles
Medibank Private
2011.01 - 2016.01
- Managed the provision of actuarial advice to the Corporate Portfolio including technical pricing, forecasting, performance management and risk management
- The Medibank corporate portfolio has revenue of over $1.0b with relationships with 1,000 corporate clients
- Selected achievements – Partnered with the Corporate Portfolio team in increasing the understanding and management of profitability within the overall portfolio and ensured that the team developed strong relationships with Medibank’s most important customers
- Developed an updated pricing strategy for the corporate portfolio seeking to facilitate improved sales conversion while managing portfolio profitability overall
- Supported the relationship manager in communicating various options, along with the implications of these, for price increases for Medibank’s largest Corporate account; approximately $60m in revenue
- This relationship had been impacted by a lack of communication around previous pricing changes and was greatly enhanced through increased collaboration.
Various Actuarial Analyst/Actuary Roles
AXA
2004.01 - 2011.01
- Assessed the combined pricing strategy for retail risk insurance for the combined AMP-AXA business along with broader input into future product strategy
- Managed the value reporting process for Australia and New Zealand, including the communication with senior management, and the external market reporting for AXA Asia Pacific Holdings
- Contributed to the pricing and risk management of the individual financial protection products during the design stage including the assessment of product and price changes
- Undertook the valuation of and reported a range of performance measures of key life insurance products.
Analyst
Deloitte
2001.01 - 2004.01
- Contributed as one of a group of Consultants and Analysts to the development of technical solutions for a variety of clients within the life insurance and funds management industries in Australia.
Education
Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) with Honours -
The University of Melbourne
Skills
- Commercial Acumen
- Customer led
- Strategic Thinking
- Supportive Leadership
- Results Orientated
- Problem Solving
- Analytical
- Financial Modeling
Professionaldetails
Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, 2009, Co-Author - Implications of the Changing Nature of Participation in Australian Health Insurance, Actuaries Summit 2015, Author of an article exploring psychological bias within insurance in Actuaries Digital, 2015, Author of a range of articles on the use of aggregators within PHI in Actuaries Digital during 2018, Author of articles on the impact of COVID-19 on PHI forecasting in Actuaries Digital during 2020, Health Practice Committee, 2014-01-01, 2016-12-31, Convenor
Timeline
Head of Actuarial
Defence Health
2023.03 - 2023.11
Actuarial Manager
Defence Health
2021.01 - 2023.01
Head of Customer Portfolio Management
GMHBA
2020.01 - 2021.01
Product and Pricing Actuary
GMHBA
2018.01 - 2020.01
Actuary
CUA
2017.01 - 2018.01
Various Analytical and pricing roles
Medibank Private
2011.01 - 2016.01
Various Actuarial Analyst/Actuary Roles
AXA
2004.01 - 2011.01
Analyst
Deloitte
2001.01 - 2004.01
Head of Commercial & Provider Relations
Defence Health
Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) with Honours -
The University of Melbourne
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