Gordon Hines

    Gordon Hines ’05

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    2005

    I am currently working at Allied World Assurance Company in Farmington, CT as Senior Vice President and Lead Reserving Actuary.

    I began my Actuarial career in the summer between my junior and senior year, interning for The Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, CT as a member of the Actuarial Leadership Development Program (ALDP). Upon graduating from college I was offered a full-time position there in the ALDP, along with about a dozen other recent college graduates from throughout the country. Being a part of an Actuarial Development program is a great way to ease into the Actuarial career. At Travelers the program offered numerous educational classes, from technical to business skills; the opportunity to rotate annually to positions throughout the company; and most importantly exam support in the way of manuals, seminars and paid study time to help navigate the grueling exam process. It’s a great way to see and learn about many different areas of the company, all while sitting for (and hopefully passing) the many Actuarial exams. Exams are generally offered just twice a year so it can take many years to complete. I finished my 9th and final exam in fall of 2011, and at that time became a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

    In the spring of 2014 I joined Allied World Assurance Company. For my first 6 years I was the lead pricing Actuary for Professional Lines (Directors and Officers Insurance, Cyber Liability, etc…). As a Pricing Actuary I spent much of my time working with underwriters, analyzing the lines of business to assess the profitable or unprofitable segments, and helping to develop new products to expand Allied World’s reach in the market.
    In 2020, shortly after the start of the pandemic, I was promoted to Senior Vice President to lead the loss reserving across most of the company. As a reserving actuary, I look at all of the loss reserves we have set aside for incurred claims across all lines of business, as well as any potential current year catastrophes (i.e. Hurricanes, wildfires, etc…), and ensure those are adequate to cover our loss obligations.

    My mathematics degree from Saint Michael’s has helped me tremendously throughout my career: from the Calculus and Statistics background in the early years to help pass exams, to the experiences of smaller, focused classes in my major. Being at a small school, and in a specialized major, classes were much more interactive than they would have been at a larger university and set a strong foundation for working on teams and interacting with others in a business setting. The college also directly introduced me to my future career: going into college I knew I wanted to be a math major but I had no idea what an Actuary even was. At the start of my junior year, the math department brought in an outside speaker who was an Actuary at National Life in Montpelier. I knew right away that’s what I wanted to do with my major, and I’ve enjoyed it ever since.