Interview with M. Bell Fanon Ouelega, FSA, CERA
By John Robinson
International News, January 2025
I met M. Bell Fanon Ouelega FSA, CERA, several years ago through the International Association of Black Actuaries (IABA). After a successful career as a life actuary in the US, he decided to return to his native country, Cameroon. For the past three years, he has served as chief actuary of Activa Group. I believe this experience can serve as a possible model for FSAs in Africa. I hope you enjoy reading the written interview that follows.
John: Bell, thank you for agreeing to this written interview. First of all: What made you become an actuary?
Bell: I love mathematics. Becoming an actuary gave me the opportunity to apply my mathematical skills to solve business problems. I enjoy the “social aspect” of the insurance sector. Insurance services help households and businesses palliate the economic consequences of uncertain, adverse and sometimes undesirable events. Being an actuary is therefore socially valuable and intellectually rewarding.
John: Describe your career while you were in the US.
Bell: I started my actuarial career in life insurance as an actuarial student in the US. I worked in many roles including cash flow testing modeling, valuation, pricing, and risk management. The companies I worked for commercialized fixed annuities, equity indexed annuities and variable annuities. While my first role was that of an actuarial analyst, I evolved in my career to become the director of quantitative risk management after receiving my FSA more than 12 years ago.
John: What made you decide to return to Cameroon?
Bell: I am a native of Cameroon. I have obtained a valuable education and experience in the US. At some point, it was valuable for me to bring it all home and help my country prosper. I believe that with my FSA and US experience, I will have a bigger impact in Cameroon and Africa in general, than I would have had in the US.
John: How is your role in Activa different from your previous roles in the US?
Bell: I am the chief actuary at Activa, a leading pan-African insurance group headquartered in Cameroon, with a substantial presence across Sub-Saharan Africa.
In my role as chief actuary at Activa, I encounter distinct challenges and opportunities compared to my previous actuarial experiences in the US. The actuarial landscape in Africa is notably broader and more diverse. Unlike a more specialized role, my responsibilities here include a comprehensive range of actuarial tasks, from traditional functions such as reserving, valuation, and pricing adequacy to non-traditional areas like experience studies, reinsurance analysis, and risk management. This diverse scope is essential for managing the complexity of various insurance products—life, savings and general insurance—across multiple regulatory environments.
I oversee the actuarial functions for three of Activa’s life insurance operations in Guinea, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as for several of our P&C companies. Additionally, I serve as the chief risk officer (CRO) for Activa Re.
A significant challenge in my role is the shortage of qualified actuaries across the continent, which adds to the complexity and demands of my position.
John: Does your role also involve pension work? Can you tell us a bit about it?
Bell: Private sector enterprises located in Africa generally offer DB pension to their workers except that for the most part, the benefit payable at the termination of employment is a lump-sum benefit rather than a life annuity. Per the ministry of labor in these countries, the benefit amount varies with the number of years in service and the annual salaries. It accrues to the ultimate benefit payable at retirement when all life and service contingencies are satisfied.
Per IAS-19 regulation, companies in Africa, including Activa, have to recognize their pension liabilities in their balance sheet. As the chief actuary for Activa, I am responsible for overseeing the valuation of the accrued liabilities (AL), the normal cost (NC) and the unfunded accrued liability (UAL) for many pension schemes. I was introduced to pension mathematics throughout the process for qualifying as an actuary. That has been instrumental to mastering and implementing the cost method needed to perform the pension valuation task.
John: Since you are a life actuary by training, how were you able to learn P&C and health practice areas, and how did your SOA training prepare you to adapt to these fields?
Bell: I must admit that the FSA education, while geared towards a single track, is very robust. I had a strong background that allowed me to quickly grasp actuarial concepts beyond my traditional track and apply them in various fields of work. For instance, to be able to perform the pricing adequacy testing of the auto block of business or to estimate the Incurred But Not Reported (IBNR ) reserve for a portfolio of health insurance business using the Chain-Ladder or the Bornhuetter Fergusson methods, I had to re-educate myself through intense readings of papers from the SOA and the CAS websites.
John: Does your employer currently support actuarial students?If not, how necessary is such support?
Activa provides support to its actuarial students. However, the level of support is not commensurate to what a US-based student obtains from his or her employer mainly due to the more limited companies’ financial resources who are constantly dealing with the training investment/employee retention dilemma. However, the company encourages actuarial education, organizes annual seminars for actuaries, pays for the SOA dues for those who have completed their qualifications, pays for trips to attend actuarial seminars (like IFRS-17 seminars), and pays for special training offered by the SOA. Activa Academy is the group’s in-house training arm that centralizes all the training whether soft or hard, including actuarial training and knowledge.
John: Starting in 2025, the SOA will no longer require FSA candidates to choose a single track. How valuable is this in Africa?
Bell: With the upcoming change in the SOA syllabus, the next generation of FSA with the intention to settle in the African continent will be better prepared than I was. There are very few qualified actuaries in the continent and the demand is rising. Considering the trend of regulation towards IFRS-17 and/or ORSA, we can only guess that the demand for these skills will be higher in the future. With the new SOA system, future actuaries will have a broader horizon of actuarial work and applications. It will be possible upon qualification to bring a difference in many aspects of an insurance company. This is extremely valuable for the African continent.
John: Can you describe how actuarial skills are instrumental to enhancing or modernizing insurance regulation in Africa?
Bell: Africa is a diverse continent, with a multitude of people, countries and cultures. Yet, the regulation of the insurance sector in the country is less diverse. For instance, in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the local GAAP accounting is the IFRS-17 accounting framework; this is also the case in Mauritius. In these countries, actuaries are extremely useful in transitioning to this new and challenging accounting framework.
Many Francophone sub-Saharan African countries are regulated by the same entity—the Conférence InterAfricaine des Marchés des Assurances (CIMA). Located in Gabon, CIMA sets the rules for the insurance sector in more than 14 Francophone countries. Currently, the CIMA regulation for estimating the unpaid liabilities for a property and casualty block of insurance business is not modernized. However, the CIMA regulator is always open to see that the local actuary has implemented a better method that reflects the true dynamics of the business. In these 14 countries, and certainly other parts of the continent, there are instances where the premium to be charged for a coverage is regulated by the CIMA, rather than being risk-based.
In fact, one may argue that CIMA is slow to modernize the insurance regulations in those 14 countries because the shortage of actuaries in the continent means local insurance companies will not be able to comply.
John: Does that mean the convergence to ORSA or its adoption is slow in the continent?
Bell: Yes, regulations that emphasize risk management are slow in the continent. However, there are some exceptions. In Ghana for instance, all insurance and reinsurance companies have to prepare the Financial Condition Testing (FCT) report and submit it to the National Insurance Commissioner (NIC). In Mauritius, all insurance and reinsurance companies have to comply with the FSC’s Insurance Risk Management Rules of 2016. The new rules in Angola require that starting in 2024; insurance companies will prepare a risk management report similar to the FCT. Also, in Angola, starting around 2026, insurers will have to estimate the unpaid liabilities using actuarial techniques backed by an actuarial valuation report. The actuaries preparing these risk reports and valuation reports use the same standards and guidelines as actuaries in Canada and the US do. Given the trend towards IFRS-17 regulation in Anglophone Africa, one can speculate that the adoption of ORSA or the requirement for risk analysis by regulators in Anglophone countries will quickly evolve.
John: Today’s reality in Africa is that less than 3 out of 100 people own an insurance policy. In other words, the penetration rate is extremely low and the contribution of insurance premium to GDP is low. What can be done to solve this problem?
Bell: To change the trend, many forces have to come together:
- Governments shall help the sector by encouraging mass education of insurance services, making some insurance compulsory, enacting insurance-friendly legislations and tax-rules, encouraging households towards long-term savings, encouraging businesses towards risk hedging solutions sold by insurers, encouraging insurers to invest in national infrastructure projects like roads, schools and hospitals.
- Insurers have to be more responsible about the services they commercialize. Actuaries shall work with sales persons to help them understand and explain the products and their guarantees to customers, insurers have to pay claims in order to change the reputation of the sector, actuaries need to develop better products that reflect the needs of the customers, and actuaries have to use risk-based pricing techniques in quoting the premiums, so that the premiums reflect the risk attitude and appetite of the potential policyholder.
- Modernizing insurance regulations will increase the professionalism of insurance agents, enhance the transparency of financial information provided by insurance companies to their various stakeholders, enforce the security of policyholders, and improve the quality of insurance services.
John: After all, insurance is a business and as such, one of the objectives of the shareholders is to make a profit. Describe how insurance companies in Africa can attract capital, maintain or improve their profit margin?
Bell: To maintain its profit margin, I think that the insurer shall develop new products and a strong commercial force. Through digitalization, the insurer can quickly reach the critical mass while reducing acquisition expenses. Through automating its internal processes, the insurer can reduce its management fees. The combination of digitalization and automating the internal processes can reduce insurance costs and help democratize insurance services. Actuarial analysis can help optimize the reinsurance arrangement and enhance the profitability of the insurance service. Therefore, reducing insurance costs further while democratizing the products. To succeed in this business, actuaries, IT persons, market and marketing experts, as well as other insurance professionals shall work together.
To attract capital like Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the insurer shall prove that it has a strong business model embedded with product development, digitalization, automating internal processes and optimizing reinsurance solutions. In addition, the insurer shall adhere to high financial reporting standards. It would help investors if the financial statements of the insurer are presented under IFRS-17 or a similar norm.
John: How many FSAs are currently based in Cameroon where you are?
Bell: I am currently the only FSA working full-time in Cameroon. There is a FSA based in Florida that performs independent actuarial consulting work. There are other fellow actuaries in Cameroon who have obtained their qualifications in countries like France and Germany. Nevertheless, thanks to my presence in Cameroon, many actuarial students start to believe they can become FSA as well. It is always a pleasure to proctor the SOA exams when they decide to take them.
John: Thank you, Bell, for sharing your experience with us as an FSA in the US and Africa.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
M. Bell Fanon Ouelega FSA, CERA, is chief actuary of the Activa Group. He can be reached at bell.ouelega@gmail.com .
John Robinson FSA, MAAA, is past president and chair (2022–23) of the Society of Actuaries. He can be reached at jwrob03@gmail.com.