Risk theory is important, but putting the science into practice is imperative.

Comprising a team of three professionals, the Milliman Chicago Life ERM team, has a "practical-first," approach to risk management.

The team, Anthony Dardis, Ariel Weis and Chloe Lau, have over 60 years' experience both on the assets and liabilities side of life insurance. Dardis, for example, co-authored one of the earliest papers published on using efficient frontiers that brings into account the liabilities, as well as the assets, to make strategic asset allocation decisions.

Technical knowledge aside, it is the team's emphasis on the adoption of best-practice approaches that stands out.

These are manifested in frequent dialogue with risk practitioners across the industry, averaging approximately 200 face-to-face interactions with companies each year. This is supplemented with formal risk management surveys that give detailed insights into industry practices, as well as hosting and participation in various risk conferences.

The team has supported clients in several ERM aspects, from better understanding tail risk exposures to optimal organisation and structure for their centralised risk function and bringing risk aspects into strategic decision making.

As a group, they have garnered respect for thought-leadership. Most recently, as the Covid-19 pandemic started to engulf the US, the team published a white paper articulating how they were seeing companies respond from an ERM perspective, remaining up on the curve.

The team is also well known for its benchmarking capabilities, including recent industry-wide surveys on enterprise risk reporting and asset-liability duration practices.

"The pandemic has had profound implications for risk management," says Anthony Dardis, consulting actuary at Milliman. "Our focus will be on medium- and long-term impacts on how insurers conduct their business and run their operations, and new ways in which our clients can tackle their goals by leveraging technology to continue strengthening governance and collaboration at the same time."