Zamara Strengthens its Actuarial Function; Appoints Two New Actuaries

Zamara Group has announced the appointment of two new qualified actuaries a move it says will shore up its team’s capacity and further expand its actuarial service offering in Kenya and across Africa at large.

Following the appointment of the two Jay Kosgei and Nikhil Dodhia, Zamara now has the largest and most experienced pool of actuaries in East Africa comprising seven Fellows and three Associate actuaries.

Commenting on the new appointments, Zamara Group CEO, Sundeep Raichura said, “Being a critical function for achieving a sustainable and profitable growth within our business, we are delighted to have both Jay and Nikhil as part of our Actuarial team.”

Jay Kosgei, FIA, CPA

Jay is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a CPA (K). Jay joins from Britam Holdings Plc, where he has been overseeing actuarial matters for Britam’s general insurance subsidiaries across seven countries in Eastern and Southern Africa. Jay has domain experience in health and general insurance but has had prior exposure in life insurance and pensions. Jay brings with him actuarial functional experience in reserving, pricing, product design, reinsurance, solvency, and capital management as well as corporate experience in product and process innovation, strategy development and monitoring, risk management, and benefits/incentives design.

Nikhil Dodhia, FIA, CERA

Nikhil is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a Certified Enterprise Risk Actuary. He has worked both in the industry as well as consulting, leading the actuarial practice for KPMG East Africa before joining Zamara. He previously worked in the United Kingdom at KPMG UK and Canada Life. Nikhil has been extensively involved in IFRS 17 gap & impact assessments, IFRS 17 implementations, insurance liability valuations, product pricing, employee benefit valuations, transactions, risk management, transformations, audit reviews, and many more.

“In the past ten years, we have witnessed significant growth in our actuarial practice area as the breadth of our services and market needs have continued to increase.  Our service offering has expanded to include general insurance consulting, healthcare consulting, enterprise risk management, reinsurance optimization and, most recently, services to the banking industry and data analytics,” Mr. Raichura said, adding that the company continues to grow its Pan-African footprint with offices in Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Nigeria.

In addition to the recruitment of two actuaries, Zamara has announced that two members of its actuarial team, Sheila Gatu, and Kio Mwangasha qualified in 2020.  Sheila will be supporting the development of the Group’s Pan-African footprint as the COO of the Rwanda office whilst Kio has been instrumental in building the company’s IFRS17 capabilities.

In 2019 Zamara became the first firm in the whole of Africa to be awarded the prestigious Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS) accreditation by the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.  This award is a recognition of the professionalism, technical quality and regulatory compliance of the Group’s actuarial division and these latest recruitments further reinforce Zamara’s position as one of the leading actuarial firms in Africa.