BAM Hires Pension Expert

Build America Mutual Assurance Company announced Wednesday that it has hired Les Richmond as vice president and actuary.

“We are looking forward to working with Les, who brings over 30 years of experience in designing and assessing the funding of employee benefit programs,” said Seán McCarthy, managing director and chief executive officer of BAM. “He will play an important role in our credit underwriting process given the importance of understanding the potential impacts of unfunded pension liabilities and other post-employment benefits on transaction performance.”

Richmond joins the company from Hay Group, where he was a senior principal and recently the project leader of a four-year engagement to audit the five New York City Retirement Systems. He also conducted special pension studies for the New York City Office of the Comptroller.

Prior to that, Richmond was senior vice president of Aon Consulting, which he joined in 1986, with the responsibility of providing actuarial consulting on post-retirement health and life insurance benefits and pensions.

He will report to Suzanne Finnegan, chief underwriting officer at BAM.

“I view this as a great opportunity to put my expertise in valuations and pension asset-liability modeling to work in the context of evaluating the debt profiles of a broad range of municipal entities,” Richmond said.

Richmond is an associate of the Society of Actuaries, a fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries, and a member of both the American Academy of Actuaries and the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries.

BAM was founded in July and is rated AA with a stable outlook by Standard & Poor’s. The company, the first mutual municipal bond insurer, insured its first bond issue, $10 million of York Suburban School District, Penn., general obligation bonds, at the end of September.

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