After hours | e l l i s w o h l n e r
Actuary Without Borders
E
llis Wohlner has been an associate of the Society of Actuaries since 1967, a mem-
ber of the Academy since 1970, and a member of the Swedish Society of Actuaries since moving
to Sweden in 1972. His resumé, covering over 40 years of broad insurance, microinsurance, and
management experience in First- and Third-World settings, betrays a remarkable level of global awareness and civic activity on both the local and international level. In a recent interview with Contingencies,
Wohlner discussed his non-traditional actuarial career.
During my last term at Cornell, John F. Kennedy started the
process of creating the Peace Corps. I was immediately attracted, but the program didn’t actually get off the ground
until the fall of 1961. By then, I was working full time for
New York Life, where I had been an actuarial trainee for three
summers. I got married in the fall of 1963, when my wife,
Joan, had a year left at Brooklyn College. We discussed moving from New York after Joan’s graduation. Since we both
were interested in the Peace Corps, we applied to join and
were posted to Sierra Leone where I served for two years as
a teacher of mathematics.
While in Sierra Leone, I was on leave of absence from
New York Life but was looking into other options, especially the possibility of attending graduate school and
combining African
studies with demography. While
applying to grad
schools, I got a
letter from a
former pro-
Joan and Ellis Wohlner in Istanbul.
72 Contingencies | MAY/JUN.08
fessor of mine at Cornell telling me that a small, progressive
life insurance company in Detroit was looking for its first
full-time actuary and that the company was interested in the
fact that I had Peace Corps experience! After an extensive
correspondence with the CEO of the League Life Insurance
Co., I accepted a position that not only, at age 27, made me
a member of management but also allowed me to continue
my actuarial career and at the same time spend about 10
percent of my time working on development assistance work
in Africa and Latin America.
Much of the focus of your career has been on development
assistance. To what do you attribute this interest?
I became friends with quite a few foreign students at Cornell, especially a number of Africans. This was at a time
when many former colonies were gaining their independence, such as Ghana in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960. The
resurgence of the civil rights movement at the same time
in the U.S. also engaged me.
You moved to Sweden in 1972 and proceeded to serve in a variety of corporate roles in that country for the next 30 years.
How did that happen? Why Sweden? Did you speak Swedish
before emigrating? How difficult was it to slip into a European
corporate perspective coming from the United States?
Though Joan and I both liked our work and lives in
Detroit and had made many good friends there, we
albo / shutterstock
I see by your CV that you went from being a life actuary at
New York Life Insurance in 1964 to serving as a math teacher
in Sierra Leone for two years and then back to a corporate
position as chief actuary for a life insurance company. How did
this come about, and did it set a pattern for you for following a
different career path from those of your corporate peers?
became more and more discouraged
by social and political developments
in the United States, including the
horribly mistaken Vietnam War,
the race riots in many major cities (including Detroit), and the many doings
of the Nixon administration (although
Watergate didn’t take place until several
months after we left).
We made a deliberate but most difficult decision to emigrate, leaving family
and friends and a comfortable life rather
than staying and trying to work for necessary change. Canada would have been
an easier choice, both in terms of language and geographical proximity, but
there were several things about Sweden
that attracted us—its combination of a
free-market economy and a comprehen-
Ellis Wohlner, left, at a cooperative conference
in Ghana, April 1966.
sive and universal social welfare system,
its independence from military alliances,
and its prime minister, Olof Palme, who
was a leading international spokesman for
human rights and against injustices in any
part of the world.
Neither of us spoke Swedish, and we
moved with two very young sons. Gaining
fluency in a new language was much, much
harder than I ever could have imagined. I
prided myself on my speaking and writing
skills in English, and it took a very long time
before I came even close in Swedish. We
also had to adjust to a considerable drop
in income, with my salary cut in half and
Joan, at least at first, unemployed.
Compared to this, the change in corporate culture was one of the easier things
to deal with. I didn’t know the language and
had moved from a very senior position in a
small company to a junior position in a large
company, Folksam Insurance Group. In the
beginning, I was rather confined to direct
actuarial work, where language wasn’t a
barrier. As I gradually learned Swedish,
I also learned about Swedish society and
the business environment, and the people
and culture of my new company. In general,
Swedish working places are less hierarchical than American ones, and the working
environment is more participative.
Contingencies | MAY/JUN.08 73
after hours
How difficult was it to balance your
actuarial responsibilities with your
interest in working with and for
developing countries?
I only continued working as an actuary
during my first three years in Sweden, from
1972 to 1974. I then worked in product
development, as head of all commercial insurance operations (everything from small
kiosks, farms, and taxis to major industries,
Talk about your work in the area of
microinsurance. In the wake of the
awarding of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
to Mohamed Yunus, are microfinance and
microinsurance the way of the future for
bringing financial and economic growth
and parity to Third World nations? What
particular roles can actuaries play?
Microfinance and microinsurance aren’t
new phenomena; only the terminology is
doesn’t involve peer monitoring.
The negative side of microfinance was
well-illustrated in a Dec. 13, 2007, BusinessWeek report, “The Ugly Side of Microlending.”
The negative side of microinsurance hasn’t
been exposed so far but quite a few insurance
companies are already shamelessly exploiting the poor. Actuaries are sorely needed and
have a major role to play in developing realvalue microinsurance plans.
the course of his 40-year
Global Action During
actuarial career, Ellis Wohlner
SV Lumagraphica / shutterstock
❯ Served as the International Cooperative Alliance’s representative
for insurance matters at the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD);
❯ Was principal author of the 1977 UNCTAD study
“Cooperative Insurance, a Suitable Form of Insurance for
Developing Countries”;
❯ Was a member of a 1978 UNCTAD expert group on crop insurance;
❯ Was a member of the development committee of the
International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation;
❯ Was one of two principal authors of preliminary donor
guidelines on microinsurance published by the World Bank’s
Consultative Group to Assist the Poor.
refineries, and nuclear plants), and as the
responsible party for all of my company’s
international organizational involvements.
Both League Life in the U.S. and Folksam
Insurance Group in Sweden were closely
affiliated with cooperative movements and
involved in providing assistance to cooperative movements in developing countries
that wanted to start their own insurance
operations (Folksam still is affiliated with
cooperative movements; League Life was
sold to CUNA Mutual in 1983). When I
moved to Folksam, I was able to continue
my part-time involvement in development
assistance projects in developing countries
(and, after, the fall of the Soviet bloc, even
in Eastern and Central Europe), and have
been involved ever since. Since my retirement in late 2002, I’ve been doing some
international consulting work, mainly on
microinsurance.
74 Contingencies | MAY/JUN.08
relatively new. Both have existed since at
least the 19th century, microfinance in the
form of the various savings and credit society movements (variously known as credit
unions, caisses populaire, cooperativas des
ahorros y creditos, etc.), and microinsurance
in the form of industrial life insurance in the
United Kingdom and the United States.
Unfortunately, microfinance and microinsurance have become buzzwords
in international development assistance
circles. There’s much hyperbole being
peddled about these two, but neither offers any kind of miracle cure for poverty in
developing nations. The Grameen model
of Dr. Yunus has been very successful and
helped many poor women and households
in Bangladesh and other countries to improve their situations. But while the peer
monitoring of the Grameen model does result in low default rates, most microfinance
So what are the success stories that
you have seen working in the area of
microinsurance? Any cautionary tales?
Most success stories involve ordinary people
who manage to arrange, through groups to
which they belong, insurance coverage that
is of real value, that meets genuine needs, and
that’s available at affordable premium levels.
There are many cautionary tales, so
I’ll illustrate with just one. An insurance
company in a very poor developing country sold individual endowment insurance
policies to the poor and lower-middleincome segments. Lapse rates were 55
percent; 15 percent of all claims were rejected; only 8 percent of premiums were
returned in benefits; and expenses were
six times greater than the benefits.
A separate issue is whether endowment insurance can possibly be a priority
for people whose meager incomes scarcely
cover the basics of food, shelter, and clothing. For those who have
any money to save, it’s doubtful whether endowment insurance can
provide reasonably secure returns that (at least on average) exceed
inflation in countries with underdeveloped financial markets and
high rates of inflation.
Do you have any advice for actuaries who are intrigued by
microinsurance and interested in becoming more involved in
development work?
There are many nongovernmental organizations doing development
assistance work of various kinds, and one could get involved through
one or more of them. Although I know little about them, I understand that there is also an informal group of actuaries (called Actuaries
Without Borders) who are involved in development work.
As a longtime resident of a country with cradle-to-grave
social support, what is your take on the health care crisis in
the United States?
The United States is one of the only countries in the world that
doesn’t, at least in principle, provide basic health care for all of its
residents. A sixth of the U.S. population has no health care insurance, and at least as many more have inadequate coverage. Despite
an average per capita health care expenditure that is 60 percent to 70
percent higher than the next highest country, U.S. vital health statistics do not rate very well in international comparisons. It’s my firm
conviction that the United States could control and gradually reduce
per capita health care expenditures and actually improve average
health care by implementing a single-payer national health insurance
plan for all of its residents. Harry Truman proposed such a plan in
1947; 61 years, countless opportunities, and an incredible amount
of wasted dollars later, I believe it’s time to finally act.
In a related question, what’s your prognosis for the survival
of social welfare programs in countries like Sweden where the
birth rate is sinking below replacement levels?
Actually, Sweden doesn’t have that low a birth rate. It’s very close to
replacement level, and we do have a small annual population growth
due both to increased longevity and net immigration. The social
welfare programs here and in other European countries provide
us with a competitive advantage, and despite massive campaigns
to reduce or eliminate them, they have great popular support. Unfortunately, after just such a campaign eight years ago, the Swedish
national pension plan was changed from a defined benefit plan to
a complex and unpopular defined contribution plan. The new plan
requires that a portion of salary contributions (2.5 percent of the
18.5 percent total) be placed in a premium reserve system. I and a
colleague of mine—a former president of the Swedish Society of
Actuaries—have written a number of articles on the subject.
What do you miss the most about living in the United States?
Relatives and longtime friends. Sweden is a small country (about
10 percent larger than California), and since most people have
long-standing friendships and family ties, there’s not much time
left for new friendships. On the lighter side, my wife and I both
really miss New York pastrami and corned beef!
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