Detailed job description and main responsibilities

A.      Professional leadership and strategy

·        Lead the actuarial discipline within the Strategic Value Unit, setting its direction and aligning the work programme and capability with ICB priorities.

·        Identify where actuarial methods can improve strategic and commissioning decisions and advocate proportionate approaches reflecting the question, evidence, uncertainty and intended use.

• Ensure actuarial work complies with applicable professional and technical standards and promotes professional judgement, constructive challenge and proportionate assurance.

B.      Actuarial modelling, forecasting and risk

·        Lead complex actuarial modelling of population need, service demand, utilisation, outcomes, expenditure and financial risk.

·        Develop and assess long-term forecasts and assumptions reflecting demographic change, morbidity, historical experience, activity and cost trends, policy, service transformation, available evidence and the relevant time horizon.

·        Apply scenario, sensitivity and probabilistic methods to quantify the range and likelihood of future outcomes.

• Ensure model performance, uncertainty and limitations are transparent and conclusions proportionate to the evidence.

C.     Strategic planning and financial sustainability

·        Apply actuarial analysis to strategic planning and commissioning, assessing the resource implications of population change, demographic and non-demographic growth, service transformation and new models of care.

·        Assess how alternative demand, activity, capacity, cost and intervention scenarios affect medium- and long-term financial sustainability.

• Work with finance, commissioning, health economics and planning colleagues to distinguish underlying expenditure trends from short-term variation and explain the implications of financial risk, volatility and uncertainty.

D.     Commissioning, payment and risk arrangements

·        Advise on commissioning and payment approaches where population need, future resource use and risk are material, including population-based budgets, risk adjustment, capitated or blended payment, risk-sharing and outcomes-based arrangements.

·        Model the allocation and potential consequences of financial risk for commissioners and providers under alternative contractual or payment arrangements.

• Work with health economists, finance and contracting colleagues to consider financial incentives, risk and expected population outcomes together.

E.      Data, assumptions and technical assurance

·        Lead analysis of complex population, activity, utilisation, outcome, cost and financial data, assessing provenance, completeness, linkage, bias and fitness for purpose.

·        Work with data, digital and information governance colleagues to define requirements and secure authorised access.

·        Establish and document robust assumptions using historical experience, external evidence, trend analysis and expert judgement, making data limitations and uncertainty explicit.

• Assure high-impact actuarial analyses through proportionate validation, peer review, independent challenge and sensitivity testing, supported by reproducible methods, documentation and audit trails.

F.       Insight, influence and multidisciplinary working

·        Work with senior decision-makers to define actuarial questions and communicate recommendations, forecasts, risks, assumptions and uncertainty clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

·        Produce or assure actuarial content for strategic plans, business cases, option appraisals, commissioning proposals and committee papers.

·        Provide constructive professional challenge where assumptions, forecasts or interpretations are unsupported or potentially misleading.

• Integrate actuarial evidence with economic, statistical, population health, clinical, operational and financial evidence, supporting implementation and monitoring whether key assumptions, risks and expected effects remain valid.

G.     Team and portfolio leadership

·        Line manage designated staff and provide actuarial leadership, technical supervision, coaching and support for professional development, training, performance and wellbeing.

·        Lead a portfolio of complex actuarial work, balancing priorities, risks, dependencies, resources and timescales.

• Contribute to workforce planning and recruitment and develop shared methods, templates and resources that strengthen actuarial and wider analytical capability.