About us

Melville Jessup Weaver is the largest firm of consulting actuaries in New Zealand. We use our extensive experience, knowledge, and resources to provide demonstrable value to our clients. We are skilled at understanding, solving and communicating solutions to meet client needs.

At Melville Jessup Weaver, we pride ourselves in our independence. We take an objective view the issues facing clients and provide unconflicted advice, with no possibility of being influenced by a parent company, competing lines of business, or other organisation.

The firm provides actuarial consulting in the areas of insurance, superannuation, KiwiSaver, investment consulting, financial analysis, and risk management. We are the Appointed Actuary for several general and life insurers. We also have a strong superannuation administration business.

Melville Jessup Weaver is affiliated with WTW, a leading global professional services company that helps organisations improve performance through effective people, risk, and financial management. WTW has more than 45,000 employees in more than 140 countries and is located on the web at www.wtwco.com

Our People

Ben Trollip

Ben Trollip is an actuary specialising in providing investment consulting advice to superannuation schemes, charitable trusts, and other institutional investors. He provides advice on a wide array of investment matters including the development of investment objectives, strategic asset allocation, manager selection and monitoring, and asset/liability modelling. In addition, he advises on issues such as currency hedging policy, asset rebalancing policy, and governance issues.

Ben began his career Melville Jessup Weaver before moving to our alliance partner, WTW, where he worked within the Sydney based manager research team. In this role, Ben researched investment managers in Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA. He was intimately involved in setting WTW’s research view and working with clients in selecting and developing investment mandates to suit their needs. Ben has assisted clients ranging in size to over $40 billion in assets under management.

Ben has written papers on a range of topics including Centralised Portfolio Management and Small Cap Equities, and has presented on topics such as Smart Beta.

 

ben.trollip@mjw.co.nz

+64 (9) 300 7315

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Chris Sissons

Chris Sissons is an actuary specialising in superannuation and life insurance. He originally started with MJW in 2011 working primarily in Superannuation and Employee Benefits.

Chris re-joined MJW in 2022 after three years working at Resolution Life where he was involved in a range of activities including, group pricing, experience investigations, IFRS valuations, solvency calculations, and risk management. His life insurance experience also includes model development for a full range of contemporary life insurance products, along with valuation of traditional products and reinsurance calculations.

In the superannuation practice area, he provides a range of advice to both superannuation schemes and employers regarding benefit design, actuarial valuations, member communications, superannuation legislation, IAS19 and FASB accounting valuations and other actuarial issues.

He has also undertaken several ad hoc projects including unit price error correction and reviews of various calculators for public and private sector entities.

chris.sissons@mjw.co.nz

+64 (4) 830 0113

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Craig Lough

Craig Lough is an actuary specialising in the field of general insurance. He began his career at Melville Jessup Weaver before working in Australia and then the UK. During his time away he worked for a large London consulting office as well as multinational insurance companies both in Australia and the UK.

Craig’s broad array of experience includes valuation, basis setting, auditing, process improvement, and exposure to IFRS and USGAAP.

craig.lough@mjw.co.nz

+64 (9) 300 7151

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David Chamberlain

David Chamberlain is an actuary with over 30 years of commercial experience in the financial services sector. Specialising in insurance, in particular life insurance, David has helped businesses both strategically and operationally. David has worked with a variety of clients from fishing companies to superannuation funds on many fascinating projects. He has experience in unit pricing and unit pricing error correction. He focuses on, and takes pride in, helping clients achieve a track record of success. He has experience both as an Executive and as a Director.

Prior to joining MJW David led the team building an insurance business for a New Zealand government owned bank in New Zealand. This encompassed all aspects of building the business including meeting the licencing requirements to operate as an insurer in New Zealand. Insurers in New Zealand are prudentially supervised by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

He was previously Chairman of the New Zealand Blood Service for 12 years, a member of the University Council of Victoria University of Wellington and a Director of At Work Insurance Limited, the State Owned Enterprise set up to compete during the privatisation of compensation for work-related injuries in New Zealand.  He currently Chairs the Trustees of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand.

He is currently the Appointed Actuary to two New Zealand life insurers.

david.chamberlain@mjw.co.nz

+64 (4) 830 0117

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Jeremy Holmes

Jeremy Holmes is an actuary specialising in general insurance.   His experience includes a wide variety of work for our New Zealand clients as well as some time working for a Lloyd’s insurer in London.

Jeremy is interested in pricing and profitability analyses for general insurers or anyone interested in getting a better understanding of their products’ performance.   He also undertakes insurance liability valuations, reviews and ad-hoc projects.

jeremy.holmes@mjw.co.nz

+64 (9) 300 7318

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Bernard Reid

Sadly, Bernard Reid passed away in January 2024.

 For superannuation matters, please contact Chris Sissons at chris.sissons@mjw.co.nz or on +64 (4) 830 0113.

 For investment matters, please contact Ben Trollip at ben.trollip@mjw.co.nz or on +64 (9) 300 7315.

Linda Caradus

Linda Caradus is an actuary with a large amount of experience gained over a distinguished career.  Linda works on a part-time basis for MJW and enjoys supporting the other actuaries at MJW

linda.caradus@mjw.co.nz

+64 (4) 815 8889

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Steve Grant

Steve Grant heads up our superannuation administration team. He started at Melville Jessup Weaver in 2000 as an actuarial analyst and moved into the administration space as the business grew.

Steve has experience with the administration of defined benefit schemes, defined contribution schemes and KiwiSaver schemes. In recent years he has overseen a number of smooth transitions of administration services to Melville Jessup Weaver.

Steve’s expertise extends to compliance under the Financial Markets Conduct Act for each of the schemes administered and for a few in-house administrators who have out-sourced this function.

steve.grant@mjw.co.nz

+64 (4) 815 8885

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William Nelson

William Nelson is an actuary who has been providing investment consulting services since he joined MJW in 2011. William has broad experience providing advice to a variety of institutional investors such as superannuation schemes, charitable trusts and inheritance funds. He provides advice on all aspects of investment consulting, including the development of investment objectives, strategic asset allocation, SIPOs and manager selection and monitoring.

William is also skilled in complex investment modelling processes, such as asset/liability matching and savings projections tools in the context of the New Zealand regulatory environment. He plays a key role in developing and maintaining MJW’s capital markets model, which provides forecasts for future investment return and risk.

william.nelson@mjw.co.nz

+64 (9) 300 7150

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