Zack Axelrod, chief actuary at American National, has won the InsuranceERM young actuarial professional of the year award, recognising his role in strengthening the insurer's actuarial, risk and capital management capabilities while supporting expansion into new markets.
Axelrod, who is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and a member of the Society of Actuaries, joined American National in August 2025 and has quickly become a central figure in the company's actuarial leadership.
Since joining the company, Axelrod has taken on a broad remit across valuation, modelling, asset-liability management and capital strategy. The submission highlighted his role in bringing those areas closer to commercial decision-making, particularly as American National grows its annuities, pension risk transfer and funding agreement businesses.
A major part of his work has involved building the actuarial infrastructure needed to support new types of transactions. This included American National's entry into the UK pension risk transfer market through a reinsurance deal with Just Group covering $1.3bn of pension liabilities linked to the G4S scheme.
The transaction covered around 22,500 pensioners and deferred members and required significant coordination across actuarial, investment, legal and regulatory teams, which Axelrod undertook.
His role further included helping establish the valuation, operational, regulation and governance arrangements needed to support the deal. The submission said this helped American National expand into the UK market while maintaining capital discipline and adding geographic diversification.
He has also been closely involved in the launch of American National's funding agreement programme, which began with a $500m issuance in the first quarter of 2025 and has since grown to around $2.3bn.
The programme has become an important part of the company's institutional annuity strategy, with Axelrod helping assess its capital impact and align product design with investment considerations.
Another area of focus has been American National's first Japanese reinsurance partnership with Dai-ichi Frontier Life. The arrangement required actuarial and governance practices suited to the Japanese market, including new reserving approaches and ongoing financial oversight.
Beyond individual transactions, Axelrod has led work on the actuarial function itself. Leading a team of over 50 professionals, he has harmonised assumption-setting across American National Group, with the aim of improving consistency and governance across annuity platforms. The company stated that this has helped reduce variation in assumptions and improve reserve stability.
He has also supported the implementation of principles-based reserving for non-variable annuities, a project that enhanced transparency and improved alignment. Tim Walsh, president and chief executive of American National Group, said Axelrod had "raised the expectations and performance" of the actuarial team through his leadership of pricing, valuation, ALM and cashflow testing.
"Zack is a highly skilled professional, of course, but what really sets him apart is how much he cares about the people he leads," Walsh said.
He added that Axelrod "gets the best out of his team because no matter how complex or challenging the situation, he remains positive and committed".
Walsh added that Axelrod had been "an instrumental contributor" to American National's growth and would "play a vital role" in its future success.
