BDO SA has suspended its head of actuarial services after the Prudential Authority (PA) accused her of misrepresenting her qualifications in a court application by the regulator to have underwriter 3Sixty Life placed under provisional curatorship.
The local unit of the global professional services firm informed Business Day late on Wednesday that it had suspended Yashoda Ram, its actuarial head, after it became aware of alleged discrepancies in the representation of her qualifications.
Ram was appointed provisional curator of 3Sixty Life in December 2021 after an urgent application by the PA, which said the underwriter of life and funeral policies had failed to maintain minimum capital and solvency capital requirements.
3Sixty Life is owned by 3Sixty Global Solutions Group, the holding company that is majority-owned by the investment arm of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA.
However, the PA applied to the high court on February 15 to have Ram replaced as 3Sixty Life’s provisional curator on the grounds that her qualifications were misrepresented in its original interim curatorship application. In the papers, the regulator argues that Ram does not have a degree in actuarial science and that she did not complete the Certified Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA) course in 2016 as indicated on her resumé, which was attached to the original 3Sixty Life provisional curatorship application.
“BDO SA has become aware of alleged discrepancies in the representation of the qualifications of the BDO employee appointed by the high court as the provisional curator of 3SixtyLife,” the firm said in a statement. “BDO has suspended the employee concerned and will conduct a full independent investigation into the matter.
“As a consequence of this ... BDO is in agreement with the PA’s request to replace the provisional curator with an actuarial specialist.”
The PA now wants Tinashe Frank Mashoko to replace Ram as provisional curator. Mashoko is a consultant to BDO SA who worked closely with Ram and the firm’s team during the provisional curatorship process. The legal papers filed by the PA indicate that Mashoko is an active fellow of the Actuarial Society of SA (Assa) as well as the UK’s Institute of Actuaries.
“Under these circumstances, the authority no longer has faith in the integrity of Ms Ram,” the PA said in papers filed to the high court. “It is undesirable to allow Ms Ram to continue to be the provisional curator when the authority no longer has faith in her integrity.”
The PA says it relied on the strength of Ram’s resumé provided by BDO as well as her profile on the firm’s website when the original application was made to have her appointed as the provisional curator of 3Sixty Life. However, the regulator says that after making subsequent inquiries with Assa it discovered that she was only a “student member” of the actuarial body and did not possess a degree in actuarial science.
However, Ram’s lawyers sent Business Day a copy of her answering affidavit in which she says the PA has impugned her integrity and spread falsehoods that have resulted in her suspension. She goes on to say in the affidavit that she never submitted to the PA that she holds an actuarial degree, nor any degree for that matter.
Furthermore, she states that she did not misrepresent any facts pertaining to qualifications related to her membership of Assa. Ram says in the affidavit that she informed the PA as early as January 28 2022 that she did not have an actuarial degree and that she was assured by a representative from the regulator that her eligibility as a curator had nothing to do with having a degree.
“The applicant’s representative assured me that I was eligible to act as curator on the basis of my vast experience in the insurance industry,” she said. “It is therefore disingenuous and blatantly untrue that the applicant only recently became aware of my qualifications.”
Ram also says she informed the Reserve Bank’s legal counsel, Dean Benn, that she had not completed an undergraduate degree, nor the CERA course. She goes on to say that she expressed reservations to ENSafrica, which was representing the PA, about how her qualifications were referenced in court documents.
Nevertheless, elsewhere in her answering affidavit, Ram acknowledges that the resumé submitted to the court in the PA’s interim curatorship application for 3Sixty Life had erroneously stated that she had completed a CERA qualification. While she confirms that she signed a confirmatory affidavit to which this resumé was attached as part of court documents, she says she mistakenly overlooked a spelling error in the document that showed she “completed” the CERA course instead of saying she was still “completing” it.
“I confirm that I did not make this misrepresentation nor do I know who did,” she says.
However, Ram’s most alarming allegation in her responding affidavit is the claim that the PA wants her removed from being the provisional curator of 3Sixty Life to “frustrate” her delivery of a report on the underwriter’s business. She contends that the report, which she says was prepared with the input of independent experts, will show that 3Sixty Life should never have been placed into provisional curatorship in the first place.
“The applicant wants me removed ... to ensure that its actions in placing the first respondent [3Sixty Life] under curatorship is not embarrassed,” she states.
The PA said its application to have Ram replaced as provisional curator of 3Sixty Life was taken solely in the interests of the company and its policyholders and its desire to protect the integrity of the curatorship process.
“The PA remains of the view that the curatorship is in the best interest of 3Sixty Life and the policyholders in overcoming the regulatory challenges 3Sixty Life is currently facing,” it said.
Ram’s LinkedIn profile shows she has been employed as a director at BDO SA since August 2021 and has held the position of head of actuarial, predictive analytics and insurance innovation since September. Under the education banner on her LinkedIn profile, she lists a Bachelor of Applied Science in psychology from Unisa with a date range of 2019 to 2022.
