BDO SA has acknowledged that the qualifications of its head of actuarial services, Yashoda Ram, were misrepresented in documents submitted to the Prudential Authority (PA) and later to the high court as part of the regulator’s application to have underwriter 3Sixty Life placed under provisional curatorship.
Business Day has obtained the answering affidavit of BDO’s head of financial services, Pierre Jacobs, which was submitted to the court on Friday in response to a February 15 application by the PA to have Ram replaced as provisional curator of 3Sixty Life.
Central to the PA’s application is that Ram did not complete the Certified Enterprise Risk Actuary (Cera) course as indicated on her resumé attached to its original court application to have 3Sixty Life placed under provisional curatorship late in 2021.
The regulator also takes issue with Ram not having an actuarial degree, though Ram says she never claimed to have one.
BDO SA’s responding affidavit appears to corroborate the allegations made in the PA’s application to have Ram replaced, which is scheduled to be heard on Tuesday.
Jacobs says in his affidavit the firm accepts that Ram’s resumé, which was submitted as part of the PA’s provisional curatorship application, was inaccurate in that it should have specifically indicated she was merely a “student member” of the Actuarial Society of SA (Assa) and should not have suggested that she had completed the Cera qualification. “BDO regrets these inaccuracies and would not have provided Ms Ram’s resumé in the form it did to the authority had it been aware of the inaccuracies contained in the resumé submitted,” Jacobs says in the firm’s answering affidavit.
Jacobs explains in his affidavit that after responding to a request from the PA to provide information on its ability to provide curatorship services, BDO SA submitted documents that included an original version of Ram’s CV, which correctly stated that she was merely a student member of Assa. This original CV also stated that she was in the process of “completing” the Cera qualification.
However, Jacobs’s affidavit states that during the process of preparing the firm’s formal proposal to supply curatorship services to the regulator, BDO SA’s Dylan Bywater emailed Ram on October 6 2021 requesting her latest CV. The next day Ram responded via email saying she had updated her CV and reworded it in “a few places”.
Jacobs says her updated CV was amended to show she was a member of Assa rather than a student member, while the bullet point relating to the Cera qualification had been altered to remove the word “completing”.
Jacobs’s affidavit states: “It now read ‘Certified Enterprise Risk Advisor’ (Cera/Assa)/2016. Neither Mr Bywater nor I had any reason to doubt the correctness of the amendments.”
Business Day put questions to Ram on the alleged amendments to her CV via her PR consultant and was told in a statement that “the changes thereafter are done by someone other than Ms Ram”.
To muddy the waters further, Assa tells Business Day that calling oneself a member is not technically incorrect, though its official nomenclature distinguishes between student members, technical members, fellows and associates.
Only members who hold a fellowship or an associateship can use the title “actuary”.
Complicating the issue is that a transcript included in Ram’s answering affidavit to the PA application to have her replaced shows she has passed nine Assa modules. Assa says all nine count towards the 13 required to become an actuary, though a degree in a mathematical or statistical field would also be needed to become an actuary.
BDO told Business Day in a statement that it was “comfortable” with Ram’s academic achievements when it hired her as the decision was based on her extensive insurance experience and industry network. Jacobs’s affidavit also acknowledges that Ram never represented to BDO SA that she had completed an actuarial science degree.
The main contention by both the firm and the PA therefore appears to be that her CV was amended to suggest that she held the Cera qualification when she in fact did not. Assa also tells Business Day that only members who hold a fellowship or an associateship — and are therefore qualified actuaries — can qualify as certified risk actuaries as per the Cera qualification.
BDO says it has instituted an independent investigation and will not give further comment until that process and the court hearings have been concluded.
However, the issue gets even murkier when one reads the answering affidavit of Tinashe Mashoko, a qualified actuary and consultant to BDO SA who has been working with Ram on the 3Sixty Life provisional curatorship process.
Mashoko, who is the candidate the PA wants to replace Ram, states in his affidavit that at a meeting on January 29 2022 she told him that the business of 3Sixty Life had been mismanaged. That allegation directly contradicts Ram’s own answering affidavit, which alleges that the reason the PA wants her removed as provisional curator of 3Sixty Life is that she was in the process of drafting a report that would show the provisional curatorship should never have been instituted in the first place.
Mashoko also says in his answering affidavit that Ram communicated on January 29 2022 that she had a BSc in actuarial science. Ram’s answering affidavit states that she never represented to the PA that she had an actuarial degree, or any degree for that matter.
The story took a further twist late on Monday when Business Day received what appeared to be Ram’s provisional curatorship report on 3Sixty Life, which concludes that the provisional curatorship of 3Sixty Life “may not have been appropriate” and should be opposed.
The PA and BDO SA confirmed to Business Day they had received the same report and are reviewing it.
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