Best's Rankings
Top Audit and Actuarial Firms

• Best's Review Staff
• January 2020
• 

Best's Review presents its ranking of the top auditors and actuaries.

These rankings focus on independent accountants who audit an insurer's annual financial statements and on third-party actuaries who provide an annual statutory actuarial opinion regarding an insurer's policy and claim reserves. These listings of auditor and actuarial firms include only insurance companies with statements that listed auditors or external actuaries. The insurer population includes U.S. and Canadian companies that file with AM Best.

Unlike the annual statutory audit, for which the insurer must use an independent certified public accountant, the actuarial opinion may be provided by an internal actuary, which is an actuary directly associated with the insurer. The data are derived from individuals or firms in the context of providing an annual audit or actuarial opinion. Many of the individuals or firms listed in the tables are likely to have additional insurance clients for which they perform a variety of other services, but such services are not reflected in this survey's data.

The primary task of audit firms working with insurance companies is to certify the audits of financial statements. That means they must understand statutory-based financial accounting. They also stay abreast of developments among regulatory bodies, particularly the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in the United States, to ensure compliance with current standards.

Rankings for both the auditing and actuarial firms are based on the loss reserves held by their client insurance companies. Again, as described in the methodology, not all insurers are included, and not all client relationships between insurance companies and their auditing and actuarial firms have been reflected.

For property/casualty insurers, loss reserves are the total of loss and loss adjustment expense reserves.

For health insurers, loss reserves are the sum of:

1. Claims unpaid, less reinsurance ceded.
2. Accrued medical incentive pool and bonus amounts.
3. Unpaid claims adjustment expense.
4. Aggregate health policy reserves.
5. Property/casualty unearned premium reserves.
6. Aggregate health claim reserves.

For life insurers, loss reserves are the sum of:

1. Aggregate reserves for life and for accident and health.
2. Liabilities for deposit type contracts.
3. Life policy and contract claims.

Count for each sector (P/C, life and health) includes companies for which an auditor or actuary was listed on the statements of companies designated in that sector, plus where they were listed by other companies that also had reserves of that sector's type. For example, some companies designated as health carriers report property/casualty loss reserves in addition to health reserves; those companies are included in the count for the P/C sector, in addition to being included in the client count for the health sector.

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