Superannuation and Employee Benefits

We have been providing advice to employers and superannuation funds for many years.

Some of the tasks we regularly undertake include:

• Triennial actuarial valuations and financial condition reports to establish the level of surplus and funding options
  
• Preparation of accounting disclosures to assist employers measure the cost of their defined benefit liabilities under AASB119, IAS19, FAS87 and related accounting standards
  
• Advising on the value of defined benefit liabilities in mergers, acquisitions and business restructures
  
• Conversion of defined benefit arrangements to accumulation designs
  
• Costing of proposed benefit design changes
  
• Preparation of funding and solvency certificates and benefit certificates to satisfy Superannuation Guarantee obligations
  
• Advising on interest crediting rates
  
• Certification of notional taxed contributions
  
• Actuarial certification to enable relevant tax deductions - for example, notional premiums for self insurance of death and disablement cover, certification of unsegregated pension assets and calculations of anti-detriment amounts on death benefits
  
• Generation of cash flow information for asset liability matching exercises
  
• Assistance with choice, design, compliance and regulatory requirements
  
• Valuations of long service leave liabilities
  
• Valuations of liabilities relating to sick leave and recreational leave

Workers Compensation

We advise employers and regulators on the actuarial and financial aspects of workers compensation arrangements. The areas in which we provide advice include:

• Valuations of workers compensation liabilities and risk margins for provisions compliant with relevant accounting standards
  
• Advice on the appropriate levels of bank guarantees (or equivalent securities) required by State scheme authorities
  
• Advice on optimal reinsurance excess levels, limits and coverage
  
• Assessments of potential impact on self-insurance costs from changes in benefit designs or other legislative developments
  
• Costs and benefits analysis of proposed changes to self-insurance administration structures, e.g. the outsourcing of claims management, etc
  
• Stochastic analysis, to estimate likelihoods of potential liability outcomes
  
• Self insurance feasibility studies
  
• Analysis of trends and variability
  

We have a particular focus on assisting self insurers and prospective self insurers.

Valuation of Share Based Payments

Investors and auditors are increasingly interested in the methodologies companies adopt for valuing executive share options, share rights and long-term employee incentive plans.

We provide services to companies valuing these entitlements in accordance with Australian Accounting Standard AASB2 (Share Based Payments), using a suite of in-house software tools that can be tailored to the unique circumstances of each client. Our valuations are fully auditable and provide all the disclosures relevant to preparing our clients' financial statements.

Please contact Geoff Morley on 1800 203 123 or email at geoff@bendzulla.com if you would like any assistance with these issues.

Asset Consulting

Bendzulla Actuarial specialises in liability quantification. Our consortium partner Eriksens Actuarial has strong asset consulting skills. The following is a brief description supplied by them of their services:

"Eriksens Actuarial is a totally independent firm of actuaries, investment strategists and business consultants with offices in Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. We specialise in providing cost effective service and pride ourselves on the quality, timeliness and clarity of our advice to clients. We do not manage money nor do we offer implemented consulting "solutions". As well as the investment professionals based in Sydney, we carry out some of our asset liability modelling and database management from Auckland.

As investment strategists, we provide reliable and innovative advice for competitive fees. We specialise in risk management in its purest sense. We aim to explain complex technical issues in a simple, straightforward manner that can be readily understood by decision makers. Our advice is conservative and designed to stand the test of time. While our focus is in Australia and New Zealand our staff have also undertaken assignments in Russia and Sri Lanka recently.

Our consultants travel regularly to the US, Europe and Asia, both to service clients and to monitor developments in the financial services and investment markets as well as the global economy and its impact on investors.

We conduct qualitative research into all the major investment managers in New Zealand and many overseas managers. This includes regular interviews with investment managers in New Zealand, Australia, U.K. and U.S. and data updates from stockbrokers, financial intermediaries and the investment managers themselves.

We have been advising trustees of major corporate superannuation schemes and managers of large financial institutions on investment strategy and the choice of investment managers for many years. We assist financial institutions and financial planners on the design of funds, the structure of savings products and their distribution.

We have extensive experience in econometric and financial modelling, including asset/liability modelling. We currently provide risk/return analysis on individual assets and asset classes, general investment advice (including attribution analysis) and ongoing investment manager reviews. Since we review, and are in regular contact, with a number of investment managers we are able to discern best practice standards and have in fact advised clients on such standards.

We also take a keen interest in the development of Australian and New Zealand superannuation and savings industry at both the political and technical levels."

A brief outline of their staff and their experience, skills and capabilities are given in their website www.eriksensglobal.com or email Jonathon on j.eriksen@eriksensglobal.com

Tel. +61 2 9223 3747
Unit 9, 84 Pitt Street
SYDNEY NSW 2000

Consumer Credit

The consumer credit code places significant compliance obligations on banks, credit unions and other lenders. Bendzulla Actuarial can assist with the preparation and review of comparison rates and related interest calculations.

We also help clients with computational aspects of their loans. For example, developing tailored software to:

• Calculate the repayments required on a loan
  
• Determine the term of a loan
  
• Calculate annualised average percentage rates
  
• Confirm compliance with statutory interest rate caps

Miscellaneous

Actuarial techniques can be applied to a wide range of issues, especially if they involve uncertain future events. A few examples are:

• retirement home funding and bonds
  
• real estate developments
  
• future cost of warranty arrangement
  
• gambling tasks
  
• transfer of staff entitlements
  
• financial modelling
  
• health funds
  
• reverse mortgages

Service Philosophy

We are dedicated to providing professional services and advice that is client focused, timely and clearly presented. We invest heavily in the latest technological and research tools available globally, and have built many of our own computational tools needed for our services.

Fees

Our fees are aggressively competitive.

We are happy to work on either a time-cost basis or negotiate a fixed fee for a task. Over the longer term what we aim to achieve is to be reimbursed at the following charge out rates for each hour worked. Our 2008/09 hourly charge out rates are:

Qualified Actuary	$396 p.h.*
Actuarial Analysts	$209 p.h.*
Secretarial Support	$99 p.h.*

* These prices are inclusive of GST - in most instances you will be able to claim this back.

We are very cost conscious and our aim is to work as cost effectively as possible. We believe our costs are highly competitive.

For a detailed quote don't hesitate to contact us on Freecall 1800 203 123 or email us at actuarial@bendzulla.com.