ColumbiaActuary
Welcome to Columbia Actuary. The company has been providing actuarial consulting since 1982 as Jess Feinman, F.S.A, Consulting Actuary, and as Columbia Actuary, LLC.
Prior to the formation of Columbia Actuary,
Jess was a self-employed consulting actuary, providing actuarial services in
the retirement plans field. His clients included small corporations,
self-employed individuals, and pension administration firms with plans ranging
in size from one to more than six thousand participants. As a consultant to the
United States General Accounting Office, he has reviewed the allocation of
costs under one of the federal survivors' annuities systems. As a part-time
employee of B.L. Seamon & Associates, under a contract
with the Division of Cost Allocation & Liaison, to provide support for the
Office of Audit Services, Office of Inspector General, United States Department
of Health and Human Services, he has reviewed the reasonableness of the
actuarial methods and assumptions used in the actuarial valuations of several
state and local government pension plans, in one case independently reproducing
the valuation. Jess has testified as an expert witness before the courts of
many area jurisdictions. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, a Member
of the American Academy of Actuaries, and a former Enrolled Actuary.
Jess taught actuarial science for the Actuaries Club of New York to actuarial
trainees preparing for Society of Actuaries examinations, and for Actuarial
Study Materials to actuarial trainees preparing for Joint Board for the
Enrollment of Actuaries examinations. He has addressed the Enrolled Actuaries
Meeting and the Internal Revenue Service Southeast Key District Office Employee
Benefits Conference on the subject of maximum benefits and contributions under
the Internal Revenue Code. He has addressed negotiators for the Division of
Cost Allocation & Liaison, United States Department of Health and Human
Services on the subject of funding of government pension plans, and has made
presentations before the Middle Atlantic Actuarial Club and several
Prior to establishing his own consulting firm, Jess was Vice President and
Actuary for Herget and Company, Inc., a
Baltimore-based employee benefits consulting firm. He directed the operations
of the Retirement Plans Department, which provided the actuarial and
administrative services to all of the pension and profit-sharing clients in the
Before joining Herget and Company, Jess was an
Actuary with Kwasha Lipton, where he was responsible
for the actuarial valuation of more than forty defined benefit pension plans.
His responsibilities included the determination of annual pension costs and the
preparation of annual valuation reports, the preparation of cost estimates for
plan amendments including proposals in connection with union negotiations, and
preparing pension cost and cash flow projections. He was previously Assistant
Director of Group Pensions for the Mutual Life Insurance Company Of New York, where his responsibilities included the
determination of annual statement reserves for group annuities, the
determination of interest rate guarantees and credits, and the design, testing
and implementation of new types of pension contracts.
Jess received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of
Rochester, and a Master of Arts degree and a Master of Philosophy degree in
Physics from Columbia University.
8820 Shining Oceans Way
Suite 409
Columbia, Maryland
21045-5964