Hello!
I'm Steve Kolk, ACAS, MAAA
Steve Kolk is president of Kolkulations LLC, an actuarial consulting firm that deploys data mining, predictive modeling, and geospatial technology to assist clients with financial risk analytics. He has 40+ years of a Property & Casualty (P&C) actuarial experience. He has been chief actuary at three companies, including global real estate data & analytics company, CoreLogic.
A sought-after speaker, Steve is considered one of the nation’s foremost actuarial experts in climate change. Presently, he is an active member of the Climate Change Committee of the North American Actuarial Societies, which constructed the first-of-its-kind Actuaries Climate Index. Launched in 2016, the public index provides objective data about changes in the frequency of extreme climate events over recent decades.
He is Vice Chair of the American Academy of Actuaries’ P/C Extreme Events and Property Lines Committee and in-coming Chair of the Casualty Actuarial Societies’ Climate Change Committee. As a volunteer advisor to the U.S. Department of Transportation, he co-authored the award-winning report, Hampton Roads Climate Impact Quantification – Baseline Assessment in 2016.
A Michigan native, he graduated with honors from Calvin College in Grand Rapids with a B.A. in mathematics.
What are Kolkulations
I juggle lots of numbers to squeeze stories out of them that help people understand their world by measuring and quantify things quickly for them. My college training began with part time work at Foremost Insurance. Upon graduation that actuarial internship help me land my first actuarial job at The Hartford. During nine years there an underwriter Margaret got to know me well. Knowing me and my last name, one day she said “Steve you do very nice calculations. You do Kolkulations.” That’s how the name of my business came to be:
Kolkulations = Kolk + Calculations
But what are Kolkulations? I am data scientist and mathematician. I bring harmony out of databases like a virtuoso conductor blends orchestra instruments together. I pull joyful melodies out of stacks of numbers like a skilled voice coach trains a concert soloist. I have been a data scientist long before the term was coined. While getting trained as a mathematician at Calvin College, I played around, learned and applied several programming languages, between classes in the computer science department. My data sci and math nature, couple with a deep desire to tell factual stories that help people, led to an actuarial career. My actuarial career has been a joyful journey of measuring business growth, profit and risk in many ways. That practiced expertise lies behind my slogans:
Testimonials
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I was continually impressed with Steve’s ability to take a database full of numbers and transform it into relevant figures and statistics... pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, and prepare to be impressed.
Steve is a remarkable person, who would prove invaluable to any organization.
Jessica Marose
Product Manager, CoreLogic
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I have known Steve Kolk for many years, both professionally and personally. I have listened to several of Steve Kolk’s actuarial presentations with respect to catastrophe modeling and climate change. In all my years as an actuary, I have never listened to a presentation from any other actuary, who presents a subject of a technical and or actuarial nature, to a group of other technically minded people, who presents as clear, as concise, and in as relaxed a manner, as Steve Kolk.