Our Team
Bryan Sautters
President
Bryan joined AST Risk as President in August 2022. Prior to AST Risk, Bryan’s 19 year Cigna career included management of the Cigna Stop Loss operations, leading the integration planning and migration for the Specialty Pharmacy and Home Delivery operations as part of the Express Scripts acquisition, managing Cigna’s participation in individual health insurance exchanges, and building the quality programs for Call, Claim, Benefit Loading functions in addition to leading numerous strategic initiatives. Prior to Cigna, Bryan worked in consulting for Deloitte & Touché and later Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in the Insurance and Healthcare practices where he was responsible for business process transformation, system migration and integration for claim, enrollment, and billing functions. His clients included Blues plans, regional health plans, TPAs, healthcare providers, and specialty insurers. Originally heralding from Ohio, Bryan is a graduate of Ohio University’s Copeland School of Business with a degree in finance. He now lives outside of Hartford Connecticut with his wife and two teenage sons.
Bernon R. Erickson Jr., ASA, FCA, MAAA
Principal
Bernie is considered the industry’s leading actuarial expert for small group Level - Funded healthcare plans. He founded AST with twenty-eight years of actuarial industry experience. AST is Bernie’s second start-up, having previously founded Actuarial Management Company (AMC) in 1996, the innovative actuarial consulting firm emphasizing insurance program management in concert with long-term, partnership-based clients, which became the industry standard for active actuarial and consultative insurance program management. Bernie and AMC became particularly known for turning problem blocks of business into successes, and lauded for producing monthly comprehensive and innovative analysis.Before AMC, he was recruited as part of the executive team to build the fully insured business line for IHC, a New York Stock Exchange publicly traded company. He began as Chief Health Actuary, led a team of 25, performed valuation and product development activity for a diversified product line, and was responsible for underwriting performance. He became President of the Fully Insured Division, led a division of over 300 people within six operating companies, and was responsible for portfolio top and bottom lines and operating company results.
Bill Ashley
Principal
Bill is the former Chief Executive Officer of Allied National, a leading program management company for small group, level funded health plans. In his new role Bill is focusing on business development for Allied as well as supporting the activities of AST Risk. Bill earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1979 from Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. Shortly after graduating, he joined Allied full-time. In the first half of his career at Allied, Bill lead the development of their information technology environment and was a hands on programmer. In the later portion of this career, he lead the company as CEO and was heavily involved with product development and risk management. He was named "2012 Person of the Year" by Munich Health North America, one of three business segments of Munich Re.