2026 Risk All Stars: Max Larkin of PRISM

Max Larkin, underwriting director, PRISM

Public agencies across the country face mounting financial pressures, budgetary constraints, escalating claim severity, rising litigation costs, and an increasingly complex risk environment. For risk pools the ability to translate vast amounts of claims, exposure, financial, and actuarial data into meaningful guidance has become essential.

Yet for many organizations, that data has remained scattered across multiple systems, locked inside custom and confusing reports, or buried under technical concepts that few stakeholders outside of underwriting and actuarial teams can readily interpret.

That was the challenge facing Max Larkin, now Underwriting Director at PRISM, who began developing the Program Performance Reports (PPRs) while serving as Actuarial and Data & Analytics Manager and continues to lead their evolution today.

The Challenge: Valuable Data, Limited Visibility

PRISM administers multiple programs that collectively generate decades of claims, exposure, financial, and actuarial information. While the data existed, it often lived across multiple systems and reports, making it difficult for members and internal stakeholders to develop a complete picture of program performance.

The difficulty was compounded by the technical nature of the underlying concepts. Claim development, reserve adequacy, incurred but not reported (IBNR) estimates, ultimate loss projections, pooled versus excess claim activity, and long-term loss trends are all critical to sound risk management decision-making, but they are notoriously difficult to communicate through traditional reports and spreadsheets.

For risk managers, finance professionals, executives, and governing committees who needed clear answers to inform funding, coverage, and risk strategy decisions, the gap between data availability and data usability had real consequences.

The Solution: A Standardized, Member-Friendly Reporting Framework

Recognizing the need for a better way, Larkin led the development of PRISM’s Program Performance Reports, a standardized reporting framework designed to provide meaningful insight into program performance while making complex claims and actuarial information easier to understand and use.

Each PPR consolidates information from multiple sources into a consistent format, with exhibits summarizing claim payments, outstanding case reserves, incurred losses, claim counts, and performance metrics across both pooled and excess layers. Rather than focusing solely on current-year results, the reports were redesigned to provide a complete view of each program’s historical loss experience.

Significant effort was devoted to improving data visualization, enhancing trend analysis, and creating exhibits that better explain loss development patterns and their impact on ultimate loss estimates.

Today, the PPR framework supports PRISM’s Primary Workers’ Compensation, Excess Workers’ Compensation, Medical Malpractice, and both General Liability Programs, with additional enhancements planned for the Property Program. The reports support decision-making for more than 380 public agencies participating in PRISM’s pooled and excess coverage programs. &

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