Jim Sylvester has over 22 years experience in the complex field of occupational and personal pensions.  In 1991, he joined Noble Lowndes and Partners Limited, a firm of consulting actuaries.  Noble Lowndes, which in 1994 joined the Sedgwick Group, provided all aspects of pensions advice and services to employers, trustees and members of occupational pension schemes.  In particular, the work there covered performing actuarial valuations of defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes for funding, solvency, legislative and management information purposes.  Individual technical calculations of retirement and death benefits including augmentations and transfer values also formed a core part of the work.

In 1997 Jim moved to Price Waterhouse to concentrate on the technical and consultative pension aspects of mergers and acquisitions.

Since qualifying as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1998, he has worked as an independent consulting pensions actuary specialising in providing pensions review technical calculation services.  In January 2002 he became Regional Actuary for the Midlands region for Hazell Carr Collins, which in October 2003 became known as Collins Actuaries, specialising in providing actuarial expertise to solicitors on the issue of pensions and divorce.

He has worked with Collins Actuaries and its predecessor company for over 12 years. He has extensive experience in preparing pension reports in divorce cases and has also appeared in Court as an Expert Witness in divorce cases.