PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: John Colberg, 704-948-7500, jcolberg@Cheiron.us

Cheiron opens new Charlotte area office; reports rapid growth in services, clientele

Innovative services helping employers address complex challenges

Charlotte, NC, January 8, 2004 — The Charlotte office of Cheiron, the innovative new actuarial services and employee benefits consulting firm, has relocated within the Charlotte area to a new site in Huntersville effective today.

The move to larger facilities caps a year of rapid growth for the firm which, 15 months after its founding, has emerged as one of the nation’s leading and most innovative “boutique” actuarial services firms.  Cheiron, through its offices in the Charlotte and Washington, DC areas, is serving a growing roster of clients whose employee benefit plans collectively have assets of approximately $10 billion and provide benefits for over 400,000 people.

Cheiron’s Charlotte office is managed by John Colberg, FSA, EA, MAAA, a seasoned actuarial consultant. Colberg works with large public sector, corporate, Taft-Hartley and non-profit organizations to address complex plan design, funding and administrative issues with respect to their retirement, health care and other employee benefit plans. Colberg has been based in the Charlotte area since 1997.

In addition to its broad menu of traditional actuarial consulting services, Cheiron’s innovative and popular “P-scan” and “H-scan” products give plan trustees and managers a tool to do real-time, interactive simulations of alternative funding, investment, asset allocation and benefit scenarios. These products have been particularly useful to clients during this time of volatile financial markets and high inflation rates on medical costs. Trustees don’t want to wait for weeks or months to get an analysis back of the implications of a change they’re considering making in the way they’re handling plan investments or benefit design.

Cheiron’s activities have received extensive media coverage, including a 2003 profile in HR Innovator magazine, which described the firm as “looking beyond the conventions of pension planning.”

After increasing its staff by more than 50% last year, Cheiron anticipates continued growth and additional innovative services in 2004. Cheiron is currently working with its clients on:

“Although the North Carolina economy has been improving in recent months, employers here are still struggling under the weight of skyrocketing medical costs and pension investments that still have a long way to go to recover from declines since the stock market crash of 2000,” Colberg says.  “We are helping these employers work through these issues.”

John Colberg is a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries and a Fellow in the Society of Actuaries, and an Enrolled Actuary. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in December 1990 with a B.S. in Economics with concentrations in actuarial science and insurance.

Colberg has authored or coauthored several articles, including Social Security or UFOs (or How Benefit Cuts Will Affect Employees); and Creating an Efficient Healthcare Marketplace, highlighting ways for employers to get more value for their dollar out of the health plan.