Maathu is a Senior Actuary at the National Disability Insurance Agency, with experience in the disability, health and general insurance sectors. She led the Actuarial Strategic Initiatives team evaluating key scheme initiatives and priorities. Her work ranged over various strategic policy and service delivery areas including the early childhood strategy, framework for consistent decision making, review of pricing arrangements, intergovernmental agreements and workforce modelling.

Through her PhD research, Maathu will investigate the drivers of increasing prevalence of Autism, focusing on the impact of government support schemes. Her research will also investigate the types of supports that are effective in achieving outcomes using a novel data driven approach. This research will inform policy by assessing the effectiveness of scheme design and service delivery of disability supports.

Maathu is a Fellow of the Actuaries Institute, Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary and Board member of the Actuaries Institute Australia. She won the Actuaries Institute’s Melville Prize and the International Actuarial Association’s Bob Alting von Geusau Prize for research conducted in her Honours degree in Actuarial Studies from the University of New South Wales.

Supervisor: Professor Robert Breunig

Publications

• Nirmalendran M, Sherris M & Hanewald K 2014, ‘Pricing and solvency of value-maximizing life annuity providers’. Astin Bulletin: The Journal of the IAA, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 39-61.
• Bourke J, Sanders R, Jones J, Ranjan M, Wong K & Leonard H 2024, 'Intellectual disability and autism prevalence in Western Australia: impact of the NDIS', Frontiers in Psychology, 15: 1359505-1359505.