Plenary speakers
Julian read History at Magdalene College, Cambridge and joined the Bank of England in 1986 where he worked in a variety of roles in the supervision and markets areas. He joined the FSA at its creation and has held a number of senior management positions within the organisation. As head of wholesale insurance firms from 2004-2007, Julian was heavily involved in the reform of the UK insurance capital adequacy framework. He was also head of the department that supervises the major retail UK banks during the period 2007 – 2009 and as such, played a key role in the FSA’s response to the financial crisis and the recapitalisation of the banking sector, representing the organisation at the highest level of the UK Tripartite authorities.
He has represented the UK on a number of international working groups, in particular, through his Chairmanship of the IAIS Reinsurance Transparency Group and the Basel Task Force on Colleges. In October 2009, he was appointed Director of Retail Firms Division and was responsible for the supervision of over 600 firms covering building societies, life and general insurers, banks and asset managers.
In April 2011, Julian became Director of Insurance and is responsible for the supervision of the safety and soundness of all UK insurance entities. The division employs around 200 staff, with a budget of approximately £12mn. His responsibilities also include the delivery of the Solvency II programme for which he is the Executive Sponsor within the FSA. He is the UK member on the Board of Supervisors of EIOPA and Chair of EIOPA’s Review Panel.
Julian also speaks and writes widely on various aspects of insurance and recently gave one of the centenary Barbon lectures on the History of UK insurance Company supervision.
Helen's current interests include: the impact of improvements in cancer control on longevity; medicines access policy; and consumer perspectives on innovation in health care. Her background connects medical and actuarial fields with health policy. She worked in the UK National Health Service for 7 years, initially as a hospital doctor and later as an Associate Director in the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. She is qualified as an Associate of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, with experience in health insurance at Munich Re and actuarial benefits consulting at Aon.
Martin has been the Pension Protection Fund's Executive Director of Financial Risk since 2006.
A Cambridge-educated mathematician, actuary and Harvard Business School alumnus, Martin’s previous career was spent in retail financial services with the Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS), the financial services arm of the Co-operative in the UK, where he rose to become managing director of the company’s life, pensions and investments business. His executive experience spans P&L Management, Marketing, Risk and Investments. He is an experienced general manager used to dealing with complex and technical projects such as the development of new products, new business opportunities and major change programmes. He has a special interest in corporate social responsibility and the development of socially responsible investment. In addition to PPF, he is chair of the UK’s Sustainable Investment and Finance Association.
Martin is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Nicholas Dunbar trained as a physicist at Cambridge and Harvard universities and has been a financial journalist since 1997.
From 1998 until 2009, Dunbar was technical editor of Risk magazine, a specialist derivatives and risk management publication. In 2005, he launched Life & Pensions, a sister publication to Risk aimed at the insurance and pensions industry.
Dunbar has written many exclusive stories on derivatives, and in 2003 broke the story of Greece hiding debt using swaps with Goldman Sachs. In 2007 he won the State Street award for institutional financial journalism. From 2001 to 2010 he also wrote a column called ‘Risky Finance’ for the financial commentary service Reuters Breakingviews. In 2011 he joined Bloomberg where he created and now edits the Bloomberg Risk newsletter.
In 1999, Dunbar wrote his first book, Inventing Money: the story of Long-Term Capital Management and the legends behind it (Wiley, 2000). His second book, the Devil’s Derivatives: The Untold Story of the Sick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in July 2011.
Mark has been an investment manager for the last 25 years and has led the investment team at NEST (PADA) since 2008. He has managed money at a variety of institutions. At Gartmore Mark was head of Japanese equities while at American Express Asset Management International, he was Chief Investment Officer. Before joining PADA, Mark was a Partner at the boutique investment manager Thames River Capital LLP. Mark was has an MA from Oxford University and an MSc from London Business School.
Tim Harford is a world renowned behavioural economist and award-winning Financial Times columnist. Frequently described as ‘Britain’s Malcolm Gladwell’, his first two books, The Logic of Life and The Undercover Economist, have been translated into 30 languages and sold well over a million copies. He is also presenter of Radio 4’s More or Less.
Tim’s most recent book is ADAPT: Why Success Always Starts With Failure shows how the challenges we face today can’t be solved with simple ready-made solutions; we must learn to improvise rather than plan. Drawing on psychology, evolutionary biology, physics, maths and economics, Tim shows how adaptive, trial-and-error processes can help tackle everything from innovation to financial crises. Gillian Tett describes it as “required reading for anyone trying to navigate an increasingly complex world”.
But whilst he’s a ‘serious’ economist with a career spanning Oxford, Shell and the World Bank, Tim’s FT columns dwell on the economics of daily life and offer tongue-in-cheek solutions to readers’ problems. He used a similar, highly accessible style as presenter of the BBC2 series Trust Me, I’m an Economist.
Drawing on the frontiers of economic research, Tim’s speeches cover everything from theories on how to save the world from Armageddon to how we can match odd socks, lose weight and find happiness. He might also reveal the hidden logic of the world around us: when a teenager commits a burglary or a smoker lights a cigarette we seem to be a million miles from common sense - or are we? Weaving evidence from sources like casinos and speed-dating, Tim shows that human behaviour is actually surprisingly logical.
Jon is the Chief Risk Officer at Royal London Group, the UK’s largest mutual life and pensions company. As a member of the Board, Jon overseas all risk-taking functions, ensuring the effectiveness of the Group’s risk management system including delivering second line of defence activities for each risk class. Prior to joining Royal London, Jon was the Group Chief Risk Officer at RSA.
Jon has also held a number of senior risk and capital management roles at Prudential, PwC, Aviva, Fox-Pitt Kelton, Swiss Re and Zurich.
He is a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and has a degree in Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics from Heriot-Watt University.
Described as an 'agent provacateur' and a 'leading revolutionary' by the Financial Times, Professor Eddie Obeng is a business management educator, author and motivational speaker.
As Founder/Learning Director of Pentacle, the world's first Virtual Business School, Eddie has been pioneering his concepts based on the ‘World After Midnight’ since the 1990s when the pace of change started to outstrip the rate at which we can learn. He focuses on helping businesses create and deliver business strategies which allow people to work together to their fullest potential. He helps individuals to apply their learning through innovative and effective Performance Enhancement Tools and techniques.
Eddie Obeng is also Professor at The School of Growth, Innovation & Enterprise at Henley Business School, and was previously an Executive Director at Ashridge Management College (where, at the age of 32, he was the youngest business school director in Europe), having begun his career with Shell. He is on the board of the UK Government's Strategic Innovation body, The Design Council.
Eddie writes on a wide range of management topics, is a major contributor to the Financial Times Handbook of Management and is the author of a series of books which describe his philosophy for managing in the New World - these include ‘New Rules for the New World', 'All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook', 'Putting Strategy to Work' and 'Making Re-Engineering Happen’.
Born in Africa and 'brought up with a strong oral tradition' he is great orator and presenter. Eddie is a 'highly competitive guy with a patient and supportive feminine side' which makes him tough enough to deal with 'awkward middle-aged executives' but compassionate enough to listen. He regularly presents his New World philosophy concepts and success stories to large audiences.
Andrew is the Chief Executive of Munich Re’s Life businesses in Africa, Asia Pacific, UK and Ireland.
He joined Munich Re in November 2010 from Oliver Wyman where he was a partner and led the insurance practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including both Life and Non-Life.
A UK actuary, Andrew has experience in areas such as risk management, product development, pricing and strategy. Alongside his private sector work he has been involved in significant policy developments both in the UK where he led the work to quantify the £27 billion Savings Gap, and globally where he supported the Geneva Association’s research into systemic risk.
Anthony Reuben has been a business journalist for 18 years and has spent the last 11 at BBC News. He is a reporter for the online business desk and worked on whizzy projects such as the BBC Budget Calculator and Student Finance Calculator. He delivers a course for BBC journalists called “Making Sense of Statistics”. He won the Royal Statistical Society's award for excellence in online journalism in 2011.
Philip Scott is a non-executive director of Diageo plc and chairman of the Audit Committee. He is also a member of Royal Bank of Scotland Board and chairs their Risk Committee. In June 2012 Philip assumed the Presidency of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries following earlier elections. The appointment runs for a term of one year.
Philip retired from the role of chief financial officer for Aviva plc in July 2010. Prior to this appointment in 2007, he was group executive director, Aviva international, and was responsible for Aviva's businesses in North America and Asia-Pacific and non-executive chairman of Aviva Investors, Aviva’s fund management business.
Philip began his career with Norwich Union as a trainee actuary in 1973. After qualifying in 1979, he went on to hold a number of positions within Norwich Union including working in New Zealand as an actuary, investment manager and head of global equities in the UK, before progressing to chief investment officer of Norwich Union in the UK.
Philip was appointed as chief executive of Norwich Union Life, following a period as group finance director of Norwich Union. He played a key role in the de-mutualisation of Norwich Union in 1997 and the merger with CGU in 2000. In 2002, Philip became executive chairman of Norwich Union Life and later became executive director, Aviva Life International in July 2003. In addition, he was chairman of Aviva Investors from 2004 to 2007.
Philip led the Aviva group’s acquisition of AmerUs, a leader in the high-growth US equity-indexed market, for $2.9 billion, which expanded Aviva’s US presence four-fold. He was also responsible for developing Aviva‘s Asian long term savings business and created new operations in China and India and drove the rapid development of Aviva’s presence in China to become the fifth largest foreign insurer in just three years.
Professor Karel Van Hulle lectures at the Business and Economics Faculty of the KU Leuven and at the Economics Faculty of the Goethe University in Frankfurt where he is attached to the International Centre for Insurance Regulation. He served as Head of Insurance and Pensions at the European Commission (Directorate-General “Internal Market and Services”) until 1 March 2013. In that capacity, he represented the European Commission within the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and was a member of the Technical Committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS).
Karel joined the European Commission in 1984 after spending 8 years with the Belgian Banking Commission. Before becoming Head of Insurance and Pensions in 2004, he was Head of Unit of Accounting, of Accounting and Auditing and of Financial Reporting and Company Law. Professor Van Hulle is a lawyer by training. He studied law at the KU Leuven and at the Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee (Wisconsin). He is a member of the Jan Ronse Company Law Institute at the Law Faculty of the KU Leuven and is a member of the Executive Board of the International Centre for Insurance Regulation at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.