Speakers biographies

GIRO Speakers at this years GIRO include: 

Alan Sheppard, Bank of England

Alan is a senior insurance advisor in the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority, specializing in strategy, external engagement, and policy. He was head of PRA insurance policy from 2016 to 2020, and has previously worked at Aviva, and in the Bank of England’s capital markets, financial risk management, and financial stability functions.

 

 

 

Alex Murcuson, Marcuson Consulting

Alex is the founder of Marcuson Consulting.  Established in 2010, they are an expert team of consultants, advising a range insurers and reinsurers, large and small on reserving, risk, pricing and capital modelling, Part VII Transfers and skilled person reviews.

With over 25 years actuarial consulting experience in both the UK and Australia, Alex is former member of the IFoA General Insurance Board, and is one of the two general insurance specialists on the IFoA Professional Support Service, a confidential helpline service for actuaries.

Alpesh Patel, Barnett Waddingham

• Alpesh Patel is a senior consulting actuary at Barnett Waddingham, a consultancy firm. Alpesh’s has experience across a variety of roles in both Risk Management Functions and within Actuarial Functions, both at a regulator and in-house. He has a particular interest in helping bridge the communication gaps between Risk, Actuarial and the wider areas of the business.

 

Amanda Istari, Bank of England

Amanda has 20 years actuarial experience in general insurance.  She started her career working for Clerical Medical but has spent most of her time at the FSA/ PRA/ Bank of England. She has had a number of roles at the Bank of England covering internal model approval, policy, Insurance data and analytics and London Market supervision. She currently leads a small team within the general insurance actuaries department and leads the model governance specialism.

 

 

Amerjit Grewal, Aegis

Amerjit Grewal FIA CERA: Amo is a syndicate actuary at AEGIS London and works across reserving, pricing and capital

 

 

 

Amrit Santhirasenan Hyperexponential Ltd

Amrit is a Co-founder and the CEO of hyperexponential (hx), an analytical technology company pushing the boundaries of data-driven decision making and pricing in the specialty insurance sector. We do this principally through Renew, our next-generation SaaS platform where our clients are building, deploying and using cutting-edge pricing models faster and with a better user-experience than ever before.

 

Amrita Pattni, Guy Carpenter

Amrita Pattni is an actuary working in Guy Carpenter (10 years at GC this year!) focusing on reinsurance pricing, optimisation and capital assessment

 

 

 

 

Angela Zhu, Bank of England

Angela is a senior actuary in the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and has previously worked at several insurance firms in Australia.    

 

 

Avtar Singh 

Avtar Singh has been a member of the IFoA since 2008, specialising in General Insurance with a focus in the areas of Reserving, Capital Modelling and delivering high profile projects working directly for Chief Actuaries

 

 

 

 

Bhavin Bhatt, Grant Thornton

• Bhavin joined Grant Thornton in January 2019 and is an Associate Director with over 10 years’ experience in financial services industry accounting and advisory work. 
• He is part of Grant Thornton’s IFRS 17 team developing market eminence activities. Bhavin has extensive advisory experience and has led and managed projects covering accounting standard implementations (particularly IFRS 17 and IFRS 9) to providing accounting advise on complex restructuring transactions including M&A and disposals.
• Bhavin has worked on a number of IFRS 17 non-life projects including major Japanese reinsurance company, UK Flood Reinsurance, listed motor insurer and a run-off consolidator.

 

Brian Brown, Milliman

Brian is a Principal and Consulting Actuary for Milliman, Inc. where his areas of expertise are property and casualty insurance, especially ratemaking, loss reserve analysis, and actuarial appraisals for mergers and acquisitions.  Brian’s clients include many of the largest insurers/reinsurers in the world. Brian is a Past CAS President and was Milliman’s Global Casualty Practice Director.

 

 

Brian Fannin

Brian Fannin has been an actuary for over 20 years. The data lack sufficient credibility for him to give a more precise estimate. Brian has been an Associate of the CAS since 2002 and a Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics (CSPA) since 2017. He has worked in a variety of roles in commercial insurance, both primary and excess, here in the US as well as Europe, London and Asia. An early proponent of R, he has taught various workshops and seminars for the CAS, Actex and insurance clients. He joined the staff of the CAS in March of 2018 as Research Actuary. His focus it to enable CAS committees and research partners to work efficiently in developing relevant, practical content.

Caesar Balona, QED Actuaries

Caesar is a Fellow of the Actuarial Society of South Africa. He has 5 years’ experience in short-term insurance and data analytics. Caesar is responsible for a range of traditional short-term insurance work including reserving and pricing, as well as developing several of QED’s cutting-edge Data Science products.
 

 

Cassandra Archer, Bank of England

Cassandra Archer is a Senior Technical Specialist within the General Insurance Risk Specialists team at the Bank of England’s PRA. Cassandra’s work covers Capital, Pricing and Reserving. She also leads the team’s reserving specialism. Prior to joining the PRA, Cassandra’s career has predominately been in consulting. She worked at Willis Towers Watson for over eleven years as a general insurance actuarial consultant and director. She then subsequently spent three years working at QBE were she helped the firm to implement Solvency II.

 

Cat Drummond, LCP

Cat is the Chair of the IFoA’s GI Lifelong Learning committee and a partner in LCP's Insurance Consulting practice. She has over fifteen years of consulting experience and helps her clients understand and manage their insurance risks better.

She is a Solvency II expert and helps firms navigate the wide-ranging and onerous regulatory requirements. She has performed numerous independent reviews of internal model validation, risk and governance frameworks, standard formula calculations and technical provisions.

Cat authors LCP’s annual review on the SFCRs of 100 non-life insurers across the UK and Ireland, and has presented widely on this subject, including at EIOPA’s industry conference in Frankfurt.

She is also a founding member of LCP's LGBT+ network which leads initiatives and gives support to ensure that LCP provides an accepting environment for LGBT+ individuals to thrive and prosper.

 

Catherine Barton, Talbot Underwriting Ltd

Catherine Barton is Chief Financial Officer at Talbot Underwriting Ltd and Non-Executive Director and Chair of Audit Committee at Sabre Insurance Group plc.  Prior to joining Talbot she worked at Bupa, firstly as Commercial & Finance Director of Bupa’s UK business and then as General Manager of Bupa Dental Care.  She was previously a partner in the general insurance actuarial teams at EY and Deloitte.  She qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries with Bacon & Woodrow in 1999 and holds a MA (Hons) degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford.

 

 

Catherine Scullion, Lloyd's

Catherine is the Head of Capital at Lloyd’s of London with responsibility for oversight of syndicate capital calculations, the operation and development of the Lloyd’s Internal Model and capital strategy. Catherine has experience across a range of market areas including detailed interaction with Managing Agents and regulators. Prior to joining Lloyd’s Catherine developed insurance and risk management expertise in consultancy and as part of the Civil Service.

 

Charl Cronje, LCP

Charl advises insurers on a wide range of matters but reserving is secretly his favourite.  In addition to his consulting work he is the Chief Actuary on an outsourced basis for two insurers.  This gives him a strong appreciation of the issues faced by internal actuarial teams as well as claims handlers. 

 

Cherry Chan, Barnett Waddingham

Cherry Chan is the Head of GI team and a Partner at Barnett Waddingham, a consultancy firm. She has over 20 years of experience in the insurance industry and has advised a wide range of general (re)insurance companies across different areas in risk management and actuarial.  Her latest passion is to help insurers find ways to improve innovations and make actuarial processes more resilient with the use of technologies.

 

Chloe Paillot, Deloitte

Chloe has over 15 years of experience in General Insurance as both consultant and a Chief Actuary. She brings multiple lenses through reserving, capital, pricing , processes, providing significant value and linking actuarial to reporting and the business. Chloe is leading the Deloitte Motor and Home Insurance seminars and is assisting her clients with improving their pricing functions, strategy and models.

 

Chika Aghadiuno, Aviva

Chika is a general insurance actuary at Aviva who has branched out in to a broader Enterprise Risk role. As Group Enterprise Risk Director, Chika leads a small team of risk experts tasked with looking across Aviva’s global operations and providing insight to key decision makers on strategic proposals plus the key and emerging risks faced by Aviva.

Chika is a Board Trustee Director of the Aviva Staff Pensions Scheme and a non-executive Director of a leading UK medical defence organisation. She is the co-sponsor of Aviva’s BAME Network. Outside of Aviva, Chika is chair of the Diversity Advisory Group for the UK actuarial profession, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and is an advisory board member of The Women’s Insurance Network.
 

Chris Francis, Willis Towers Watson

Chris is a senior analyst who joined Willis Towers Watson in 2017

During his time at Willis Towers Watson, Chris has developed experience in the following areas:

P&C reserving for a variety of different insurance companies, including Lloyd’s Syndicates, London Market insurers and reinsurers, and commercial lines and personal lines (re)insurers across a number of geographies.

 

Chris Smerald

Chris Smerald pursuing a passion for solving complex insurance problems as Director of Emerald Lake Consulting. He is also an Associate of OAC PLC providing senior actuary services.

He worked at AIG for a third of a century with a focus on extending actuarial practice in pricing, reserving, risk and claims.

He is a Fellow of the IFoA and the Casualty Actuarial Society and is on research steering committees for both.

His original research has spanned the ORSA, a universal risk register, complex communication, and applying non-actuarial approaches and language philosophy to insurance problems.

He has memberships with the International Society for System Science (ISSS), The European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) and the International Statistical Engineering Association (I-SEA).

 

 

Ed Harrison, LCP

Ed specialises in advising insurers on their reserving and providing outsourced actuarial function support. He has helped insurers with all aspects of their reserving, from process design and best practice governance, through to the detailed calculation of IFRS reserves and SII technical provisions. He is a member of the IFoA “towards the optimal reserving process” working party and has a keen interest in the use of automation to help enhance reserving processes.

 

Emma Steward, Lloyd's

Emma is the Chief Actuary and Head of Reserving at Lloyd’s of London with responsibility for the Lloyd’s Actuarial Function and oversight of all syndicates’ Actuarial Functions.

Emma began her career in Actuarial Consultancy at Willis Towers Watson. Having joined Lloyd’s in 2016, Emma has held a number of roles at Lloyd’s of London. She started as an International Licence Support Actuary and prior to her recent appointment was the Senior Manager of the Central Reserving team.

 

Gianmario Afeltra, Deloitte

 

 

 

 

Giorgis Hadzilacos, Bank of England

Giorgis Hadzilacos a Senior Technical Specialist in PRA responsible for leading the Catastrophe Risk Specialty which supports the General Insurance supervision on all topics relating to natural, man-made and liability catastrophe risk. Giorgis has led the development of the 2019 climate change insurance stress test scenarios and is leading an industry working group on related climate topics. Previous to this role, Giorgis spent 15 years assisting firms assess and manage catastrophe and climate risk

 

Gordon Woo, RMS Consulting

Dr. Gordon Woo is a catastrophist with RMS, specializing in the quantitative modelling of catastrophe risks of all kinds, both natural and man-made. Newsweek magazine named him as one of the world’s leading catastrophists.  As an expert on extreme risks, he served on the Blackett Committee of Sir John Beddington, when he was the UK government chief scientific adviser.

 

Grainne McGuire, Taylor Fry

Grainne has worked extensively in social sector analytics, dynamic financial analysis and liability valuations.

Grainne specialises in statistical modelling and have a particular interest in developing customised cutting-edge software to help our clients understand their data and experience better. In recent years Grainne has worked on predictive tools for the social sector and the creation of a comprehensive tool for liability valuation, pricing and asset-liability modelling for accident compensation.

 

Harsh Jaitak, Kuwait Reinsurance K.S.C.P.

Harsh is an experienced Actuarial professional with a demonstrated history of working in the finance , research and insurance industry. Skilled in Risk Management , Investment Advisory , Actuarial Consulting,Actuarial Reserving, Rate making, Capital Modelling and Data Analysis. He is pursuing a career as an actuarial analyst with hands on experience with actuarial work on R, Python ,VBA, SQL , Tableau and Power BI . Postgraduate with distinction in Actuarial science aiming for ACAS designation. 

 

Helen Cooper, Hiscox

Helen is the Group Chief Actuary at Hiscox, a diversified international insurance group listed on the London Stock Exchange and headquartered in Bermuda. Helen is responsible for all Group insurance carriers and therefore works under IFRS, US GAAP, Solvency II and Economic Balance Sheet regimes amongst others. Hiscox is currently undergoing a significant multi-year finance transformation programme replacing all major accounting systems including migrating actuarial reserving models into Tyche. Prior to working at Hiscox, Helen was a director in Risk Consulting at KPMG.

 

Hugo Clugston, Talbot Underwriting Ltd

Hugo is Head of Portfolio Management and Business Planning at Talbot Underwriting Ltd. He joined Talbot in May 2020 having held various roles across Pricing, Loss Reserving and Capital Modelling at P&C Insurers. He has specific interests in portfolio optimisation; and understanding how technology and Insurtech can play a role in supporting better underwriting decisions, managing claim costs and reducing operating expenses. Hugo is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

 

Ian Thomas, Willis Towers Watson

Ian is an Associate Director at Willis Towers Watson.  He’s relatively new to consultancy having previously worked for direct insurance companies focusing on P&C reserving, strategic projects and change initiatives.  He has a keen interest in innovation and enjoys joining ideas together to create improved ways of doing things.  He lives in Devon and enjoys running on the moors.

 

Isaac Alfon, Crescendo Advisors

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacqueline Friedland

Jacqueline Friedland joined the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) in October 2020 as Sr. Director, Insurance Supervision Sector, P&C Insurance Group. For the two years prior to joining OSFI, Jacqueline provided a wide range of actuarial, risk management, and research consulting services through her own firm, J. Friedland Actuarial Consulting Inc. (JFAC). At JFAC, Jacqueline offered expertise in leadership development, lean management, actuarial target operating models, and governance frameworks. Prior to JFAC, Jacqueline served as Chief Risk Officer, Chief Actuary, and Chief Compliance Officer for RSA Canada. During her career of more than 35 years, Jacqueline worked with a number of consulting firms and international insurers in the U.S., South Africa, and Canada.

 

James Orr, Bank of England

James Orr is the Chief Actuary for General Insurance at the Prudential Regulation Authority, which is part of the Bank of England. He is also the Head of Department for the General Insurance Risk Specialists within the PRA.

James’ department is focussed on the review of reserving processes within firms, the adequacy of those reserves and of capital requirements, as well as underwriting, pricing and exposure management.

His career has included working for Lloyd’s of London, time as a GI consultant and five years with the PRA’s predecessor organisation, the FSA. James has also been active in shaping the industry’s response to climate change, a topic of increasing importance to the regulation of the financial services industry.

 

 

Jenn Barnett, Grant Thornton

An experienced people professional, currently leading Inclusion, Diversity and Wellbeing at Grant Thornton UK LLP. Responsible for embedding ways of working to enable everyday inclusion for all. Jenn gained experience working in senior people roles at Grant Thornton UK, BAE Systems and BAA at Heathrow. She runs leadership development programmes, coaches senior leaders and has led culture change programmes. She has a Master's degree, is a fellow of the CIPD and an Executive Coach Supervisor. 

 

Jerry Skees, Global Parametrics

Jerry is a co-founder, Director and Chief Strategy Officer of Global Parametrics. Jerry’s early career was focused on important research and product development issues for the US crop insurance program. He and colleagues built the first area yield insurance for the US in the early 1990s. With a career of 35 years as a professor at the University of Kentucky, Jerry and his previous firm, GlobalAgRisk, were on the forefront of many important innovations in low and middle-income countries relating to weather and seismic risk. Jerry was instrumental in developing the globally acclaimed Index-Based Livestock Insurance Program in Mongolia and in providing core research in Ethiopia contributing to the advent of The African Risk Capacity. He also led in developing the world’s first regulated insurance product in Peru paying before a disaster, coined forecast insurance and laying the foundation for ongoing global efforts on forecast-based financing.

 

Justyna Pikinska, Capsicum Re

Justyna is the Head of Analytics for Property & Specialty Lines at Capsicum Re (soon to be Gallagher Re) and leads a team of dedicated actuaries, to help drive growth across different classes and support the entry of new reinsurance carriers to the market. Justyna has developed a variety of bespoke internal models and her team is responsible for pricing all the (re)insurance placements, while providing key actuarial insight into those placements such as optimising reinsurance, assessing tail risks and peer review of reserves. Justyna is also responsible for managing relationships with actuarial teams at international insurers to develop pricing tools, rating methodologies and underwriting guidelines, providing them with the technical capability to underwrite various risks, as well as relationships with external modelling firms, to assist them in the development of accumulation models and the creation of different realistic disaster scenarios (RDS).

 

Kamaal Basran, Markel International

Kamaal is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and is currently working as a Pricing Actuary for Markel International. He previously held a position at Lloyd’s Syndicate Barbican Insurance for 6 years, where he played a key role in establishing and building out the pricing function. He has experience of working with a broad range of commercial lines, across Property & Casualty and both Insurance & Reinsurance.  Kamaal joined Barbican after graduating in Mathematics with Modern Foreign Languages (specifically German) at University College London, where he was awarded a First Class with Honours and a place on the UCL Mathematical and Physical Sciences Dean’s List. He is a keen advocate of the additional dimensionality achieved through combining technical actuarial knowledge with other industry expertise.

 

 

Karen Seidel, NHBC

Karen has twenty years of actuarial experience in general insurance; which includes six years as Head of Capital at The Society of Lloyd's and extensive experience working for major actuarial consultancies.

She has also held senior positions at Allianz and Legal and General.

 

Kevin Kuo, RStudio, PBC

Kevin is the Director of Insurance Practice at RStudio, PBC, evangelizing RStudio professional and open source offerings across the industry. He is also an advisor to Kasa AI, an open source community dedicated to advancing insurance analytics in a collaborative manner through research, education, and software development. Kevin is an author of several papers at the intersection of machine learning and actuarial science, the book Mastering Spark with R, and several R packages, including sparklyr and mlflow.

 

Laun Middleton, LCP

Laun is a Partner in the investment consulting practice at LCP.  He works with insurance companies, banks and pension funds on designing and implementing investment strategies focussed on effective risk management.  Laun has a doctorate in financial mathematics.

 

 

Laura Hobern, Milliman

Laura is a consultant who enjoys working with her clients and advising on a range of actuarial matters. Having worked directly for (re)insurers previously, she has broad experience covering topics such as reserving, pricing, mergers and acquisitions due diligence, portfolio analysis and management reporting. She has a particular interest in increasing the value that actuaries add to the business, including through improvements to the reserving process.

 

 

Laura Scarpa, Deloitte

Laura has 17 years’ experience in the Insurance and Reinsurance markets. She leads Deloitte’s General Insurance Regulation and Strategy team and her focus is on leading regulatory, strategy and business model projects in the sector. Recent projects have focused on supporting new entrants define their approach to entering the insurance market, helping brokers move up the value chain, Brexit implementation planning and elements of the Future at Lloyd’s programme.

Laura joined Deloitte after four years at Benfield as a reinsurance broker of property and liability business. Laura is ACII qualified.

 

Madhuri Kumar, Ultimate Risk Solutions

Madhuri is the technical lead at URS, a platform and service provider, focusing on ERM processes for European and North American insurers and brokers.

 

 

 

Mahima Agarwal, Deloitte

An Actuary by profession, Mahima Agarwal specialises in underwriting and pricing transformations for general insurers across global markets.

Having an in-depth understanding of the current industry dynamics and future innovations, she leverages data and technological capabilities available to redesign and digitise processes, allowing competitive advantage to be gained through better risk selection, risk management, product strategy and design, and customer/broker interaction.
Her experience also spans across capital modelling, reserving, transaction advisory and finance transformations.

 

Malcolm Cleugh, RSA Group

Since the start of 2020 I have been part of the RSA Group Actuarial team in the UK with responsibility for the oversight of RSA’s Canadian and Scandinavian businesses. I also manage the Reserving Assurance team providing line 2 assurance of reserving across RSA Group.

Prior to this was Head of Reserving for RSA Scandinavia from 2015-2019, based in Stockholm. I have extensive knowledge of the Nordic markets where I have spent considerable time since 2006, with particular focus on the Sweden Motor and Personal Accident products. Have also spent time working on Insurance and Portfolio Risk in a Group oversight role for RSA.

 

Matthew Attard

Matt is an actuarial professional,  holding a Master of Science in Applied Actuarial Science with a distinction from the University of Kent and a Masters in Accountancy from the University of Malta, and is also a Certified Public Accountant. He was previously Assistant Vice President at a leading risk consulting firm where he specialised in reserving and IFRS 17 and Solvency II implementation consulting. Prior to this he has worked as an account manager with a leading Maltese  Insurance manager. Matt began his career  in audit, as assurance senior with one of the Big Four audit firms. He  has also been involved in a number of research publications ranging from epidemiological studies to ones concerning the use of hedging derivatives.

 

Matthew Byrne, NFU Mutual 

Matthew Byrne is an actuary with 18 years’ experience in general insurance. In his current role with NFU Mutual as Head of Actuarial Function he leads a team delivering second line risk assurance across a wide range of business areas. In addition to his involvement with the GAR WP, Matthew currently chairs the Professionalism, Regulation and Ethics workstream of the Data Science MIG, and is a member of the Inclusive Insurance MIG. He also carries out peer review work for other IFoA working party papers. Outside of work, Matthew is married and has a range of interesting hobbies, including his most recent one: photobashing.

 

Michael McCord, Milliman

With decades of experience, Michael J. McCord is one of the world's leading experts in developing and managing microinsurance products.  Michael specializes in institutional development for microinsurance, development of new products, and analysis of microinsurance programs. He has worked in over 75 countries for clients that include commercial insurers, foundations, bi- and multi-lateral development agencies, regulators, non-governmental organizations and others. In addition to his consulting and advocacy work, Michael has written extensively on microinsurance, including numerous microinsurance case studies, reports and manuals, and has provided microinsurance training to thousands of people across the globe.

 

Minnie Green. Milliman

Minnie is an actuarial consultant with Milliman’s Financial Risk Management practice in Chicago. She works closely with large U.S. and Canadian insurers to help them with designing, implementing, and managing dynamic hedging programs for their variable annuity business. Prior to joining Milliman, Minnie worked in Asset Liability Management at Ontario Teachers’ Plan and volunteered with the Canadian Institute of Actuaries on the Committee for Sustainability and Climate Change. She is an associate of the society of actuaries actively pursuing fellowship.

 

Natasha Naidoo, Generali UK

Responsible for risk management systems, processes and controls, relevant risk capital models and adherence to all relevant regulatory requirements.

 

 

 

 

Neil Gedalla, LCP

Neil is a Senior Consultant at LCP, where he works primarily on capital modelling and validation projects, advising insurance companies across the personal lines, commercial and Lloyd's spaces.  Prior to joining LCP, he held a range of roles within the insurance industry, covering all aspects of the capital modelling process, including parameterisation, modelling and validation.

 

Nigel Carpenter, RSA

Nigel Carpenter is a mathematician, actuary, data scientist and double Kaggle master, with a 30 year career in General Insurance.

In that time he has held senior leadership positions in both Reserving and Pricing functions, but for the last 5 years has worked in the emerging field of Data Science where he holds the position of Chief Data Scientist at RSA Insurance. Nigel believes the Actuarial profession is well positioned to ensure that adoption of data science in Insurance is both robust and serves the public interest. 

 

Nina Ndebele, Deloitte

Nina Ndebele is an actuarial manager at PWC in Bermuda with experience spanning reserving, risk management, capital and audit support.

 

 

 

Owen Morris, Aviva

Owen is Global Chief Underwriting and Data Officer for Aviva General insurance, and Managing Director of Aviva’s global data science practice, Aviva Quantum. 

He has global accountability for underwriting across our general insurance business and a passion for driving positive customer experiences and sustainable profitable growth.  This will be achieved through the adoption of consistent best-practice, leveraging global insight and shared expertise, to drive world-class underwriting, pricing and data capability.  The ability to aggregate underwriting performance including exposure management, written rate strength and the codification of technical wording, will deliver an improved level of robust and informed insight to some of the most critical aspects of our business.  In leading Quantum, a practice of over 700 data scientists and underwriters, Owen ensures that Aviva is at the leading edge of data science by using analytics across the value chain ensuring that we use our digital capability to promote insurance solutions against a market leading data strategy.      

 

Patrick Tingay, Willis Towers Watson

Patrick is a Senior Consultant at Willis Towers Watson who, since joining in 2014, has worked on a variety of projects, predominantly non-life insurance. The variety of areas in which he has experience include substantial use of the Willis Towers Watson pricing suite, both in terms of writing and delivering training of the materials and using the software for client projects; running pricing transformation projects for both large commercial and personal lines insurers; replicating a company’s underwriting and pricing strategy in Radar for a small-fleet book of commercial business.

 

Dr Paul Redmond, Keynote speaker

Dr. Paul Redmond is leading expert on generations and the graduate labour market. An excellent keynote speaker and specialist on employment, Paul is also a presenter, author, researcher, media contributor whose work centers on the changing world of work and the challenges facing both students and graduate recruiters.

 

Peter Lukacs, FCA

Peter Lukacs is a Senior Manager in the Competition Division of the FCA leading the market study into General Insurance Pricing Practices. He joined the FCA in 2013 and has worked in the Economics Department and Competition Division on a wide range of market studies, policy and research projects.

 

Peter Moore, BDO

Peter is a senior manager in BDO’s Actuarial team. Having worked in insurance consulting for 14 years, he has extensive experience covering reserving, capital modelling, audit support, finance transformation and enterprise risk management.  He is currently serving as the Deputy Chair of the IFoA’s General Insurance Lifelong Learning committee.

 

 

 

Peter Towers, Central Bank of Ireland

Peter Towers is Chair of the IFoA’s PPO Working Party and a member of the Life Board Research Subcommittee. He has a number of years’ experience in CEO and other board level roles across the UK, Irish and cross-border insurance and wealth management sectors and is a Past President of Insurance Ireland (the representative body for the insurance industry in Ireland). He now works in financial regulation and is Senior Actuarial Advisor at the Central Bank of Ireland.

 

Philippa King, Ageas

Qualified actuary, leading the Actuarial implementation of IFRS 17 at Ageas. 

 

 

 

Raghav Ohri, Lux Actuaries

Raghav is a consulting actuary at Lux Actuaries in Dubai, UAE. He has experience working with (re)insurers across the Middle East in statutory and consulting roles.

 

 

 

Professor Rebecca Shipley, UCL

Professor Shipley, FIET, is a British mathematician and professor of healthcare engineering at University College London (UCL). She is director of the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering, co-director of the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering and Vice Dean (Health) for the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. She is also a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and was one the main leads of the UCL / UCL Hospitals / Mercedes F1 effort to develop, manufacture and distribute the Ventura non-invasive breathing mask to provide crucial machines to help patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Richard Campanha, SCOR

Richard Campanha is currently a Sr. Business Analyst within the Natural Catastrophe Systems department of SCOR. Based in London, he has worked in the areas of catastrophe modelling, (re)insurance, insurance linked securities, and related technologies. He is currently pursuing a Master of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology specializing in Computational Perception & Robotics. He has a Bachelor of Science in Pure Mathematics from Florida International University along with a minor in Astrophysics. He has also worked with the United States Coast Guard (Civil Engineering Unit and Air Search and Rescue), NASA/MIT (Aero/Astro department), and Apple Inc in different capacities.

 

Richard Holloway, LCP

Richard advises a range of insurance and reinsurance clients on the design, building, and validation of capital models for Solvency II.  He co-chairs LCP’s CRO and capital round tables.  As a result he takes a keen interest in the modelling of risk.

 

 

Robin Finer, FCA

Robin Finer is Head of Retail Competition. From 2014 to 2018 Robin was the Head of Department for Wholesale and Investments Competition Department and led some of the FCA’s seminal market studies, such as the Investment and Corporate Banking Market Study and the Asset Management Market Study.  He then spent a year as the FCA’s acting Chief Economist before starting his current role.

Prior to working at the FCA, Robin was a Director of Economic Analysis at the Competition Commission, where he worked on mergers, market investigations and regulatory inquiries across a wide range of sectors. He has also worked as a Project Director and economist at the Office of Fair Trading and in the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission.

 

Ryan Li, Bank of England

Ryan Li is a Senior Technical Specialist within the General Insurance Risk Specialists team at the Bank of England’s PRA. Prior to joining the PRA, Ryan had spent 20 years working in the insurance industry both in the UK and abroad.

 

 

 

Samir Khimani, NHBC

Samir initially joined NHBC in 2018. Currently a Senior Actuarial Analyst in the team, he has previous experience in a broker environment with exposure to generalised linear modelling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Santiago Restrepo, BDO LLP

Santiago is a specialist in general insurance pricing, reserving, enterprise risk management and economic capital models. I have over ten years experience in the UK General Insurance sector including personal and commercial lines. I am a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (FIA) and Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA). I also hold the Lloyd's Syndicate Actuary Practising Certificate. 

 

 

Sarah MacDonnell, LCP

Sarah has 25 years actuarial experience in general insurance, spanning personal lines, London Market, reinsurers and captives, both in the UK and overseas.  She started her career working for General Accident in Hong Kong but has spent most of her time as a consultant, first with Towers Watson, and then with LCP.

Sarah is on the GI board of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and until last year was chair of GIROC, the IFoA committee responsible for oversight of GI reserving in the UK.

 

Seema Thaper, Enstar Group

Seema Thaper is the Chief Transaction Actuary at Enstar Group and leads the actuarial analysis for global M&A Transactions. Prior to this she spent most of her career at Deloitte, most recently leading the GI Actuarial Advisory Team in the UK. Seema has broad experience within the insurance market across reserving, capital, transaction pricing, audit, regulatory and risk issues. Until last year, Seema was the IFoA Chief Examiner for SP7, a member of the GI Board and Chair of the GILL committee and now spends her volunteering time supporting a local academy as a School Governor.

 

 

Shanawaz Hirani, Willis Towers Watson

Shan is an actuary at Willis Re, leads their EMEA region strategic analytics practice focused on capital management and reinsurance.

 

 

 

 

Shirley Beglinger, Crescendo Advisors

Experienced expert witness in insurance and reinsurance disputes.

Solid technical underwriting background in Property and Business Interruption, Professional Indemnity, Directors & Officers, Crime Bonds and Commercial Crime.

 

 

 

Simon Black, Aviva

Simon has spent over 30 years in the industry initially starting out in pensions before switching to Life and then finding his “true home” in general insurance where he has held a number of senior roles in reserving, pricing and more recently economic capital. He is currently Head of Economic Capital within Aviva’s General Insurance Actuarial Function, a role he has held since July 2015

 

 

Simon Cartagena, SCOR

Actuarial Risk Manager at SCOR & The Channel Syndicate. Working on cyber quantification for the last 5 years focussing on accumulation and silent cyber risks. At SCOR I’ve led the modelling of silent cyber risks for the group and the management reporting of the risk. Market collaborations on cyber include the role of Deputy Chair of the Cyber Risk Actuarial Working Party/ ASTIN Cyber Working Party & speaking at conferences on cyber quantification.

 

Simon Sheaf, Grant Thornton

As an experienced partner, Simon has lead Grant Thornton's provision of actuarial and risk services to general insurers. He has worked in, and consulted to, the general insurance industry for nearly 30 years. He focusses on the provision of practical advice to enable clients to make informed management decisions in financial and operational matters. 

 

Sophie Weisenberger, RPC Tyche

Sophie is a Senior Consultant at RPC Tyche and the Product Lead for the reserving and specialist library offerings. Her current focus is on the development of reserving models with web interfaces built in Tyche and Tyche Flow. Prior to RPC Tyche, Sophie advised clients on reserving and other insurance matters including Solvency II, enterprise risk management and internal model validation.

 

Sophie Williams, FCA

Sophie Williams is a Senior Associate in the Competition Division of the FCA. Sophie has played a key role on the FCA’s market study into General Insurance Pricing Practices since it was launched in October 2018. Sophie is now leading on firm engagement during the consultation phase of the market study.

 

 

Stavros Martis, Deloitte

Stavros is a Director in Deloitte’s UK Non-Life practice where he leads the Lloyd’s and London Market actuarial portfolio of clients and has recently joined the IFoA’s GI Board.

Stavros has over 23 years of experience in Lloyd’s and the wider London and UK insurance markets and has previously served in a variety of roles including as an house Chief Actuary..

 

 

Stefan Holzberger, A.M. Best

Stefan Holzberger joined A.M. Best in 2001 in the United States as a financial analyst in the property/casualty rating division. In 2004, he assumed the position of assistant vice president responsible for the ratings of roughly 100 excess and surplus lines and specialty insurance organizations. In 2008, Stefan’s responsibilities shifted to the development and dissemination of rating criteria and methodology, as well as regulatory policy development. Currently, Stefan is Chief Rating Officer of A.M. Best, where he is responsible for the agency’s global ratings coverage.

 

Steve Marriott, NHBC

Steve has worked at NHBC since 2002.  He has held a variety of roles within the Actuarial Department before becoming the Head of Pricing in 2018.  Prior to joining NHBC he worked at Hamilton Insurance, a creditor insurer.

 

Steve Wilson

Steve has over 30 years’ experience in the insurance industry across actuarial, risk and general management, including Group Chief Actuary for Zurich and Global CRO of Zurich’s General Insurance businesses. Steve has interacted extensively with boards, investment analysts, rating agencies, regulators and auditors.

 

 

Professor Tim Baker, UCL

Since March this year Tim has been the co-lead of the UCL-Ventura group that manufactured 10,000 breathing aids in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The designs have since been licenced free-of-charge to over 1,000 organisations in more than 100 countries worldwide.

After graduating from UCL Mechanical Engineering, Tim joined the department’s internal combustion engine research group. His PhD focused on intake systems development in collaboration with Ford Motor Company. Tim then worked in motorsport for 20 years starting with Formula 1, which saw his career evolve from engine development to engine design. Tim has designed engines that have won races and championships at global level, notably class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

 

Tom Durkin, LCP

Tom is an expert in building and communicating results from business models to inform his clients' decisions. He works with insurers and other financial companies to help them understand their wider risks and capital requirements. Tom has significant experience in internal model validation under Solvency II. He is also responsible for the development and maintenance of internal models for Lloyd's clients.

Tom has nearly fifteen years' experience in both UK and international consulting, including several years as a consultant in Sydney, Australia, providing advice to the Australian Government.

 

Trevor Maynard, Lloyd's

Dr Trevor Maynard is Head of Innovation at Lloyd’s and is responsible for encouraging a culture of innovation within the Lloyd’s market including identifying and removing barriers to change, product development and thought leadership. Subjects covered in recent years include: Intangible Assets,  the New Space economy, the Sharing Economy and supply chain risks. He is chairman of OASIS, an open access platform for Catastrophe models and sits on the Technation Insurtech Board and the Oxford Industry Advisory Board for the Statistics Department.    Trevor has degrees in Pure Maths and a PhD in Statistics.  He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

 

Valerie du Preez, Dupro

Valerie du Preez, Fellow Institute of Actuaries, has extensive experience in supporting insurance clients optimise their actuarial, risk and finance processes. Her work includes Programme Advisory Services on the International Financial Reporting Standard for Insurance Contracts (IFRS 17) which covers input and guidance in core operational and technical areas. She focuses on developing sustainable finance and risk operating strategies and optimising key business drivers impacting organisational performance and financial accuracy, with the use of innovative technologies, including advanced data science tools and techniques.

Ugo Okpewho, Healthcare Advisory Actuarial Leader

Ugo is a seasoned healthcare actuarial leader with experience serving clients in the public accounting and employee benefits consulting space and has extensive experience working in health insurance companies. He has also worked with leadership at insurance companies, self-insured organizations, and various state insurance regulators to help solve a wide-variety of problems related to financial reporting, pricing, reserving, forecasting, due-diligence for mergers and acquisitions, and meeting statutory requirements.

Ugo is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA).  He is a board member of the International Association of Black Actuaries (IABA) and also serves on the American Academy of Actuaries’ Health Equity Task Force.

 

Visesh Gosrani, Aon

Visesh has over 20 years of experience as an Actuary and Chief Risk Officer in the insurance industry. His area of interest has been finding better ways to measure individual and organisational risk beyond the standard underwriting submission. 

He chairs the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Cyber Risk Working Party which provides guidance to actuaries and insurers on how to better understand and manage cyber risk. Visesh is Head of Actuarial at Medical Protection Society and is on the Advisory Board of Kovrr, a cyber modelling firm that won both insurtech initiative of the year and cyber solution of the year at this year's Insurance ERM awards. Kovrr has also participated in the Lloyd's Lab 2020 insurance accelerator.

 

Will Scobie, Horizonscan

• Will Scobie is from Horizonscan, a firm with a small team of Business Continuity, Resilience and Crisis Management experts and practitioners. Will has been at Horizonscan since 2015, having previously worked in politics and public affairs. For the past four years he was General Manager and has recently taken on the role of Director of Finance and Business Development.

 

William Diffey, Assurant

William is a senior actuary with oversight of Actuarial for the APAC and European Regions at Assurant.  He is Chief Actuary for 2 non-life companies and 2nd line Actuary for 2 Dutch insurers.  This role follows a period leading the Risk and Actuarial functions and the Data Protection officer function (under GDPR) for The Warranty Group Europe as part of the Management Team prior to TWG’s acquisition by Assurant in 2018. He also led global capital modelling for TWG Inc.

William has served as chair of the Institute of Actuaries' Towards the Optimal Reserving Process Working Party since November 2016. During this period the Working Party has presented at the last 3 GIROs on reserving processes automation; IFRS 17 and business transformations.

 

Yuming Mei, Convex

Yuming Mei is an actuary working in Stochastic Analytics at Convex.