Marc Guy Victor Sordoni
Unipol Re
CEO
Marc Guy Victor Sordoni has been chief executive officer of UnipolRe since 2014. He is also head of reinsurance for UnipolSai Assicurazioni supervising the reinsurance for the 16 affiliated companies of Unipol Group in Italy; a member of the credit risk committee for Unipol Gruppo Finanziario under the leadership of CRO Renzo Avesani; and a member of the bonds committee supervising Unipol Bank and UnipolSai under the leadership of group general manager Matteo Laterza. UnipolSai is the sponsor of the catastrophe bond Azzurro Re I. Sordoni has been vice president of the board of directors of Syneteristiki Insurance since March 2016. Prior to joining Unipol Group in 2013 he worked in the reinsurance industry for more than 20 years on the life and non-life side. He holds three Master’s degrees in business studies and a degree in economics and finance.
Shirine Khoury-Haq
Lloyd's of London
Chief Operating Officer
Shirine Khoury-Haq joined Lloyd’s in July 2014 as chief operating officer and her remit includes market operations, data, information technology and property services. She is responsible for driving forward modernisation across Lloyd’s and the wider London market as the sponsor of the London Market Target Operating Model (TOM) initiative. Khoury-Haq joined Lloyd’s from Catlin, where she was group head of operations and UK chief operating officer. Prior to this, she was an associate partner at IBM, specialising in large systems and business transformation projects as well as post-merger/acquisition integration. She also had responsibility for finance and operations for several regions while employed at McDonald’s Corporation. Khoury-Haq holds an MBA from Ohio State University and is a US Certified Public Accountant.
Jacob Abboud
Allianz Insurance (UK)
Chief Information Officer
Jacob Abboud is the chief information officer of Allianz Insurance. The company is focused on providing P&C insurance to commercial and personal customers in Great Britain and is the UK insurance arm of Allianz SE, the world’s largest general insurer. He is also a board non-executive director (NED) at the Motor Insurers Bureau and a NED for Premier Business Care Brokers. Before this, Abboud was IT director savings, insurance and digital at Legal & General. He also worked at a technology product company, Fluency, as the chief technology officer and VP of product development, and held roles in retail banking, credit cards, and investment banking. He has an engineering degree from the University of Bath where he was also awarded a PhD in computer-aided engineering. He is a chartered member of the British Computer Society and the Chartered Insurance Institute.
Martin Henley
XL Catlin
Global Chief Information Officer
Martin Henley is XL Catlin’s global chief information officer. In this role he is responsible for leading transformational IT change. Henley has more than 18 years of experience in the insurance industry. Prior to joining XL Catlin he held numerous senior positions at AXA, including the role of chief information officer.
He holds a BSc in maths from the University of Southampton and is a qualified accountant.
Ian M Thompson
Zurich Insurance Group AG
Group Chief Claims Officer
Ian M. Thompson has spent 23 years working in general insurance, gaining a range of experience in global and UK roles covering risk engineering, operational risk management, corporate venturing, capability development and operational leadership. He has increasingly focused on business transformation and strategic change. In 2012 Thompson was appointed Zurich Insurance Plc and Europe chief claims officer, based in Dublin, Ireland. In 2014, his remit expanded to encompass Zurich’s Middle East and Africa claims teams. He is now accountable for more than 4,000 claims professionals across 31 countries. He has led the development of the EMEA claims governance and control environment, and overseen the delivery of more than $400 million of incremental claims indemnity improvements. In 2014, Thompson was appointed as non-executive director to the board of Zurich’s Italian direct business Zuritel. He is chairman of the board of Zurich Sigorta, Turkey.
David Nichols
Zurich Insurance Group AG
Chief Claims Officer for UK
David Nichols started his career in Aviva (Norwich Union) before joining Zurich in February 2004 holding a number of positions including head of small business, head of performance management and director of technical operations. With effect from January 2016, he was appointed to the role of Zurich’s UKGI chief operating officer bringing with him drive, experience and inherent customer focus to help operations and technology continue to play a vital role in the Zurich business. In July 2017 Nichols was appointed chief claims officer, and has end-to-end responsibility for the claims operation within the UK.
Brian Wallace
DXC Technology
Chief Technology Officer - Insurance
As the chief technology officer for DXC’s global insurance business, Brian Wallace drives technology strategy, industry partnerships, and the ongoing alignment of DXC’s capabilities to the needs of the insurance industry. His role is to stay on the forefront of disruptive technological change and drive the creation of transformative offerings, enabling DXC’s insurance clients to take action through informed understanding and well-executed delivery.
Wallace has leadership and service delivery experience in insurance, banking, and healthcare, spanning the commercial and the public sectors. He has worked in industry, consulting, startup, ISV, and global SI businesses where he’s held COO, CTO, and practice leadership roles. His passion is IT-enabled transformation and he is regularly looked to as a thought leader and change agent.
Ben Canagaretna
Barbican Insurance Group
Group Chief Actuarial Officer
Ben Canagaretna is group chief actuary and joined Barbican in June 2009. He leads the actuarial and exposure management departments within Barbican and brings high levels of systems, processes and data management expertise to the role. Canagaretna began his career in 2001 at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the pension consultancy area providing services to a number of FTSE 250 companies. He moved into the insurance industry in 2004, joining the actuarial team at Whittington. He then became casualty divisional actuary at Liberty Syndicates with sole responsibility for actuarial output for the casualty division.
Volker Büttner
Generali
Head of Group Innovation
Dr Volker Büttner is head of innovation at Generali Group. He has been working within the financial services sector for more than 12 years. Previously, he held management roles at Germany’s leading online insurer CosmosDirekt and within the global automotive division of Allianz Group. Before that, he worked for McKinsey for seven years. Büttner graduated from EBS Business School and holds a PhD from WHU.
Antony Elliott
Zurich Insurance Plc
Group Head of Business Transformation
Antony Elliott is the group head of business transformation for Zurich Insurance Group. In the internet of things (IoT) space Elliott has oversight of Zurich’s work looking at IoT for commercial insurance. He believes that the nexus of connected devices, machine learning and digitisation will bring a step change in the way insurers can help customers to understand, manage and insure risks. Elliott stands for delivering customer-centric, efficient and effective solutions and propositions for retail and commercial insurance customers. He believes that the insurance industry needs to embrace a ‘lean startup-like’ innovative culture to drive meaningful transformation across the industry. In his 18-year career in the insurance industry Elliott has worked across roles in operations, finance, governance, architecture and innovation covering projects across the globe and the insurance value chain.
Alasdair Craig
Liberty Syndicates
Chief Actuary - Specialty
Alasdair Craig is chief actuary for specialty at Liberty Specialty Markets (LSM). He is responsible for actuarial pricing, reserving and capital parameterisation across all specialty insurance lines written by LSM. Craig joined Liberty in 2011 from Groupama Insurances where he began his career. He is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and graduated with a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Bath.
Haixia Zhao
Exin Re
Chief Risk Officer
Haixia Zhao has been chief risk officer of Exin Re since 2016. She has professional skills in actuarial science, catastrophe modelling, predictive modelling, financial risk, property and casualty reinsurance pricing, analytical skills, and enterprise risk management. Prior to Exin Re, she held the position of senior vice president, head of property non-cat, agriculture and weather derivative pricing at Axis Re. Earlier, at Towers Watson, she worked on reinsurance pricing in property and casualty lines and supported the North American reinsurance market. She is a fellow of the CAS and is a Certified Catastrophe Risk Analyst from RMS.
Ken Marke
Ageas UK
Head of Strategic Development
Ken Marke has spent more than 30 years in the insurance industry in the UK, Europe and Asia mainly in corporate and strategic development roles. He works for Ageas Group advising on horizon scanning, future trends and blockchain strategies to anticipate and manage longer term disruption. Ageas is a founding shareholder in B3i to which Marke is currently seconded to the chief marketing officer.
Dennis Westerhuis
Kroodle-Aegon, Aegon
Managing Director
Dennis Westerhuis is the Managing Director of Kroodle (Aegon). Kroodle Connect is a global mobile platform that rewards users for positive behavioural lifestyle choices (good driving, healthy lifestyle choices and, later this year, retirement readiness). Dennis Westerhuis and team have introduced Lean Startup to manage the innovation process. Westerhuis has a proven track record in international business cultures. Before his current role, Westerhuis was the marketing lead at Aegon China for new online term life insurance for China. Prior to that, he was based in Los Angeles as the social media director at Transamerica Life Insurance. In 2013 he won the LIMRA Social Media Award for Transamerica in the category ‘Best Use of Facebook’. Throughout his career Westerhuis has attained extensive experience in behavioural economics / neuromarketing; intrapreneurship; connected car; telematics; connected health; IoT; usage-based insurance; fintech/insurtech innovation; digital marketing; lean startup and growth hacking. Westerhuis holds an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.
Alexandre Rispal
Moonshot-Internet (Société Générale Insurance)
Co-Founder and CEO
Alexandre Rispal is associate director, Moonshot-Internet (Société Générale Insurance) and the former head of R&D and innovation at Sogessur, Société Générale Insurance. He is also the president of the finance and insurance club Adetem (French National Marketing Association). Rispal has more than 10 years of experience with Société Générale, the Macif Group, Crédit Agricole, and AXA in marketing and innovation management, operational, strategic, products, digital, social media, disruptive projects, partnerships with startups, and creation of services, recruiting, training and management of experts. He is a business author and is considered a thought-leader in areas such as telematics, internet of things, big data and blockchain. Rispal has won several innovation prizes.
Ashley Prebble
Clifford Chance
Partner
Ashley Prebble is deputy co-head of the Clifford Chance insurance group and is based in London. He specialises in corporate and regulatory insurance, including initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, part VII transfers, distribution agreements and regulatory matters. Prebble advises insurers, reinsurers and intermediaries in the Lloyd’s and the London markets, as well as internationally, and provides transactional and regulatory advice to established and emerging participants in insurtech. He is ranked as a leading lawyer in the directories, and is described in Chambers UK 2016 as having “an excellent knowledge of insurance and regulation coupled with an unerring commercial judgement”.
Cécile Wendling
AXA Group – GIE AXA
Group Head of Foresight – Corporate Responsibility and Public Affairs
Dr. Cécile Wendling is head of foresight at AXA Group, where she conducts forward-looking analyses for the group on data, digital and cyber issues, among others. She is also an associate researcher at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, a joint programme of the Sciences Po university, Paris and the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research). Her areas of research focus mainly on the sociology of risks, crisis management, foresight tools and methods.
Diogo Santos Franco
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Head of Digital Transformation
Diogo Santos Franco's professional activity as head of department at Generali Spain since 2013 is combined with his academic activity as an associate professor of corporate finance at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid on the Master in Management course. Santos Franco's experience ranges from London and Paris to Lisbon and Madrid in strategic consultancy and in a variety of companies such as France Télécom, Mercedes-Benz and AXA Group. Santos Franco holds a Bachelor’s degree from Universidade Técnica of Lisbon, a post-grad in insurance strategic management from Fundación Mapfre (University of Salamanca), and an international MBA from the University Carlos III of Madrid, and is currently a PhD candidate in financial digital strategy at Bocconi University in Milan. He holds extensive courses in strategy, big data and innovation from universities such as IESE, Stanford University, Deusto University and Fundación Mapfre.
Hagen Selinger
Willis Towers Watson
Global Marketing Lead
Magdalena Ramada PhD is a senior Economist at Willis Towers Watson’s Research and Innovation Center with 20 years of experience in R&D and international consulting. Magda holds a PhD in Quantitative Economics and Finance and was the firm’s Head of Research and Analytical Services. She currently focuses on strategic consulting for the Insurance Industry, especially around emerging markets, #insurtech and blockchain/distributed ledger technologies.
Her main areas of expertise include technology and innovation, MNC internationalisation strategies, emerging markets, global governance, macroeconomic and sociopolitical risks. Ramada has 15 years of teaching experience at European and Latin American universities. She has presented at various international conferences and summits and has several publications in her areas of expertise.
Marc Lehmann
Aig
Head of Catastrophe Management
Marc Lehmann is part of the AIG Client Risk Solutions leadership team and head of client service development, responsible for promoting existing products and offerings and developing new technical risk services for AIG’s clients and prospects. Lehmann joined AIG from insurance broker Willis Towers Watson where he was a partner and founding member of a risk consulting practice that offers clients a multitude of services including enterprise risk management, risk finance optimisation, actuarial services and cat modelling. Prior to Willis he worked at ABS Consulting (formerly EQE) managing the delivery of catastrophe risk advisory services to global clients across various industry sectors and was also responsible for developing and promoting the cat modelling software products (EQECAT) for the re/insurance markets. He is a structural/civil engineer by training and is fluent in English, French and German.
Sudaman T M
Allianz BeNeLux
Chief Data Officer
Sudaman T M started his career as a middleware designer developing a complex event processing solution for a major bank in India. After completing his MBA through UCLA he consulted for insurance companies in Scandinavia and Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and joined Allianz in 2013; he then left to work for ING. Allianz then re-hired Sudaman to set up and head the data office for BeNeLux. His role involves data governance, data management, data architecture vision, business intelligence and reporting, advanced analytics and master data management.
Martin Overton
AIG
Cyber Risk Technical Specialist
Martin Overton acts as a subject matter expert on cyber risks and solutions, acting as a technical resource for AIG underwriters, brokers and clients; turning technical risks into business language. He is also responsible for partner and business/services development to help AIG clients improve their security posture and maturity. He has been a regular speaker at the Virus Bulletin International Conferences, and has spoken at many other presentations/conferences. To date he has accumulated over three decades of experience in investigating and combating computer viruses, Trojans and related malicious software (malware) and other security breaches.
Martin Pluschke
Nürnberger Versicherung
Head of Group Digitisation Strategy
With more than two decades of experience in the insurance industry in various positions, Martin Pluschke is familiar with all areas of the insurance industry, including field sales and direct insurance. Before he was in charge of the digitisation strategy of Nürnberger, Pluschke established the independent research & development activities of Ergo Group with Axel Springer Plug & Play in Berlin and Startupbootcamp in London, so he is also familiar with the insurtech ecosystem. Nürnberger is an independent insurance and financial services company, concentrating on the German-speaking market and cooperating with European partners. With gross premiums written of some €3.5 billion in the financial year 2015, Nürnberger ranks as one of the major German primary insurance companies.
Max Perkins
Lockton UK
Senior Vice President
Max Perkins joined Lockton’s global cyber & technology team in March 2015. He helps clients manage their professional liability, cyber, IP, media and other emerging intangible risks such as reputational harm. He joined Lockton from Beazley Group, a leading global cybersecurity and data breach insurer. His career began at AIG and later Chubb (legacy ACE Group). Perkins speaks regularly at the largest global risk management and cyber liability conferences such as RIMS, PLUS, NetDiligence, and Advisen. He is relied on by the media, government, and educational institutions for commentary and insight into emerging intangible risks.
Michael Fitzgibbon
Slice Insurance Technologies Inc.
Chief Underwriting Officer
Michael B.C. Fitzgibbon has had a varied 30-year career. As an underwriting manager with CNA, he oversaw a 100% increase in credit insurance GWP and launched automobile nationally in Canada, achieving ROE of 15%. Fitzgibbon led the healthcare and life sciences team at Marsh when his team won three national business development competitions and ranked in the top five business units for profit-centre contribution. As co-owner and president of a regional brokerage in Toronto, Fitzgibbon and his team increased NOI to just under 30%, enabling the sale of the firm to one of Canada’s largest insurers for above-market valuation. His philosophy is “If it isn’t broken, then break it!”. He is an instructor at The Insurance Institute of Canada, a member of the Chartered Insurance Professionals and has held designated underwriting authority with Lloyd’s and Munich Re.
Douglas Robare
Generali
Global Head of Underwriting - Financial Lines, Generali Global Corporate & Commercial,
Douglas Robare is the global head of financial lines underwriting at Generali Global Corporate & Commercial (GC&C). His primary responsibility is the design and execution of growth strategies for the GC&C globally. He is also a member of the European financial roundtable working group on cybersecurity and new digital business models on behalf of Generali. Conducting business in more than 30 countries worldwide, he has held his position since January 2014.
For the past 20 years Robare has worked with customers providing relevant insurance solutions for complex domestic and cross-border risks. He is a regularly invited speaker across a broad spectrum of insurance related topics, having presented in the US, the UK, Brazil, Germany, India, Central and Eastern Europe, and Italy, most notably panelling with ex-UK prime minister Tony Blair.
Roy Jubraj
Accenture
Managing Director, Insurance
Roy Jubraj is a senior client executive for one of Accenture’s largest property and casualty (P&C) clients. He also leads the digital and innovation agenda for its insurance practice in the UK & Ireland.
This has enabled him to set up and launch Accenture’s Insurance Innovation Centre which offers insurers in the UK and Europe a controlled environment where they can rapidly “test and learn” concepts and ideas within the changing digital environment—focusing on a set of leading-edge technologies and capabilities.
Jubraj is passionate about driving Accenture’s connected insurance offering for clients, specifically related to telematics, connected car and connected home.
Michal Koczwara
Aviva
Global Head of Red Team & Red Team Lead - CISO Group
Michal Koczwara is an experienced pen tester, ethical hacker, and programmer. Previously, he worked for MalwareMustDie where he assisted in a cybercrime investigation regarding Dendroid Malware Coder. He collaborated with MMD researchers and the FBI resulting in a successful conviction. During his independent security research, he has discovered and reported more than 100 critical vulnerabilities and threats in airlines, banks, retailers, governments (including the White House and Barack Obama’s website) and financial institutions systems in the UK, the US, and Russia. Hall of Fame Acknowledgments include Sony, Dell, BlackBerry, Apple, Alpha Bank, Barclays Bank, General Motors, Hawaiian Airlines, ESET, SKY TV, McAfee & Intel Security, USCERT (United States Cyber Emergency Readiness Team), Bitcasa Cloud. He is also a public speaker and a member of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).
Minh Q. Tran
AXA Strategic Ventures
General Partner, Europe
Minh Q. Tran is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur with over 20 years of investing experience. He is the founder of the insurtech capital managed by his investment platform Seed Factory Venture Partners. Formerly, he was general partner at AXA Strategic Ventures and founded AXA Seed Factory (Seed SPV before the creation of @AXAVentures). He is an MBA graduate from INSEAD. He also regularly writes and curates news on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the state of the insurtech industry on his blog The #Insurtech #VC (www.minhtran.fr).
