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Speaker's Profile
Session One
Manjit Rana
Head of Insurance, psKINETIC
Manjit Rana, is highly regarded as an industry thought leader and one of the pioneers of the InsurTech movement. As a leading pioneer in this field, he has led the charge for informing and educating traditional, well-established players to remain relevant by helping to shape new propositions that are more compelling and relevant in a constantly connected, fiercely competitive, radically changing market.
With over 30 years’ experience of working in the insurance space alongside co-founding a number of start-up businesses and driving internal innovation for large global corporates, Manjit’s advice is firmly grounded and his role as Advisor to some of the most exciting InsurTech disruptors and industry accelerator programmes ensures he’s permanently well-informed.
Session Two
Graeme Lewis
Managing Director, Global Head of Insurance Advisory, HSBC
Graeme Lewis is a Managing Director and Global Head of Insurance Advisory at HSBC. He has spent over 25 years advising insurance companies in Europe and Australia at both HSBC and Credit Suisse. His focus is M&A, capital raisings, demutualisations, defence and balance sheet optimisation transactions for insurers with key clients including Phoenix, Winterthur, Allianz, AMP and INA.
Graeme started his career at the State Bank of NSW as an Actuarial Officer working on the banks own pension scheme and pricing mortgage guarantees for consumer behaviour. He then moved to the banks treasury operation to run an Index arbitrage book and work on more exotic option hedging. Graeme is an Associate (Investment and Finance Specialist) of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and has a BEC from Macquarie University. Graeme is a father of three, a keen sailor, skier and mountain biker.
Anne-Hélène Illich
Co-head of Private Wealth Management in Paris, Goldman Sachs
Anne-Hélène is a Private Wealth Advisor and co-head of Private Wealth Management in Paris for Goldman Sachs, where she has spent the last 20 years. She advises large family offices, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, charity and endowments, on their investments throughout all asset classes.
Graduating in 2000 from Institut des Statistique de l’Universite de Paris (ISUP) as an Actuary, she started her career at Goldman in the European Insurance Group within the Securities Division. She has been advising Insurance and Pension funds on their Asset Liability Management and Fixed Income Investments until 2005. She then broadened her coverage to Asset Managers, Banks, Hedge Funds and specialized in Credit products and Corporate Bonds. In her last role in Securities, she was Head of Credit Flow Products for France, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Anne-Helene is co-heading the Women Network for Goldman Sachs Paris Offices and a member of the Taskforce on Banks and Finance within the Institut des Actuaires Francais (IAF)
Tim Stedman
Group Chief Actuary, Legal & General Group
Tim Stedman graduated in 1987 with a degree in Mathematics from the University of Manchester. He joined the Institute of Actuaries the same year and started his career in the life and pensions division of an insurance company called Guardian Royal Exchange (GRE).
Tim qualified as an actuary in 1994. He left GRE in 1995 and, after two years in consultancy, joined Legal & General Group (L&G) in 1997 and has worked for them ever since. He now has over 30 years’ experience in the life insurance sector.
In 2007 Tim was appointed Actuarial Function Holder to the Group’s main UK life insurance subsidiary and became Group Chief Actuary in 2010. Since then he has led the project to gain approval of the Group’s Solvency II internal model in 2015. Today he has responsibility for the actuarial aspects of the Group’s financial reporting as well as responsibility for capital management and optimisation across the Group.
Session THree
Alessandrea Quane
Chief Insurance Officer, Oscar Health
Alessandrea (Alessa) Quane recently joined Oscar Health as Executive Vice President, Chief Insurance Officer overseeing the Individual, Medicare Advantage and Small Group businesses that provide affordable, high quality healthcare that fits the lives of Oscar’s members. Alessa has extensive experience in both the domestic and international insurance markets through her nearly 25 year career at AIG through global roles in Enterprise Risk Management and Actuarial.
She served as Executive Vice President, Chief Risk Officer for AIG as well as Chief Corporate Actuary, Head of Global Actuarial and Value Management, and Chief Risk Officer of AIG Property Casualty during her tenure. Prior to her tenure with AIG, Alessa specialized in pricing and research for non-standard auto at Allstate. Alessa is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and an affiliate member of the Institute of Actuaries. Alessa holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a major in Actuarial Science from Drake University. She was honored in 2019 with the Stuart A. Klugman Distinguished Alumni Award from Drake University for her achievements as an actuary and chief risk officer, her professional engagement and community involvement.
Charles Cowling
Chief Actuary, Mercer
Charles originally joined Mercer’s Liverpool office in 1984 and subsequently became a Worldwide Partner before leaving Mercer to join JLT Benefit Solutions in 2006, where he became their Chief Actuary. He subsequently re-joined Mercer in 2019, when Mercer acquired JLT, and is now Mercer Chief Actuary. Charles has acted as principal actuarial adviser to several multinational companies and their pension schemes and has advised on global de-risking projects.
Charles is a member of the Council of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and has chaired their Pensions Board and their International Board. Charles is the author of a number of research papers and was also Chairman of the UK Actuarial Profession's Discount Rate Steering Committee which led the Actuarial Profession's research into the use of discount rates. Charles is the UK’s pension representative at the Actuarial Association of Europe and the International Actuarial Association.
John Birkenhead
Founder, InsuranceInspect Services
John is an actuary and owner and Director of HJC Actuarial, which he founded in 2003 and which has advised over 100 clients since its’ inception. John qualifed as an actuary in 1995, and has worked for insurers, large audit firms and actuarial consultancies, becoming a Partner in a major global consulting firm in 2000. He has been in the Actuarial Profession for 31 years. He provided extensive actuarial advice to set up Lambeth’s £100m Child Abuse Redress Scheme, the first UK Child Abuse Redress Scheme of its’ kind, advising on its’ design, financial dynamics and all insurance-related matters.
He has presented extensively to schools and universities on actuarial careers, even setting a third year actuarial Maths project for university students, as part of their degree marks. He is also a Student Buddy at the IFOA, a Facilitator on the IFOA’s Professional Skills Course and on the Disciplinary Panels of the IFOA, adjudicating on cases of alleged misconduct of other actuaries!
Session Four
Dr. Rick Gorvett
Professor and Chair of Mathematics Department, Bryant University
Rick Gorvett is Professor and Chair of the Mathematics Department at Bryant University in Smithfield, RI, a position he has held since 2018. For 12 years, Rick was a Professor and the Director of the Actuarial Science Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was the State Farm Companies Foundation Scholar in Actuarial Science. He has been a corporate and consulting actuary, including Senior VP of a large commercial insurer, and he was the first Staff Actuary in the history of the Casualty Actuarial Society. He has been editor-in-chief of Variance, the CAS’s scholarly publication; has served on the board of directors of the CAS; and has been president of the Midwestern Actuarial Forum.
In addition to autonomous vehicles and their potential impact on the risk management and insurance industries, Rick’s research interests include enterprise risk management, financial applications to actuarial science, and modeling behavioral aspects of risk.
Ruoshu Chen
Actuary, Waymo
Ruoshu is an actuary at Waymo based in Mountain View, California. Her responsibilities cover a wide range of topics, including actuarial modeling, risk advisory, policy oversight, data infrastructure and systems, claim analytics, etc. In this role, Ruoshu works closely with various internal and external partners to manage Waymo's risks, and collaborate with Safety Research and Data Science teams to come up with insights for the betterment of autonomous driving technology.
Prior to joining Waymo, Ruoshu spent 4 years at Uber, holding roles in different functions under the Safety & Insurance Team, from reserving to product analytics to safety data science. She helped launch Uber's Crash Detection model and contributed to many other safety features on the ridesharing platform. She also worked at AIG and Willis Tower Watson in earlier stages of her career, building expertise in reserving and stress testing.
Co-founder, CEO and Managing Partner, Alchemy Crew
Sabine VanderLinden
Alchemy Crew is a venture commercialization lab using open innovation, ecosystem thinking, and parallel experimentation techniques to accelerate the curation, validation, and commercialization of digital services supported by disruptive business models. Sabine has over 20 years of experience in insurance.
She was the CEO & co-founder of Startupbootcamp InsurTech (UK) & Hartford’s InsurTech Hub Accelerator (Hartford, CT, USA) where she worked with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated 70+ growth ventures, helping them raise over $100m in funding. She is a pioneer in building innovation ecosystems, a co-editor of bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a multi-award winner, and a top 50 InsurTech Influencer. She was appointed as an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow of The Business School (formerly Cass) in early December for her business model disruption work.
David Wong
Partner and Business Unit Leader in RMS, PwC
David is the Business Unit Leader for Risk Modelling Services (RMS) in PwC. RMS is a team of 350 across 5 offices, specialising in actuarial advice and risk modelling. RMS advices clients across the insurance, banking and the commercial & government sectors.
David has over 25 years of experience working in consulting and in the banking industry. Prior to PwC, he worked for the Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest retail bank.
