Matan Abraham

Matan is the co-founder and CEO of Elevate Life, a new generation technology and life insurance company. Using his actuarial and statistical expertise, he is passionate about building smart offerings enabled by best-in-class technology and data that align consumer and business incentives to create lasting value within the financial services environment.

Afaz Uddin Ahmed

Afaz Uddin Ahmed is a senior consultant in Deloitte Australia. He has 8+ years of experience working with data analytics and model development in both academic and non-academic industries. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and M.Eng.Sc degree in Wireless Communication. Afaz also has completed his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Queensland in collaboration with CSIRO Data61. He worked as a research assistant in several research institutes. His main fields of interest are data automation, cognitive system, machine learning algorithm, and process optimization.

Abhijeet Agarwal

Abhijeet Agarwal is an experienced practitioner in the AI, Data and Analytics space, having spent over 16 years in the financial services industry. He has led and delivered various analytics transformation projects, and helped companies develop their data and analytics strategy. Abhijeet has also been immersed in the crypto space, including in smart contract platforms, defi, NFTs, DAOs, layer 2 scaling solutions and insurance protocols.

Kathy Allison

Kathy Allison is a Director in EY’s IFRS Professional Practice based in Sydney. She has over 15 years’ experience in the insurance markets in Australia and South Africa. In her role she provides support to clients across a range of complex technical accounting matters.  She is currently actively working with several life, general and health and reinsurers to support their interpretation and application of IFRS 17.

She is a member of EY’s Global IFRS Insurance Technical Panel and a key contributor to the preparation of IFRS 17 disclosure publications. Kathy is a qualified CA(SA).

Leandro Ao

Leandro Ao is a Director in the Actuarial & Financial Risk practice at KPMG Australia with experience on capital management, valuation, transactions and in-force management for life insurers in Australia and Asia Pacific. He also volunteers in the Superannuation and Investment Practice Committee in the Actuaries Institute. 

Geniere Aplin 

Geniere is the CEO of EML Solutions and is an experienced Non-Executive Director. Her executive experience spans a range of industries including Personal and Commercial Insurance, Banking, Law and Regulation in private, mutual, and public sectors. She has over 20 years of executive experience leading high performing organisations with vision and purpose. Her proven success in financial services includes profit and loss experience in building, growing, merging, acquiring, regulating, and divesting businesses. Geniere has a proven track record of growing and building organisational capabilities to increase sustainable competitive advantage, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. She is a highly sought-after speaker and is recognised as a strong and trusted voice within the Australian business community and beyond. Geniere graduated with an MBA (Executive) from the Australian Graduate School of Management for which she was awarded the Chairman’s Prize. She also holds a Bachelor of Laws from the Queensland University of Technology and is a Graduate of the AICD (GAICD).

Anthony Asher

Anthony is an actuary and Adjunct Associate Professor at the UNSW Business School - i.e. now retired from paid work. His working life has been divided between university teaching and a variety of professional roles including Chief Actuary of a life insurer, consultant actuary to a range of companies and governments, and with APRA. Within the Actuaries Institute he is currently a member of the Council and the Retirement Strategy Group, and Convenor of the Retirement Incomes Working Group, which is working on the design of post retirement products and advice. He is well known in the profession for his interest in ethics in professional life, particularly the social impact of actuarial work.

Benjamin Avanzi PhD MAICD is Professor of Actuarial Studies at the University of Melbourne. He worked as an actuarial consultant in Switzerland and Canada, was Executive Chairman of the Board of a Swiss pension fund from 2006 to 2008, and held full-time academic positions in Australia and Canada since 2008.

Benjamin is a member of the Swiss Association of Actuaries, an Affiliate member of the Australian Actuaries Institute, an Academic member of the Casualty Actuarial Society, as well as a member of the ASTIN section of the IAA. He has ongoing collaboration with major Australian non-life insurers, including Allianz, Insurance Australia Group, and Suncorp.

Benjamin has published in top actuarial and operations management journals, and he was awarded (along with co-authors) the Hachemeister Prize by the Casualty Actuarial Society in 2017, and the Taylor Fry General Insurance Seminar Silver Prize in 2018. He is an Editor of the ASTIN Bulletin, an Associate Editor of Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, as well as a member of the Editorial Board of the open access journal Risks.

Elizabeth Baker

Elizabeth has worked for 30 years in the financial services industry in Australia, Europe and Asia. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia (FIAA), an Associate of CPA Australia and holds a Master of Applied Finance. Elizabeth is an independent consultant in risk management, actuarial and finance practice areas. Elizabeth previously worked at Hollard Insurance, at EY as a Director in Financial Services and at CommInsure where she was the Appointed Actuary for CMLA. Before returning to Australia in 2013, Elizabeth worked internationally for 15 years in Europe, Japan and the Asia Regional office in Singapore for AXA, in a range of senior Actuarial, Risk and Finance roles across a number of insurance and reinsurance businesses. She has extensive operational experience in Finance, Capital Management, Actuarial, Risk Management and Strategy.

Dustin Ball

Dustin is a Partner in EY-Parthenon’s Strategy & Transactions practice and the Asia-Pacific Insurance Transaction Leader.

Over 20 years of experience across a broad range of areas including general management, strategy formulation and mergers & acquisitions; Over 12 years in Asia with leading multinational insurance companies

Former CEO of BIDV MetLife, MetLife’s insurance joint venture in Vietnam. Managed the company from inception to being one of the leading bancassurance businesses in Vietnam

Former Head of Strategy and M&A at several multinational life insurers; completed a number of transactions including acquisitions, divestitures, and restructuring, as well as negotiating bancassurance agreements

Sharmani Barnard

Sharmani is an epidemiologist/biostatistician, trained at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and King’s College in London. She holds positions within the PHI industry at HBF, in medical research at Telethon Kids Institute and an advisory role in English government.  Prior to coming to Australia, she held a role as Principal Statistical Adviser within Health Intelligence at Public Health England where she and a team developed excess mortality estimates used for monitoring and decision making during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Her work in England now involves estimating mortality displacement caused by COVID-19 infection.

Will Barsby

Will is an experienced Lawyer and General Manager who has successfully established, transformed and built high performing businesses in all personal injury schemes across Australia. Will commenced his career as a lawyer at a plaintiff firm where he assisted thousands of injured motorists and workers navigate their personal injury claims. Later, Will moved across to Australia's largest injury insurer where he held roles in claims management, regulation & compliance, and integration roles across CTP and public liability products. More recently, Will was the National GM of the Life Insurance Practice at Shine Lawyers where he led the operations for close to 9 years.

Will joined the EML team in 2019 where he was appointed to the role of General Manager, Life, CTP and Accident & Health. Having seen claims businesses from both sides, Will holds a strong belief that there exists a common goal, the unwavering desire to do the right thing for customers. Will is passionate about the injury insurance industry and is driven by his desire to create sustainable insurance claims businesses. Will believes that industry can deliver strong financial returns whilst still delivering ethical claims outcomes that accord to community standards and expectations. Will advocates this is achievable by balancing, with discipline, customer centricity with technical excellence.

Danny Bechara

Danny is a Director within the Actuarial & Financial Risk practice at KPMG Australia, primarily supporting life insurance/reinsurance, retirement income and wealth management clients across a range of strategic, financial and risk management engagements. Danny actively volunteers for the Actuaries Institute. He is currently Treasurer of the 2023 International Congress of Actuaries Organising Committee, and was awarded the Institute’s Young Volunteer Achievement Award in 2020 

Raymond Bennett

Ray Bennett is a Principal in Deloitte Consulting’s Actuarial and Insurance Solutions team and has more than 25 years of experience, mainly in consulting. Ray has worked all over the world having been based in Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Asia. Ray is focused on financial reporting and risk management and has worked in the life insurance industry with projects including audit work, financial transformations, actuarial modelling, managing participating businesses, capital management, strategic analysis, business planning, product development and M&A projects. Ray has also worked on projects covering reinsurance, general insurance, PHI and pensions work over the years. Ray is a qualified actuary (FIAA) and has a Bachelor of Economics completed at Macquarie University.

Mark Berry

Mark is an actuary who now works as a financial planner and enjoys being an advocate for the customer. After a 15 year Actuarial career working in traditional life insurance actuarial roles, Mark commenced as a financial planner in 2002 with the goal of applying actuarial skills to the provision of financial planning advice delivered in a professional transparent manner paid for by the customer to deliver their outcomes, thus enabling those seeking to be engaged with the management of their own financial plans to be empowered to achieve outcomes appropriate to their circumstances.

Hannes Boshoff

Hannes Boshoff is a Fellow of the Actuaries Institute of Australia and it currently the Chief Actuary for HBF Health. Born in South Africa, he completed his actuarial studies with the Institute of Actuaries in London. Prior to his current roles, he was involved in various actuarial roles in the health funding industry in South Africa for 13 years ranging from data quality assurance and analysis to complex modelling and leading actuarial and product development teams. He has a passion for the health ecosystem and sustainable health funding, using the rich data available in the market to drive insights and decisions that benefit consumers. 

Ryan is a career associate actuary with the Institute of Actuaries in Australia. Originally from South Africa with 8 years of consulting experience there including being a manager at Deloitte, he is now the Head of Corporate Actuarial for the APAC region at Allianz Partners where he has been for the last 3 years.

In addition to his actuarial career he is a former TEDx speaker, United Nations Ambassador, Regional Manager of CSR at Deloitte South Africa and has 16 years of presenting experience across multiple topics.

Finally Ryan is happily married to his beautiful wife Teri, heavily involved at his Church and enjoys supporting Australian rugby and cricket whenever possible.

Matthew Buckle

Matthew is a Manager in EY’s Life Insurance and Wealth Management Actuarial Services practice based in Sydney.  He has experience in the insurance industry in South Africa and Australia, having started his career in Cape Town before moving to Sydney with EY in 2019. Matthew has significant technical expertise in Life Insurance valuations, capital management and process improvement and is an active member of EY’s Global IFRS 17 Implementation Network, a member of various IFRS 17 related forums, as well as an active contributor to IFRS 17 thought leadership.

Francis Burgess

Paul Burton

Paul Burton is Professor of Data Science for Health in the Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University, UK.  Over his career, his research has encompassed three broad themes: 1) Methods research in biostatistics and genetic epidemiology –  focusing on generalized linear models (GLMs), generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) and on Bayesian approaches to modelling and statistical inference, particularly when data exhibit a strong correlation structure; 2) Applied research in genetic epidemiology and complex disease epidemiology; and 3) Health Data Science with a focus on the design, set up and harmonization of biobanks/cohort studies, and in facilitating privacy-preserving access for researchers and health professionals to national and international repositories of data and biosamples.

Much of his early work under themes 1 and 2 was carried out in Western Australia as part of the work programs led by Professor Fiona Stanley at what is now the Telethon Institute for child health research. He returned to the UK in 1999 and, since 2019, has been a senior advisor to Public Health England. In this role, he has been integral in the development of methods for estimating excess mortality and mortality displacement resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tiberio Caetano

Tiberio has spent the last 20 years working on machine learning in numerous roles as a student, researcher, academic, entrepreneur and practitioner. He started his research career in theoretical physics as an undergraduate, following with a degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in computer science.

He has published extensively in top-tier academic journals and conferences in machine learning, graduated numerous PhD students, and collaborated widely with researchers from across the world. He held research positions in Brazil, Canada, France, and Australia, including adjunct academic appointments at the ANU, UNSW, and University of Sydney. He spent 10 years at NICTA, where he worked as a researcher, research leader, and research group manager in the machine learning group.

In 2012 he co-founded Ambiata, a data science NICTA spin-off focusing on applying rigorous scientific methodologies for personalised decision-making using machine learning, causal inference and randomised controlled trials. As Ambiata’s Chief Scientist, he led the design of decision-making algorithms that have touched millions of consumers across several industries, including banking, telecommunications, media, insurance, and retail, spanning personalised decisions from pricing and credit scoring to advertisement and product configuration.

Tiberio believes the path to a more ethical world is through a deeper understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between actions and wellbeing. He is a proponent of the rigorous application of scientific thinking and methods beyond academia and into all areas of industry, government, and society more broadly. 

Daniel Cheng

Daniel is a Portfolio Management Actuary from TAL, with a great passion for enterprise risk management. He has experience in designing and maintaining Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) for wealth management business, as well as managing regulatory risk for various clients. Daniel is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia (FIAA) and holds the Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuaries (CERA) designation. He was also a member of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) in 2018 and is a current member of the Actuaries Institute, supporting the Risk Management Faculty and Disability Insurance Taskforce Working Group.

Neha Chopra
Manager, Actuarial & Financial Risk
KPMG

Neha is a Manager within KPMG’s Financial Risk Management team, with consulting experience in the banking, wealth management and life insurance industries. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia. Neha is a member of the Wealth Management Sub Committee and the Banking Practice Working Group, and is passionate about lifting the actuarial brand in non-traditional areas. 

Philip Chu

Philip has over ten years’ experience as an Actuary in superannuation consulting and wealth management. Recently he joined the Trustee Office at Mercer where he supports the Trustee’s role to prioritise members’ best interests and Trustee obligations such as those in SPS515 Member Outcomes. He is also the Convenor of the Wealth Management Sub-Committee and has led the drafting of the Institute’s submission to the APRA consultation on the proposed enhancements to SPS530 Investment Governance. 

Karen Cutter

Karen worked as a consulting actuary in the general insurance field for 25 years before taking a career break a few years ago. Finding herself at a loose end during lockdown in March, she developed an interest in COVID-related matters. Karen has authored a number of professional papers and has served on the GIPC and other Institute committees.

Joe Daley

Dr Joseph Daley is the General Manager of Group Life Product, Pricing and Portfolio Management at TAL.

Joseph joined TAL almost ten years ago initially leading TAL’s Individual business Pricing, Value and Portfolio Management function before moving to Group Life almost four years ago. Joseph has worked with partners and customers to drive transformational change across the Australian Retail, Direct and Group Life industries.

Joseph has lead investment, product and pricing and commercial advisory business units in global brand name organisations in the US, Europe and Australia. Joseph has been recognised as a leader in the life insurance and investments field for his ability to lead and create high performance, customer focussed organisations.

Joseph holds a PhD from Central Queensland University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries.

Vivian Dang

Vivian is an Actuary with 15 years experience in superannuation consulting. He is currently working as a Strategy Lead at UniSuper and was previously Senior Consultant at MLC Wealth and a Consulting Actuary at The Heron Partnership and Russell Investments, providing actuarial and strategic advice to a wide range of superannuation funds and employers. Vivian is a member of the Actuaries Institute’s Superannuation and Investments Practice Committee, the Life Insurance and Retirement Education Faculty and helped educate a generation of Part 3 superannuation students through course leader roles across the 6A, 6B and CAP subjects.  

Michael Dermody

Michael is a partner in the Actuarial & Financial Risk practice at KPMG Australia. He advises life insurance companies in areas including experience analysis and assumption setting, scenario analysis, capital management, pricing, valuation and appointed actuary services. He also specialises in providing advice to financial institutions and superannuation funds with a particular focus on engagements addressing member equity, fairness and remediation. 

Tony Diep
Senior Consultant
EY

Tony is a Senior Consultant in EY's Actuarial practice who focuses on providing actuarial and strategic consulting advice to wealth management and superannuation clients.

He believes in superannuation as a lever for social progress, and is passionate about the use of a member outcomes lens through which to assess all aspects of superannuation decision-making and regulatory reform, with the ultimate goal of creating better financial outcomes throughout the lifecycle of all Australians.     

Laura Dixie is a director at Taylor Fry. Her expertise is in quantitative analysis of large-scale linked datasets and predictive modelling. She focuses on the health, education and social sectors to support government in making sustainable, evidence-based decisions that benefit community.

Her projects range from understanding the risk factors leading to cancer diagnoses to applying Taylor Fry’s pioneering investment approach modelling in lifetime valuations of welfare and housing in Australia and New Zealand. She is a Fellow of the Institute and holds a PhD in Physics.

Chris Dolman

Chris Dolman is currently Director, Data and Algorithmic Ethics at IAG, helping to ensure that modern decision-making algorithms and other advanced uses of data are designed and implemented in an ethical, responsible and thoughtful way. Prior to this, Chris held a variety of senior management positions in the insurance industry and consulting, in Australia and the UK. Chris is a Fellow of the Actuaries Institute, a Gradient Institute Fellow and an active member of the Actuaries Institute’s Data Analytics and General Insurance Practice Committees. His previous papers at the Actuaries Summit were awarded the Melville Prize, in both 2020 and 2021. 

Michelle Dong

Michelle is a fully qualified actuary and a Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting. She is a current member (and previously secretary) of the Actuaries Institute Climate Risk Working Group, where she has contributed through research and publications on physical and transition risks. Michelle is also a member of the Deloitte Australia ESG Working Group, and the Deloitte Asia Pacific actuarial climate group, focussed on knowledge sharing across business units. She has experience in life insurance across retail and group business, including project managing large scale actuarial integration projects.

Daniël is CEO of Insight Actuaries. He is a healthcare actuary with over a decade of experience in healthcare funding, service delivery, and long-term market sustainability. He has worked on both the health funder and healthcare service provider side of the market. Daniël developed his actuarial career working across several industries, including health, general, and life insurance markets. A significant focus during his formative years was related to wellness and longevity. He has become particularly interested in optimising systems and effective care delivery in the healthcare space. He is an industry expert with a strong focus on the future of healthcare, systems integration, and efficient care delivery.

Daniël has a passion for solutions that empower patients, and he has been involved in developing several innovative product solutions. He has been a speaker at several high-profile international conferences. Those topics included healthcare information asymmetries, technological advances in care delivery, value-based contracting, and health outcomes measurement.

Ian has been involved in the superannuation industry for about 25 years. He is an actuary and has been Head of Research at Chant West for the past 17 years, and is now also General Manager. He is responsible for coordinating Chant West’s research program for super and pension funds, including analysis of the performance, portfolio structure and governance of their investment offerings, as well as how funds help members get the most from their super through their range of member engagement channels. Ian also has a strong focus on fee and insurance disclosure and led an industry-wide group to help industry implement ASIC’s new fee disclosure regime.

Peter Goldblatt

Peter is a senior advisor to the University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Equity and a statistical advisor to the UK Department of Health and Social Care. His main activities are in the field of measurement and monitoring and contributing to European and other international project to review and monitor the social determinants of health. He was previously the Chief Medical Statistician at the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS). He was seconded from ONS to UCL for the duration of the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-2010 (the Marmot Review). Following this review, he co-ordinated reviews of health inequalities in the WHO European Region, for WHO, and a review of health inequalities in European, for the European Commission (EC). He has subsequently contributed to several other projects, including two European Parliament pilot projects, another EC project on drivers of health inequality, a UNDP project to assess the impact of development projects on inequalities in health and its determinants, a Public Health England project modelling return on investment, a review of equity and health inequalities in the Americas, a review of 10 years on since the Marmot Review, a review of non-communicable diseases in Belgium and several projects on the unequal impact of COVID-19 and its containment measures.

James Goldsmith

James Goldsmith is a Senior Health Actuary at HBF. His career has spanned education, general insurance, health insurance, actuarial consulting and analytics consulting for various industries. As Solvency II approached, he led the design and build of reserve risk and capital models for a London Market general insurer.

James moved to Perth in 2015 where he gained experience in data analytics and AI, alongside more traditional actuarial work such as Appointed Actuary support for PHIs. He has helped assess Aged Care funding models, design loyalty systems, and develop analytics strategies.

James was part of the Deloitte analytics team that helped HBF to design and implement new reserving and forecasting processes, leveraging cloud technologies. He joined the HBF actuarial team last year and is now focused largely on capital, insurance risk management and strategic projects. 

Tim Gorst

Tim has over 25 years of financial services experience across both banking and wealth management and currently consults independently as a senior financial services and ERM actuary.  Tim is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary.

Mudit Gupta

Mudit Gupta is an actuary specializing in data analytics and risk management. He is part of Deloitte’s Business Algorithms unit helping organisations design, implement and monitor data solutions and algorithms that are consistent with an organisation’s corporate and social objectives.

He led a wide spectrum of initiatives within insurance companies and banks in Australia and Asia region including standing up an actuarial function, leading pricing and product development unit, launch new digital products, lead insurance procurement for ASX200 organization and manage financial advice risk through data.

Mudit is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales.

Phillip Halverson

Phillip is a general insurance Partner within EY’s Actuarial Services practice and has over 15 years consulting experience. As a key member of EY’s Oceania Sustainable Finance working group, Phillip is working with a range of EY professionals to support financial services companies in the move to net zero emissions and in particular is interested in the role that insurers can play in assisting the transition.

Katja is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies and the Coordinator of the Actuarial Co-op Program at UNSW Sydney. She is also a UNSW Business School Dean's Research Fellow and the Director of Research of the Ageing Asia Research Hub at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR). She holds a PhD in Economics from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Germany. Her research addresses risk management and insurance responses to population ageing. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, the Risk Management and Insurance Review and the Journal of Retirement.

Genevieve Hayes

Genevieve is the Director of Genevieve Hayes Consulting, an AI and analytics consultancy focussed on helping organisations get the most from their data.

She has experience in technical, leadership and academic roles, through which she has applied cutting-edge statistical and machine learning techniques to a range of business problems, including image and text classification, social network analysis and psychometric assessment design.

Genevieve is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, and holds a PhD in Statistics from the Australian National University and a Masters in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Ka Hei Choi
Partner, Actuarial and Insurance Solutions, Deloitte

Ka Hei is a Partner of Deloitte Actuarial Practice based in Hong Kong. He joined the firm in 2007 and has spent 5+ years working overseas covering the US, UK and European markets. His actuarial specialism also includes complex asset modelling, business planning & projections, and asset-liability management.

Ka Hei is a specialist of finance transformation. He has extensive experience on transforming enterprise finance system to adapt regulatory changes such as Solvency II and IFRS 17.  He has been the actuarial lead of multiple global finance transformation programme, ranging from global actuarial system moderisation to UK with-profits fund E2E system & process reform. 

Ka Hei is currently leading the IFRS17 program delivery for one of the major life insurers in Hong Kong. He has been the actuarial solution lead on multiple IFRS17 implementation programs across Asia and also been functional testing lead for the IFRS17 implementation program of a Pan-Asian insurer.

Cary Helenius

Cary is a qualified actuary, experienced in equity market advice, corporate finance, company research, financial modelling, investor communications and marketing.  Cary Helenius has over 36 years experience in the financial services industry, with 6 years experience at National Mutual and 15 years of equity research and investment banking experience as an equity partner of JBWere and Goldman Sachs JBWere, In 2006, he founded Equity Risk Management where he has providing investor relations consulting advice (with Market Eye) to ASX listed companies and undertaking equity market research.  He is also a joint founder and Director of Lifetime Income which provides strategic corporate advice focussed on the decumulation phase of superannuation, and contributed to a number of submissions and research papers in the development of innovative retirement income streams.  

Zane Heyl

Zane is an academically qualified actuary of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA) with 5 years of experience within the life insurance industry, and a member of the ASSA’s Life Assurance Committee which contributes to the current pool of knowledge on various items.

The first four-and-a-half years of his career were spent partly in technical marketing where he played a role in automating and innovating on financial adviser support systems, and largely in IFRS 17 development ranging from technical interpretation to development and the broader strategic decision-making processes.

He currently works as a consultant at Insight Life Solutions dealing with clients on matters related to IFRS 17, Prophet development and regulatory reporting. 

Kirsty leads Munich Re Australia’s group life insurance business. She is a life insurance actuary with twenty years of experience working in Australia, UK and Ireland. Kirsty has worked in a variety of roles across her career spanning pricing, business development, operations and administration, strategy, finance and valuation. 

Fei Huang

Fei is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies, UNSW Sydney. She received her BSc. in Mathematics from Xiamen University in 2009, MPhil in Actuarial Science from the University of Hong Kong in 2011, and PhD in Actuarial Studies from the Australian National University in 2015. Before joining UNSW, she worked at the Australian National University as a Lecturer (2015-2018) and Senior Lecturer (2019-2020).

Fei's main research interest lies in predictive modelling and data analytics. Her recent research focus is on insurance discrimination and pricing fairness. She applies machine learning techniques and statistical methods for various actuarial applications, such as mortality modelling and forecasting, macroeconomic and investment forecasting, and general insurance pricing.  

Fei is also a dedicated educator.  Her educational excellence has been recognized by winning the ANU Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence in the Early Career Category (2018) and ANU College of Business and Economics Award for Teaching Excellence in the Early Career Category (2017).  Fei is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Douglas Isles
FFA, FIAA, MA Math (Trinity College, Cambridge)

Douglas initially joined Platinum in May 2003 as an investment analyst covering industrials and as primary communicator for advisor presentations. He previously worked for CBA as a product actuary and prior to this as an investment manager for Aegon Asset Management in the UK. Douglas left Platinum in October 2008 to work in Singapore where he helped develop Standard Chartered Bank’s equities broking business.

Douglas rejoined Platinum in February 2013, as Investment Specialist, acting as an intermediary between the investment team and Australia/NZ based advisers. Over time he built a team to support this effort, and since 2017 he has, in addition, been introducing Platinum to US-based investors. Douglas was appointed as Head of Investment in March 2022 and is responsible for the investment team’s process and people. He has been a member of the firm’s Management Committee since 2013.

Alisha Jones, FIAA

Alisha is a Business Development Director at RGA. She is a qualified actuary with close to 20 years experience in the financial services industry. She joined RGA in 2008 as a Marketing Actuary, having worked in actuarial consulting prior to this, and has held various roles whilst at RGA encompassing pricing, product, business development, risk and capital.

Doreen Kabuche is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, and a Research Scholar at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR). She researches retirement income (pension) products designing, longevity risk and risk management strategies. Her research interest covers many topics, including population ageing, mortality modelling, pension products, health insurance markets, computational finance, petroleum and energy economics. She holds a Master's in petroleum, Energy Economics and Finance from the University of Aberdeen, UK and a Bachelor's degree in actuarial sciences from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Prior to her doctoral studies, Doreen was a research fellow at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Andy Kanchik

Andy is a Senior Manager within EY’s Actuarial Services practice providing consulting advice to a range of Australian general insurers and reinsurers. Andy has a broad range of experience across capital and risk management, reserving, product and pricing, having worked in both corporate and consulting capacities for close to 10 years. Andy has a strong interest in driving the ESG agenda and is an active member of EY’s Oceania Sustainable Finance working group.

Margaret Kerr

With over 25 years of experience in superannuation and life insurance, Margaret is a director at Deloitte in the Superannuation Actuarial Consulting team.  Prior to joining Deloitte, she worked at Zurich as Strategic Client Partnership Manager where she was responsible for the group life partnerships with several industry funds. Margaret has an intimate understanding of insurance issues facing superannuation and insurance executives, and the ever-changing legislation and expectations from APRA and ASIC.

She has also held executive roles in superannuation funds, serving as Fund Secretary of a corporate fund and an industry fund, as well as senior product and insurance management roles. 

She contributes to various ASFA Discussion Groups, as Chair of the Risk & Compliance Group and Secretary of the Insured Benefits Discussion Group as well being a member of the Group Insurance Working Group, as part of the Disability Income Taskforce at the Actuaries Institute.

Margaret is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

She is passionate about improving the experience for members on claim (particularly for mental health conditions) and is keen to work with all stakeholders across the group life value chain to achieve greater effectiveness, fairness and sustainability.

Robert Kerr

Robert is a Senior Account Manager at Gen Re. Prior to joining Gen Re in Australia 7 years ago, and a couple of years travelling, Robert worked for Gen Re in similar roles in the UK for 5 years.

Prior to this Robert had direct office experience leading pricing, experience analysis and reinsurance for protection and annuity business.

Robert leads the Sustainability Measure working group for the Disability Insurance Task Force.

Francesca Kirby
Consultant, Finity Consulting

Francesca Kirby joined Finity in 2015 as an actuarial graduate. Working across multiple teams at Finity, Francesca has experience across the insurance sector with a focus on pricing. Within the climate risk team, Francesca has contributed to the development of our forward-looking perils models and was a core contributor the development of the Australian Actuaries Climate Index (AACI). Most recently, Francesca has been working with the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation (ARPC) on recommending premium rates for the Cyclone Reinsurance Pool’s commencement on 1 July 2022.

Prior to re-joining Finity in 2021, Francesca worked in Deloitte Netherlands’s Actuarial & Insurance Solutions team where she worked on pricing and climate risk.

James Knight

James leads Aon’s catastrophe research and consultancy services across Australia and NZ. James holds a postgraduate degree in natural hazards and physical geography from his native New Zealand. James has worked in natural hazards since 2007, starting his career as a Flood Hydrologist. Over the last decade, James has worked in the UK, Canadian and Australian insurance markets, primarily focussed on underwriting risk acceptance and pricing of natural hazards.

Nicole Kriek

Nicole is a qualified actuary with 11 years of experience in pricing, valuations and risk management. She has worked in industry and consulting in various countries and across different practice areas including life, health and general insurance.

Shweta Krishna

Shweta is an Associate Director within EY’s Actuarial Services practice providing consulting advice to Australian life insurers and reinsurers. She has a wide range of experience across reserving, capital management, product pricing and risk management, having worked across corporate and consulting roles for over 13 years. She has a keen interest in assisting insurers respond to climate risk and is a member of the Actuaries Institute’s Climate Risk Working Group and EY’s Oceania Sustainable Finance working group.

Tim Lam

Tim is currently employed as a Data Analytics Actuary at Gen Re, where his role is to lead local and support segment transformations across its actuarial and non-actuarial data and analytics capabilities. Prior to joining Gen Re Tim worked in actuarial and non-actuarial roles at KPMG, where he was involved with the graduations of the most recent Australian Disability Income and Lump Sum tables as well as development of a global non-actuarial cloud-based systemic risk solution. 

Richard Land

Richard is Head of Insurance Product & Pricing at AustralianSuper, responsible for the Fund’s insurance offering.

Prior to joining AustralianSuper Richard was Insurance Segment Leader at Mercer, providing consulting services as follows:

• Appointed Actuary to four friendly societies;
• Calculation of policy liabilities, capital management, pricing and risk management for life insurers;
• Insurance benefit design, independent pricing of premiums, general advocacy and the design and review of Insurance Management Frameworks for superannuation funds; and
• Strategic asset allocation and investment consulting for insurers.

Jennifer Lang 
Non-Executive Director & Actuary

Jennifer is a non-executive director and actuary. With more than 25 years of corporate and consulting financial services experience, she is an advocate for the insights actuaries can add to a wide variety of issues. She is Convenor of the Actuaries Institute's working group on Covid19, and a member of the Actuaries Institute's working group on Climate Change. In her spare time she writes her popular actuarial blog Actuarialeye.

Louis Lee
Partner, Actuarial and Insurance Solutions, Deloitte

Louis is a qualified actuary and a Partner in Deloitte’s Actuarial and Insurance Solution practice based in the Hong Kong office, where leads the practice for the General and Health Insurance sector. He joined the firm in 2020, and has more than 20 years experience in the insurance and reinsurance industry across Asia and Australia, for both General and Life & Health Insurance companies.

Louis was the Asia Pacific CFO for a top 5 global reinsurer. He led the operations on financial reporting, planning, actuarial reserving, value of new business, capital management, IFRS17, and finance transformation.   Louis has worked for 2 large General Insurance companies in Australia on pricing and product proposition, and has extensive experience in leading the price optimization framework for personal lines products including Motor Insurance, CTP, Home, and Travel Insurance.  He led a team to execute end-to-end price optimization techniques comprising of competitor analysis, risk models, demand elasticity models, new/renewal models, and retro-fitting optimized rates into a structure.

Louis is currently the Certifying Actuary for a number of General Insurance companies in Hong Kong and South East Asia. In addition to actuarial reserves, Louis is engaged on Risk Based Capital and ORSA.

Julia Lessing

Julia is a qualified actuary and the Director of Guardian Actuarial, a boutique actuarial consultancy helping clients across a range of industries use data to solve complex people-oriented problems.  She is leading a mission to foster forward-thinking leaders in the actuarial industry and runs the Guardian Actuarial Leadership Program to help actuaries build their management toolkits and leadership skills.

Dr Han Li,
Associate Professor, Centre for Actuarial Studies,
University of Melbourne

Dr Han Li is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Actuarial Studies, University of Melbourne. She is an Associate of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and a member of the COVID-19 Mortality Working Group. Han has a broad range of research interests around longevity and mortality risks, ageing and retirement, and the impact of climate change on insurance industry. Specifically, much of her research expertise centers on actuarial modelling and forecasting using advanced econometric and statistical techniques. She has attracted research funds from the Australian Research Council, the Society of Actuaries, the Casualty Actuarial Society, and the Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme.

Yanfeng Li

Yanfeng Li has obtained his Honours degree in Actuarial Studies at UNSW under the supervision of  Bernard Wong,  Benjamin Avanzi, and Alan Xian. His research project focuses on the development of model combination strategies for stochastic loss reserving. Besides the main research project in his Honours' year, he serves as a casual research assistant in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies at UNSW. 

Mary Liao

Mary is currently Head of Group Pricing for MunichRe Australia. Mary has over 15 years of experience working in life insurance market, ranging from rating agency to direct life insurer to reinsurers. Mary loves badminton, travelling and food tasting.

James Lin

James is a Partner in the Transactions Advisory Services team in Hong Kong. James joined Ernst & Young Hong Kong after 10 years with consulting and corporate in Asia and Australia.

Estelle Liu

Estelle is the Actuarial Practice Lead at Aware Super and her work includes superannuation projections, retirement modelling, policy submissions, defined benefits and member data driven insights and research.

Estelle is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia (FIAA) and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA). Estelle is the convenor of the Actuaries Institute’s Superannuation Projection and Disclosure Sub-committee. Estelle won the Actuaries Institute Young Volunteer Achievement Awards in 2021. 

Brad Louis
Chief Commercial Officer
Munich Re Australasia

Brad Louis is the Chief Commercial Officer at MRA, a position that he has held since January 2017. Brad joined Munich Re in 2014 as the Head of Pricing. 

Prior to this, Brad’s Actuarial qualifications have seen him engaged in a range of industry roles across wealth management, encompassing pricing, valuation, strategy and planning, management reporting and financial control.

Brad has been a member of the Actuaries Institute Taskforce since inception and is currently leading its TPD and Trauma Working Group.

John Low

John is the Director of Skilful Analytics, a boutique actuarial consultancy providing pricing and analytics solutions to the financial services industry.

He has more than 20 years’ experience in pricing and valuation, across group insurance and retail insurance portfolios. In the past 5 years, outside of actuarial consulting, he has been involved in pricing transformation projects and the development of analytics solutions for the life insurance industry.” 

Richard recently retired with more than 40 years’ actuarial practice under his belt – mostly in life insurance.  Co-editor and co-author of the textbook that teaches students about the actuarial approach to problems, he enjoys bringing an actuarial perspective to important real-life problems such as Covid.  Richard has served on the Institute’s Council and on many of its committees, task forces and working groups, including the COVID-19 Working Group.

Jonathan leads the Data & AI team in WA within the overall Strategy, AI & Transformation practice of Deloitte Consulting. Jonathan has a particular focus on using advanced analytics, automation and artificial intelligence to transform business operations and support functions. Jonathan has a successful history of leading large-scale, multi-stream technology and analytics projects across industry in WA and the UK.

Jonathan is passionate about the opportunity where humans work with intelligent machines and can transform their businesses into Insight Driven Organisations. Jonathan led the Deloitte Analytics team that helped HBF to design and implement new reserving and forecasting processes, leveraging cloud technologies.”

Roger McIntosh

Roger is an investment management executive with over 25 years’ experience developing specialist portfolio management teams and investment solutions across multiple asset classes.  These strategies focus on global, regional equity and multi-asset class mandates incorporating market-leading quantitative risk measurement, monitoring and portfolio construction techniques. Roger is also involved in enhancing market practitioner and the wider community’s quantitative knowledge of financial and investment challenges as a member of the Melbourne sub-committee for Q-Group Australia, the Institute of Quantitative Research in Finance. 

Scott McKay

Scott McKay is currently the Head of Pricing for RGA Australia, in a role that covers both Retail and Group pricing.  Starting his career in a graduate pricing role in Scotland almost 20 years ago, he has gained valuable experience in a variety of roles including consulting with PwC in the UK and Australia, and valuation roles with Suncorp, prior to joining the RGA pricing team in 2014.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Actuarial Mathematics from Heriot Watt University and is a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries.

Faro Mok

Faro is currently a Senior Manager at Insignia Financial/MLC.  Over the last 17 years, he has worked in a number of roles across functions including Investment Governance, Product, Pricing/Actuarial and Asset Management Implementation.

Faro is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA charterholder).

Tal is a Partner leading the Business Algorithms team at Deloitte Consulting. Tal has +22 years of experience working with large global financial institutions including +12 years advising clients in Australia and Asia Pacific on Quantitative Modelling and Risk Management.

He has led a large number of programs involving review, validation and development of quantitative models. Main areas of focus includes: Market, Credit & Liquidity Risk, Capital Modelling & Stress Testing and Quantitative Strategy.

Prior to working as a consultant, Tal held several senior positions in Risk Management at Banco Itau Unibanco.

Tal is a registered qualified actuary in Argentina, a member of the Society of Actuaries (US) as well as the International Actuarial Association, and a PhD Candidate in Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Sydney.

Basem Morris

Basem is a Director in the Strategy, AI & Transformation team at Deloitte Consulting. He focuses on enabling businesses use analytics to realise the power of data. Prior to that, He spent 10 years in London where he worked as an independent risk analytics consultant to some of the largest European, Asian and Australian financial institutions.

His experience spans analytics, general insurance and banking. Outside of work, Basem enjoys playing, watching, and talking about football (soccer).

Tom Mortlock

Tom is a Senior Analyst at Aon and an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University, with a background in climate risk, coastal and flood modelling. He has worked for over 13 years in the fields of climate science, catastrophe risk and insurance, and coastal and flood modelling. He has supported corporates and government in understanding the materiality of physical climate risk to their business. Tom is a Chartered Engineer with a PhD in Environmental Science. He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed papers in coastal and climate risk and currently sits on the Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (APCP) Expert Panel.

Desmond Muzorewa

Desmond is the Head of Actuarial Analysis at Super SA. Super SA administers various Defined Benefit and Accumulation superannuation schemes and products for many South Australian Government employees. Desmond is responsible for  performing actuarial analysis to identify, review and evaluate superannuation related policy options for the State budget, inform population projections, assess long term financial liabilities and risks, quantify the potential costs of guarantees, and value obligations for financial reporting (including leave and superannuation liabilities).

Prior to joining Super SA, Desmond gained over nine years’ experience with various global institutions in Australia including RGA and Mercer; and several actuarial institutions in South Africa, which include WTW.

A holder of a BSc Degree in Mathematics and Statistics, Desmond is a qualified Associate of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and is passionate about big data management and automation with AI and ML as it relates to superannuation. He has completed the Data Analysis - An Enhanced Toolkit for Actuaries course with Macquarie University and is currently pursing self-directed training in R and Python programming.

Alison Nanson

Alison has experience spanning over 20 years in financial services, having worked in actuarial roles within life insurance, superannuation and pensions. Currently employed by KPMG, Alison previously spent over 10 years working for a large Australian life insurer and prior to that worked in superannuation and pensions consulting in Australia and the UK. She has led teams of actuaries, including in valuation, pricing, AAB17 implementation and risk management.  She has been a member of the Actuaries Institute’s Disability Insurance task force since its inception.

Eilidh Nicholson

Eilidh is the Head of Actuarial Services at HBF Health and through her slightly non-traditional career has had detours into politics and data analytics before helping to the build HBF’s first internal Actuarial team. During 8 years in private health insurance, Eilidh has been involved in pricing, reserving and strategic analysis but has spent most of her time forecasting, bringing stakeholders together from all areas and levels of the business to understand and solve problems. 

Matt Noyce

Matt is the founder of MNC and has 25 years’ experience in life insurance and reinsurance, across the Australia & New Zealand, Asia and UK markets.

Matt’s previous leadership roles include Chief Pricing Actuary for Swiss Re and a member of the Australian Leadership Team and Asia Products Leadership Team. Prior to that he was the Chief Pricing Officer for CommInsure and responsible for the pricing of its Life and General Insurance portfolio.

His technical expertise covers pricing, product design, experience studies, reserving, regulatory capital, risk management, reinsurance and M&A’s.

Josh Ong

Josh is a Manager in EY’s Actuarial practice and has over 5 years’ experience in Wealth Management and Insurance. He has worked on multiple projects providing actuarial and strategic advice to clients in the Wealth space. In recent years, he has also been heavily involved in a number of major remediation projects for both Wealth Management and Insurance clients. 

Miheka Patel
Consultant, Finity Consulting

Miheka Patel is a consultant at Finity with a background in environmental engineering.

She has extensive experience in supporting clients with the delivery of climate change, policy development, emission reporting and energy markets projects.

She has conducted multiple physical and transition climate risk assessments for clients and supported the implementation of TCFD recommendations across the insurance, retail, energy and building sector. 

Oleguer Plana-Ripoll

Oleguer Plana-Ripoll is an Associate Professor at Aarhus University (Denmark). His research interests lie in the areas of register-based psychiatric epidemiology and biostatistics, particularly in the estimation of innovative metrics using administrative health records. Through his recent Marie Curie fellowship at the University of Queensland (Australia), Oleguer has been responsible for a comprehensive study of comorbidity and mortality associated with mental disorders using Danish registers.

Matt Ralph

Matt Ralph is Gen Re's Regional Chief Actuary in Australia and New Zealand where he leads the pricing and data and analytics functions. He has over 25 years' experience as an actuary working across a range of financial services. Before joining Gen Re he spent time working with actuarial technology provider Montoux and as Head of Pricing at AMP Life.

Eric Ranson

For 5 years, Eric has been helping innovative ideas generate risk free government funding and avoid risk in their innovative startup ventures.

He has been lucky to enjoy several earlier careers - Fund Manager, Treasurer and Investment banker - after leaving actuarial consulting to manage swaps and options books (trader). He also contributed to the beginning of the Australian mortgage backed securitization market.

His background has highlighted the opportunities and challenges for all of us to use our knowledge for good. Eric uses structured finance to help startups and thinks that it could help generate better retirement income outcomes.

Michael Richardson

Michael has been with RGA since 2006 and in his current role of Technical Product Consultant he assesses changes to products and provides technical advice to both internal and external stakeholders. Having worked for direct insurers and reinsurers over more than 35 years, Michael has gained broad experience in the areas of claims management, product development, underwriting, new business, policy administration and operational risk & compliance. He is a passionate advocate for the interests of consumers being met. Michael holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Western Sydney, as well as a Master of Dispute Resolution from the University of New South Wales, and is a Fellow of both ANZIIF and ALUCA.

Louis Rossouw

As Head of Research and Analytics in his segment Louis Rossouw is based in Gen Re's Cape Town office and him and his team support life insurance clients in the UK, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with research and analytics.  He has previously worked on individual pricing and product development, group pricing and reserving. Louis joined Gen Re in 2001.  He has also worked for two years in Gen Re’s Singapore branch as Regional Chief Actuary.    He currently serves on the Actuarial Society of South Africa’s Continuous Statistical Investigation Committee as well as the IFoA COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group. 

Richard Russell

As Lead Health Data Scientist in RGA’s Global Data and Analytics department, Richard provides specialist resources to enhance RGA’s mortality and morbidity modelling capability, including underwriting manual research, actuarial pricing, and innovation projects. He is also a key member of RGA’s COVID-19 modelling group tasked with measuring and forecasting the impacts of the pandemic on RGA’s business. Richard joined the company in 2013. Prior to his role with RGA, Richard was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at City, University of London for two years, and at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London for two years. Richard received a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in biotechnology, a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in bioinformatics (with distinction), and a Ph.D. in statistics from Imperial College London. He has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles for journals such as The Lancet, BMJ Open, PLoS One, and Annals of Actuarial Science.

Anthony Saliba

Anthony is a Director in Deloitte’s Sydney office in the Actuarial Consulting practice. Anthony is a qualified actuary (FIAA) and software developer with over 12 years’ experience in the financial services industry.

Anthony possesses a unique skill set and a passion for solving complex problems in the retirement income, banking and wealth management spaces and communicating results in innovative ways. Anthony has applied his sound grasp of modern technologies (including mobile and web development) to address long-standing problems. He has a track record of delivering quality results to clients and has an in-depth knowledge of Australia’s retirement income landscape.

Lee Sarkin

Lee has over 16 years of experience in actuarial, AI / data analytics, research and consulting roles at primary insurers, reinsurers and independent consulting. As a regional Chief Analytics Officer, Lee heads the regional AI-analytics team, located in Singapore, covering the Life & Health Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa business of Munich Re. Lee’s team combines cutting edge AI/ML modelling with Munich Re’s deep domain knowledge and technology to develop AI-driven digital solutions that enhance insurers’ end customer experience and operational efficiency by transforming underwriting and claims processes. His Master’s degree, presented at the 2014 International Congress of Actuaries in Washington D.C., provided many South African insurers with the first credible South African research for underwriting HIV and applied advanced analytics methods to medical scheme and managed care data. Lee is now completing a PhD in AI and advanced analytics, is a member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the Actuarial Society of South African where he chairs its Demography & Epidemiology committee. 

Yang Shen

Yang is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies and an Associate Investigator of CEPAR. He obtained his PhD in Actuarial Studies from Macquarie University in May 2014. After completing his PhD degree, he worked as a research fellow at CEPAR from 2013 to 2015 and an assistant professor at York University from 2015 to 2019. His current research interests include optimal insurance and reinsurance, longevity risk, retirement planning, pricing and hedging of insurance and annuity products, portfolio optimization, contract theory, game theory, and regime-switching model.

Yang has published in all top-tier actuarial journals (e.g. IME, ASTIN, SAJ, NAAJ), and top journals in control theory (e.g. Automatica), and major journals in operations research (e.g. EJOR). According to Google Scholar, as of April 2021, his publications were cited over 850 times and had an h-index of 19. His research has been funded by major funding agencies and professional organisations, such as ARC, NSERC, SOA, CAS, etc. Yang is the first actuarial academic winning DECRA since the inception of this award. 

Michael Sherris

Michael Sherris is a part time Professor in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies having retired in 2016. His part time role concentrates on research, research student supervision and mentoring of early career researchers particularly through the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research where he is a Chief Investigator and Director of Industry Engagement. He was Head of Actuarial Studies at UNSW until 2010 having been appointed to UNSW in 1998 to establish the Actuarial Studies program. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, the Institute of Actuaries (UK) and the Society of Actuaries (North America). His research focuses on longevity, health and functional disability risk modelling, long term care insurance and longevity risk management.

Ellora Shirodkar

Ellora Shirodkar recently completed her Bachelor of Actuarial Studies (Honours) at UNSW with Honours Class 1. Her thesis “Assessing sustainable aged care financing in Australia” combines previous Actuarial literature in disability modelling and recent findings from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety to provide an actuarial perspective on future aged care costs and risks. She is currently working as an Actuarial Analyst at QBE Insurance and pursuing her Actuarial qualifications. 

Danny joined AIA as Chief Actuary in March 2013 and has more recently taken on the Chief Strategy Officer responsibilities. He has over 30 years’ experience in the Australian finance and insurance industry in a wide range of strategic, marketing, actuarial and executive roles in both the corporate and consulting sectors.

Prior to joining AIA, Danny was the Deputy Group Actuary and Appointed Actuary NMLA at AXA APH/ AMP.

He has also previously worked at MLC/National Australia Bank, PwC and Tillinghast Towers Perrin.

Danny is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, has been a member of the Actuaries Institute Disability Insurance TaskForce since inception and was recently appointed as its Convenor.

Katie Sun

Katie Sun has a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies (Co-op). She also completed an Honours year in Actuarial Studies at UNSW in 2021, where she was supervised by Professor Hazel Bateman and Dr. Katja Hanewald. 

Yan Sun

Yan is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries Australia and Singapore Actuarial Society, with 17 years’ experience in financial services across life insurance, superannuation and investments. Yan joined Resolution Life Asia in 2022 in Singapore, structuring risk transfer solutions for clients and partners across mature Asia.

Yan’s experience enables her to deliver insurance and financial outcomes for life insurance companies which meet the needs of a diverse range of stakeholders in identifying and managing risks across highly dynamic market landscapes.

Greg Taylor

Greg Taylor is Adjunct Professor in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies at the University of New South Wales, a position he has held since 2005. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Gradient Institute, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to facilitation of the ethical use of algorithms. He is a Fellow of the Institute and faculty of Actuaries UK and a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia. He holds a doctorate in Actuarial Mathematics and a doctorate in Theoretical Physics, both from Macquarie University. He worked as an actuary in industry over the period 1962-2013, except for an 8-year period as an academic. Of the 44 years in industry, 35 were spent as a consulting actuary, mainly concerned with general insurance.

Gavin Teichner

Gavin is the Executive General Manager Individual Life at TAL.

In this role, he is responsible for TAL’s Individual Proposition as well as the commercial outcomes of the Individual Business. In addition, he has accountability for Data Management at TAL.

Gavin Teichner joined TAL in 2008 and has over 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry both in Australia and overseas. Over this time he has held a number of Executive roles in life insurance, investments and distribution.

Gavin is an Actuary and has an MBA from Kellogg School of Management. 

Gavin has been a member of the Institute of Actuaries Disability Income Taskforce from inception and is now leading a working group within the taskforce looking at supporting advisors to understand how to incorporate sustainability assessments into their advice process.

Damian Thornley

Damian is a Partner at Azuria Partners, a team of expert actuarial consultants bringing fresh thinking to life insurance. A qualified Actuary with 20+ years experience working as an Actuary and a BBQ enthusiast. Damian has previously held roles as Head of Pricing (Group Insurance) for several life insurers and has a deep experience of life insurance product and pricing within the group insurance segment.

John Trowbridge

John Trowbridge has a distinguished career as a consultant, executive, company director and regulator, working predominantly in financial services with an emphasis on insurance-related businesses. He founded Trowbridge Consulting in the 1980s which became a leading actuarial and management consulting firm in Australia and Asia, specialising in insurance and merging with Deloitte in 2000.

He has held senior executive positions at QBE and Suncorp and, from 2006 to 2010, he was the APRA Member for insurance. He chaired the Australian Government's review of natural disaster insurance following the 2011 floods and in 2015 he chaired the Life Insurance & Advice Working Group to recommend reforms in the life insurance industry which came into effect in January 2018. He undertook a review for the RBNZ of its prudential insurance regime following the failure of CBL Insurance in 2018. In 2021 he conducted an independent strategic review for the Insurance Council on the affordability and availability of commercial lines of insurance in Australia.

Nicolaas van Burick

Nicolaas van Burick is a qualified actuary of the Actuarial Society of South Africa with 10 years of experience within the Life Insurance Industry. The first eight years of his career were spent at General Reinsurance Africa where he held various roles including valuations, retail product development and pricing and management of the group pricing function. He currently heads the actuarial team of Insight Life Solutions, a life insurance consultancy firm based in South Africa which provides actuarial outsourcing and consultancy solutions to its local and foreign clients. Over the last two years he has gained experience of the Australian market where he did Prophet development, modelling review and other actuarial projects which his client used to make strategic decisions.

Andrés Villegas is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies at the University of New South Wales. He is also an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) where he was previously a Research Fellow. Andrés completed his doctoral studies at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) in London focusing on the modelling and projection of mortality. Andrés’s research interests include mortality modelling, longevity risk management and the application of analytics techniques in actuarial science and finance. Andrés has extensive experience in developing collaborative research with the actuarial profession and has completed major contract research projects for the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and for the Society of Actuaries in North America on longevity-related topics. He is an Associate Editor of the Annals of Actuarial Science and a member of the Actuaries Institute Data Analytics Practice Committee.

Melantha Wang

Melantha has a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies/Science (Statistics) dual degree and is pursuing an Honours degree in Actuarial Studies at the University of New South Wales. She has a keen interest in the recent advances in machine learning techniques and their applications in the actuarial space. She also holds casual teaching positions with the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies, UNSW. 

Sylvia Wang

Sylvia Wang is currently an actuarial consultant in natural peril pricing team in Insurance Australia Group (IAG). Graduated from Master of Actuarial Studies and Master of Data Science, she is a member of Australian Actuaries Institute’s Climate Change Working Group with a particular interest in general insurance pricing, data analytics, CAT modelling, and reinsurance. 

Matthew Webster

Matthew is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and an Associate Director with Dynamo Analytics. He has consulting experience across the Australian, UK and Nordic markets, advising insurers and government clients on reserving and capital, with a focus on leveraging technology to improve and transform actuarial processes. 

Andrew West

Andrew is a Director in WTW’s Retirement Practice and has over 28 years of experience in the superannuation industry.  He has worked on a wide range of actuarial and general consulting tasks relating to corporate superannuation funds, master trusts and industry funds including the valuation of defined benefit funds for funding and accounting purposes, mergers and acquisitions and fund modelling.

Andrew is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia.

Linda Winterbottom

Linda is a qualified Rehabilitation Counsellor with more than 25 years of experience in assisting individuals return to work following injury or illness in both compensable and non-compensable systems, over 20 of these in the Life Insurance Industry. She has a degree in psychology, postgraduate qualifications in rehabilitation counselling and certification in Organisational Coaching. She has extensive experience in all aspects of rehabilitation and has previously lectured at Sydney University in the areas of psychiatric and vocational rehabilitation. Linda has worked for both direct Insurers and ReInsurers and is currently a Claims Rehabilitation Specialist for RGA.

Shang Wu

Shang Wu is an Associate Portfolio Manager in the Investment Strategy team at Aware Super. Shang joined Aware Super in August 2017 and in this time has focused on retirement strategy research including the development of retirement solution for the fund. He is also responsible for member outcomes modelling and the collaboration between the fund and academia. Shang has over 8 years of experience in the retirement strategy research. 

Prior to joining Aware Super, Shang was a Senior Research Associate at the University of New South Wales where he obtained his PhD in Actuarial Studies. His academic research focuses on financial decision making in retirement. He has published several papers in leading international economic journals.

Shang is also a qualified actuary and a member of the retirement income working group of the Actuaries Institute.

Brnic Van Wyk

Brnic leads the development of the Australian Retirement Trust’s ALM framework, member data analysis, models and governance structures. He is a member of the Investments leadership group and his team is responsible for:

• designing the cohort structure and managing investment strategies for the MySuper product, QSuper Lifetime; and
• the ongoing operational, actuarial and solvency management of the asset pool for the new QSuper Lifetime Pension product.

Brnic is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia (FIAA) as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (UK). He is a CIMA® certificant, FEAL member and serves on the Superannuation and Investments Practice Committee of the Actuaries Institute (as well as the Superannuation Projections and Disclosures Sub-committee and the Retirement Incomes Working Group). He is a Board member of the Pension Benefits and Social Security Section of the International Actuarial Association, the CIMA Society of Australia and the International Advisory Board of the EDHEC-Risk Institute (France).

Alan Xian

Alan is a consultant at Taylor Fry Consulting Actuaries and also a lecturer in the Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics at Macquarie University. In his role at MQ, he has held a number of industry facing roles including the Academic Lead for the Actuarial Co-op Program. 

Alan’s research focuses on data analytic applications across a number of areas including insurance premium and claims inference and prediction, demographic modelling and teaching analytics. He is particularly interested in socially motivated research such as the examination of discrimination, inequality and inequity. His work is published in top operations research journals and he, along with coauthors, was awarded the Taylor Fry General Insurance Seminar Silver Prize in 2018. Alan graduated with 1st class Honours and the University Medal in 2015 from Actuarial Studies and Statistics. He has also held GI, Life and capital analyst roles at Finity Consulting, TAL Life and Allianz Australia.

Sting Xu

Sting is Senior Consultant in the Business Algorithms of Deloitte. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA), with extensive experience in the pricing of General Insurance industry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Computational Modelling. He has solid knowledge in Quantitative Finance, incl. interest rate modelling, derivative pricing, credit risk modelling, etc. He is also a Level III CFA Candidate. 

Xiao Xu

Xiao is a Lecturer in the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies and the Academic Mentor for the Actuarial Society of UNSW. Her research interests centre around variable annuities, retirement planning and artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning. Xiao lectures various actuarial and risk management courses in UNSW. Before joining UNSW, Xiao had three years of industry work experience in life insurance, consulting business and VC entrepreneurship.

Xiao holds several professional qualifications: Chartered Financial Analyst, Chartered Accountant - Australia, Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, Certified Public Accountant – USA, Financial Risk Manager (2016), Fellow of Society of Actuaries and Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst. 

Chen Yang

Chen is a project actuary at Zurich Australia Limited currently working on AASB17 implementation. Prior to her current role, Chen has spent 4 years at AIA and another 2 years at KPMG.

Chen is a member of the Actuaries Institute’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group and the secretary to the Disability Income Task Force.

David holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies (Honours) from the University of New South Wales. He is currently working as a graduate analyst at IAG.

Sharon Yu

Sharon is a Pricing Actuary at Swiss Re with 8+ years of product & pricing experience in the Australia life insurance industry.

She's a is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia (FIAA) and a member of the Sustainability Measure working group for the Disability Insurance Task Force. 

Joey Yung

Joey is a research student in the school of Risk and Actuarial Studies at UNSW Sydney. She completed her Bachelor of Actuarial Studies degree (Hons) at UNSW in 2021. Joey also works as a research student at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research in Sydney. Her current research interest includes mortality modelling and data analytical application. 

Richard Zhou

Richard is a Senior Analyst in the Actuarial and Risk Modelling practice at PwC New Zealand, primarily supporting life insurance and banking clients. He has been working for four years since graduating with a Bsc/Bcom conjoint. Richard is passionate about banking and asset-liability management. He is also looking forward to the industry-wide implementation of IFRS 17.

Hazel Bateman

Hazel is a Professor in the School of Risk & Actuarial Studies, UNSW Sydney, and Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR).  Hazel’s research focusses on consumer financial decision making especially as it relates to retirement accumulation and decumulation with an emphasis on interventions to facilitate better financial decisions. Her current research investigates the role of choice and information architecture on lifecycle financial decisions including superannuation and housing. She also works on design of and demand for retirement products including annuities, aged care insurance and home equity release products. She is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and has been a Chief Investigator on over a dozen ARC funded projects.

Hazel has consulted on retirement income issues to international organisations including the OECD, the World Bank, the Social Insurance Administration (China) and the Korean Institute of Health and Social Affairs. She is the Chair of Netspar’s Scientific Council and President of the International Pension Research Association (IPRA) and serves on the UniSuper Consultative Committee and the Advisory Boards of the Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index, the Conexus Institute and MyHomeStream.

Hadyn is an experienced actuary with 20 years experience across health insurance, general insurance and superannuation, working for Government, regulators, corporates, not-for-profits and as a consultant and Appointed Actuary.  Hadyn has recently left his role as Principal at Finity Consulting to embark on a new career in executive coaching and non-executive directorships

Nick Callil is Head of Retirement Solutions for Willis Towers Watson Australia. He leads the firm’s research in the area of retirement strategy, and consults to Australia’s leading superannuation funds, financial institutions and government bodies on superannuation and retirement, advising on retirement and accumulation phase design, default investment option strategy, longevity risk solutions, safe spending rates in retirement, lifecycle design and digital provision of retirement income projections.  He has authored papers spanning topics including retirement strategy for Trustees, bucket strategies in retirement, dynamic lifecycle strategies and evaluation metrics for retirement products. 

Nick is an actuary, an Adjunct Fellow at the Macquarie Applied Finance Centre and a member of ASFA’s Super System Design Policy Council. He is a regular speaker and presenter at industry and professional conferences in Australia and internationally.

Dr Ramona Meyricke

Ramona is an actuary and a Director at Taylor Fry, with experience across the superannuation, life insurance, health and government sectors. Her recent projects have focused on using data, analytics and actuarial modelling to improve government, health and disability systems and services.

Ramona is an active member of the Institute’s Climate Change Working Group and has a particular interest in helping businesses and government manage climate transition risk.

Previously, Ramona presented to the Actuaries Institute on the impacts of climate change on heat-related deaths, air pollution and bushfires, and the subsequent health costs to government. Her work encompassed further wide-ranging implications of climate change, such as lower investment returns and superannuation contributions, which result in lower retirement incomes.

Young Tan

Young is an actuary with over 10 years’ experience in superannuation. He is currently the Manager of Actuarial & Research at UniSuper. He is a member of the Actuaries Institute’s Superannuation Projections and Disclosures Sub-Committee, and the Life Insurance & Retirement Education Faculty. Young is interested in the development of effective guidance frameworks and solutions that simplify retirement decision-making and encourage confident spending in retirement.