Plenary Speakers and Facilitators

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Plenary SpeakerS

	Anne O'Driscoll Non-Executive Director Anne is a professional non-executive director. For the past six years, Anne has been a member of the advisory board of MarketEye Pty Limited, a privately-owned investor relations consultancy. In the not-for-profit sphere, Anne is President of her local St Vincent de Paul Society region and devotes time to volunteering with the Society.
	Brooke Pettit Executive Manager Brooke Pettit is the Executive Manager, Responsible Business at IAG. She leads IAG’s responsible business activities such as delivering non-financial reporting, including TCFD aligned disclosures, responsible business programs and impact measurement. IAG has been using the TCFD recommendations to guide their climate disclosure since 2018 and sits on the UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance TCFD pilot. Brooke has extensive responsible business experience through leadership roles at Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s NewCo, Foxtel and LendLease. Prior to joining the corporate sector, Brooke worked in Indigenous Affairs at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence and Reconciliation Australia and has experience managing community engagement and advocacy campaigns.
	Claire Wivell Plater Chairman, The Fold Legal Claire is a lawyer, company director and strategic adviser. She is chairman of The Fold Legal board, a non-executive director of StatePlus and Athena Home Loans and an independent member of the compliance and audit committees of US Residential Masters Fund. Claire also serves on advisory boards for startups, Ignition Wealth (roboadvice), Snug Technologies (rental marketplace technologies), Emotional Fitness (EQ learning platform) and LySensE (financial adviser regtech). Claire co-founded The Fold Legal in 2002 to provide specialist regulatory and commercial advice to general insurance brokers and underwriting agencies. She grew the firm and diversified its client base to include wealth management, credit, payments and fintech businesses before retiring from active legal practice in mid 2019. Prior to The Fold, Claire was a specialist insurance partner of Phillips Fox (now DLA Partner) and spent 3 years as AGM Corporate Development at ING.
	Hugh Miller Principal, Taylor Fry Hugh Miller is a principal at Taylor Fry, where he has worked for more than decade. Many of his recent projects have been for government, modelling welfare, housing and disability programs. He also has a keen interest in research, including actuaries assumption setting and in applying newer statistical techniques to traditional problems. He has a PhD in statistics, chairs the Institute’s Interest Rate Working Group is also part of Institute’s Public Policy Council Committee, and is an editor at Actuaries Digital.
	John De Zwart NEOS Life John is a Chartered Accountant with more than 30 years’ experience in senior executive positions in financial services businesses across Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He has been a key contributor in creating market leading businesses during his career at AMP Corporate Super, TOWER, TAL, Centrepoint Alliance and now NEOS Life.
	John Price Lead Ombudsman Insurance John has over 30 years’ experience in the financial services industry. Prior to AFCA, John was Lead Ombudsman – General Insurance at the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) Australia, having previously acted as Referee, Adjudicator and a Panel Chair there too. John was until recently also a Director of State Trustees Limited and STL Financial Service Limited and Chair of the State Trustees Limited Australia Foundation and member of the Audit, Investment and Remuneration Committees. John is also a Code of Conduct Commissioner for Cricket Australia and Chair of the Pennant Cricket Appeals Board for Cricket Victoria. John’s industry knowledge has been built through his experience as a solicitor at Maurice Blackburn & Co from 1978, becoming a partner in 1984. He headed up the industrial personal injuries practice until retiring from the firm in 2004. John also brings his experience as a member of the Accident Compensation Committee for more than 20 years, a member of the Victorian WorkCover Authority Legal Liaison Committee and numerous Victorian Government working parties and advisory groups. John is a member of ANZOA, the peak body in Australia and New Zealand for industry-based, parliamentary and statutory ombudsman offices.
	Karen Chester BEc (Hons) Karen Chester commenced as an ASIC Deputy Chair on 29 January 2019. Before joining ASIC, Karen was a Commissioner at the Productivity Commission since 2013 and Deputy Chair since May 2016. Previously, Karen was a Partner at Mercer and Global Head of Infrastructure. Before joining Mercer, Karen was a Partner at Access Capital Advisers and the CEO of Access Economics. Karen has held directorships on several Australian infrastructure company boards. Before moving to the private sector, Karen held senior economic policy roles in the Australian Treasury and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Karen has a first class honours degree in Economics from the University of Queensland and was awarded an honorary doctorate in Economics by the University in 2017. She is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
	Kate Lyons Kate joined Suncorp 5 years ago and is the Executive Manager of Reinsurance & ESG Strategy. With more than 20 years of insurance and reinsurance expertise, she understands the complexity of natural hazards risk and climate change. Kate is chairing the Insurance Council of Australia’s Climate Action Committee and participating in the Actuaries Institute working group on Climate Change. She is an advocate for the insurance industry sharing science based physical risk assessment to advance an orderly transition to a low carbon environment.
	Peter Doherty Australian Nobel Price Winner Professor Peter Doherty shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine in 1996 with Swiss colleague Rolf Zinkernagel, for their discovery of how the immune system recognises virus infected cells. He was Australian of the Year in 1997, and since then has gone in to bat for evidence-based reality, relating to areas as diverse as childhood vaccination, global hunger and anthropogenic climate change. Professor Doherty's research is mainly in the area of defence against viruses. He regularly devotes time to delivering public lectures, writing articles for newspapers and magazines and participating in radio discussions. He has so far published 6 "lay" books on science, his latest "The Incidental Tourist". Professor Doherty graduated from the University of Queensland in Veterinary Science and became a veterinary officer. Moving to Scotland, he received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Professor Doherty is the first person with a veterinary qualification to win a Nobel Prize.
	Peter Kohlhagen Peter is the general manager of APRA's Advice and Approvals area and is responsible for overseeing APRA's actuarial, accounting, capital and technical specialists across the banking, insurance and superannuation industries. Peter plays a key role domestically and internationally in APRA’s response to climate risk, including as co-Chair of a drafting group preparing a joint International Association of Insurance Supervisors and Sustainable Insurance Forum application paper to assist supervisors around the world incorporate climate risk considerations into their supervisory approaches. Peter joined APRA in 2005. Prior to his current role, Peter was head of APRA's insurance policy development team, where he led APRA's domestic and international policy work across the insurance industries. Peter holds Bachelor's degrees in Law and Economics from the Australian National University and a Master's degree in Applied Finance from Macquarie University.
	Sean Carmody Executive Director, Cross-Industry Insigts & Data, APRA Sean Carmody has over 20 years of experience across banking, financial markets and funds management. Prior to joining APRA, he was General Manager, Risk Analytics and Insights at Westpac where he had responsibility across risk modelling and reporting, market risk and liquidity risk. Mr. Carmody has also held roles at Westpac as Head of Credit Risk and Head of Market Risk. His previous experience includes working in funds management (Barclays Global Investors) and investment banking (Deutsche Bank) and his qualifications include a PhD in Pure Mathematics from St John's College, Cambridge.
	Tim Baynes Tim Baynes is a Senior Scientist at CSIRO where he leads research on scenarios of population growth, resource use, and environmental impacts from regional to international scales. He was the Cities and Infrastructure Lead in CSIRO’s Australian National Outlook 2019 project and he also recently co-authored the UN report on The Weight of Cities: Resource Requirements of Future Urbanization. Previous work on climate impacts and adaptation was widely cited in the Australasian chapters of the IPCC 5th Assessment. He has advised UN Environment on resource efficiency in the Asia-Pacific region and is the current Secretary of the International Society for Industrial Ecology.
	Tracy Green Group Executive Insurance, RACQ Insurance Tracy Green joined RACQ in February 2018 as General Manager Insurance Product and Pricing before becoming Acting CEO Insurance in July 2019. Tracy was permanently appointed to the role in June 2020 under its new title Group Executive Insurance. She has more than 25 years’ experience in general insurance, having held executive position across multiple functions in the value chain including, portfolio management, product and pricing innovation, claims management and distribution. Prior to joining RACQ, Tracy held executive positions at IAG, Suncorp and TIO. Tracy is a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance, Certified Insurance Professional (CIP) and has a Bachelor of Commerce.

Plenary facilitators

	Elayne Grace Chief Executive Officer, Actuaries Institute Elayne Grace is CEO of the Actuaries Institute. She was previously Deputy CEO and Head of Public Policy from 2013 – 2017, responsible for the development and implementation of the Institute’s public policy strategy. Elayne has 25 years’ international experience with leading consulting firms and major insurers. She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK) and has a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting and Finance.
	Estelle Pearson Convenor Principal Finity Estelle is Principal at Finity. She is an Actuary and a mathematician by training and has worked in the general insurance industry since 1989. She is a regular contributor to thought leadership and presents to a wide range of industry conferences each year.
	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
	Naomi Edwards Chair, Tasplan Super Naomi is an actuary and a professional company director. Following an executive career with Trowbridge Consulting and then Deloitte, Naomi became involved with the wider actuarial fields, including acting as adviser to the Australian Greens on various projects and advising a wide group of environmental organisations. She then embarked on a career as a company director, chairing the listed Australian Ethical Investments and sitting on the boards of funds managers, ASX listed companies and superannuation funds. She is currently Chair of Tasplan Super where she has led the fund through three mergers in the last four years. She joined the Council of the Actuaries’ Institute from January 2020.
	Nicolette Rubinsztein Non-Executive Director, Zurich Nicolette is a former President of the Actuaries Institute. She is also a Non-Executive Director and sits on several wealth management boards spanning superannuation, life insurance, technology and health insurance – UniSuper, OnePath Insurance, Class Limited, SuperEd and CBHS Health Fund.
	Sharanjit Paddam Head of ESG Risk, QBE Insurance Group Sharanjit is Head of ESG Risk at QBE Insurance Group, where his responsibilities include reporting on climate-related risks & opportunities. He was previously an actuarial consultant to general insurers and banks in the UK and Australia, specialising in natural disasters and climate risk management and disclosure. Sharanjit convenes the Actuaries Institute's Climate Change Working Group and is co-chair of technical working group 3 – on Better Informed Decisions – of the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative. He is a member of the IGCC’s adaptation working group, the Insurance Council of Australia’s Climate Change Action Committee, the Advisory Panel to the Whitsunday’s Climate Change Innovation Hub, and a contributing author to the IPCC AR6 Working Group II Australasia.
	Trevor Matthews Plenary Committee Non-Executive Director AMP Limited Trevor has extensive CEO experience both in Australia and overseas and is currently chairman of the State Insurance Regulatory Authority, 1st Group, AMP Life, CMC Markets Australia and the wrap platform operator, FNZ Asia Pacific and a non-Executive Director of AMP Limited, AMP Bank, Bupa Australia New Zealand, and Edelweiss Tokio Marine. He also provides executive coaching through Foresight’s Global Coaching.