Speakers

Abhijeet Agarwal
Executive Manager
Quantium

Abhijeet Agarwal is an Executive Manager at Quantium, having spent over 15 years in the insurance industry. He has led and delivered various analytics transformation projects, and helped companies develop their data and analytics strategy. Abhijeet’s area of focus is on how advanced analytics can be applied in a way that goes beyond the hype to deliver measurable, practical and commercial value.

James Collier
Senior Partner
KPMG

James is a Senior Partner at KPMG, a professional services firm with over 200,000 staff in 150 countries.

He is the Head of the Risk Consulting Division for Australia leading around 2,000 staff locally, and sits on both the ASPAC and Global Executive, responsible for over $3.5B in revenue and 30,000 staff

Prior to his 20 year consulting career at KPMG, James worked in corporate roles in the Life Insurance, Reinsurance & Superannuation industries at both AMP and Swiss Re.

Murray Goldschmidt
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Sense of Security

Murray is an industry-recognised information security expert providing advice across the spectrum, from the boardroom to the basement across the region's elite corporate entities to government agencies.

Murray is frequently invited to present at conferences, workgroups and seminars and asked to provide expert comment for editorials and publications. He has presented on security topics at every leading conference locally, regionally and internationally.

His credentials include CISSP, IRAP and PCI QSA certifications and he is an active member of AISA, the AICD and RMIA. Murray has been instrumental in developing an expert and authoritative voice to the Australian media. A Cyber Security Thought Leader, Murray is frequently published as well as being a high-profile media commentator for both enterprise and consumer security trends, attacks and issues.

Rachel currently works at Pacific Life Re as a Director in the pricing team and is focused on the reinsurance of Australian Life insurance business.  Rachel is a member of one of the working groups within the Actuaries Institute Disability Income taskforce who are looking to assist the market in tackling the sustainability issues of Disability Insurance.

Prior to joining Pacific Life Re, Rachel worked for Munich Re in both the UK and Australian offices and was involved in pricing work across Protection, Longevity and Structured reinsurance deals.  Prior to that she also held roles at a life insurance company in both Valuation and Pricing. 

Hugh Miller
Principal
Taylor Fry

Hugh Miller is a principal at Taylor Fry, where he has worked for 15 years. Over the past 5 years he has been working almost exclusively in government analytics, modelling in sectors such as welfare, housing, homelessness, disability and suicide prevention. He holds a PhD in statistics, has a keen interest in actuarial research, is part of Institute’s Public Policy Council Committee, and is also an editor at Actuaries Digital.

Martin Mulcare

Martin is currently enjoying a portfolio of activities. He presents training programs for financial advisers, coaching relationship skills. He is involved in business planning for companies from diverse industries and facilitates workshops that promote people skills. He also acts as a business adviser to business owners who appreciate the need for external accountability. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and chairs the Board of both The Growth Project and InsurTech Gateway Australia. He was, until 2019, an Independent Director of SCOR Global Life Re and was the Chairman of Macquarie Life Limited until September  2017.

In Martin’s prior corporate career path, he had more than 25 years’ experience in the financial services industry. The ten years from 1995 were focused on actuarial, financial and general management roles with Mercantile Mutual/ING and BT/Westpac. As a line manager responsible for around 150 people, and delivering profit in excess of $30m, Martin gained a range of valuable experiences, including the importance of personal development discussions associated with performance reviews.

In the context of the 2020 YAC, he is an FIAA and facilitated the Professionalism Course for the Actuaries Institute for 10 years. For three years Martin wrote the “More Than Maths” column in Actuary Australia, sharing ideas on communication-related matters. He enjoys conversations about diverse career paths.

Andrey Ponomarev
Lead Modelling and Analytics Specialist
Quantium

Andrey is a lead modelling and analytics specialist at Quantium who has developed numerous ad-hoc and productionised analytical solutions for media, banking, and most recently has focussed on natural language processing. Andrey specialises in developing AI solutions driving business decisions and packaging them to become an everyday tool within client’s environment.

Recently, Andrey was the analytics lead for our promotional optimisation product as well as delivering a suite of automated systems for classification of legal documents. 

Michael Rice
Executive Director
Rice Warner

Michael specialises in providing strategic advice to financial institutions, fund managers, government agencies, industry associations and large superannuation funds. Michael is the Chief Executive Officer of Rice Warner, which he founded in December 1987.

Michael heads up Rice Warner’s public policy work.  He has undertaken pioneering research into Age Pension dependency and trends.  He has a keen interest in the integration of social security and superannuation, as well as measuring the adequacy of retirement incomes.

Other activities include:

• Michael is a member of the Advisory Board of the ANU College of Business and Economics.
• Chairman of QSuper’s Investment Committee from January 2009 to June 2013 and remained an independent investment expert on the Committee until March 2016.
• Former Councillor of the Actuaries Institute (1999-2001) and convenor of the Public Policy Council Committee for five years (2014-2019).Michael was awarded Actuary of the Year for 2017.
• Michael was on the StatePlus Board from October 2016 to May 2019.
• Michael has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day honours January 2020

Ward Sutcliffe is an Acting Senior Regulatory Specialist in the Insurers team at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). He is experienced in regulation and law reform across the consumer credit, general and life insurance sectors. Since joining ASIC in 2017, Ward has held roles across ASIC’s Insurers, Strategic Policy and Financial Services Royal Commission response teams. Prior to working at ASIC, Ward held roles at the Commonwealth Treasury including working on the introduction of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act. Ward holds a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Political Science) from the Australian National University.

Sam Zheng
Co-Founder and CEO
Curious Thing

Sam is Co-founder/CEO of Curious Thing, a conversational AI startup for recruitment interviews and telephone automation based in Sydney and San Francisco. Sam is a serial tech entrepreneur, data scientist, and a Fellow of Institute of Actuaries. Before Curious Thing, Sam was the Co-founder/CTO of Hyper Anna, an AI for business intelligence startup.