Insurance Europe

Jad Ariss

Managing director
The Geneva Association

Jad Ariss was appointed managing director of The Geneva Association in 2019 after 24 years with French insurance group AXA, most recently as head of public affairs and corporate responsibility. Prior to that, he was CEO of AXA Middle East and Africa, leading the company’s operations across 14 countries.

Jad joined AXA in 1995 as chief financial officer of AXA Global Risks. In 1999, he became group head of investor relations. From 2001 to 2015, he worked for AXA France in several leadership roles, including corporate secretary, human resources director, CEO of AXA Entreprises (AXA France’s division for commercial lines) and deputy CEO of AXA France.

Jad started his career as a consultant at McKinsey, where he specialised in financial services.

Andreas Brandstetter

President
Insurance Europe

Chairman & CEO
UNIQA Insurance Group, Austria

Andreas Brandstetter was elected president of Insurance Europe in May 2018.

In 1993, he joined the cabinet of the then vice chancellor of the Republic of Austria, before becoming managing director of the Austrian People’s Party. In 1995, he was appointed head of the EU office of the Austrian Raiffeisen Association.

Andreas joined the insurance industry in 1997 as assistant to the CEO of UNIQA’s predecessor company, becoming the member of the management board responsible for international markets and mergers and acquisitions in 2002. In 2011, he was appointed chairman and CEO of UNIQA Insurance Group.

Véronique Brionne

Country president, France
Chubb, USA

Véronique Brionne, previously Chubb’s senior vice-president of accident and health for continental Europe since 2018, was nominated country president for France in 2020. She is responsible for the performance, strategy and development of Chubb’s business in France.

She joined Bermudian insurer ACE in 2014 as country president for Spain and Portugal. Prior to joining ACE, she had worked at French insurance group AXA for 16 years in various European countries, including Spain.

Particularly involved in the Women in Insurance Network, Véronique actively promotes female leadership in the sector through the “Empower Women in Insurance” initiative and she is strongly committed to diversity and inclusion as a member of Chubb’s Regional D&I Council since it was formed in 2017.

Thomas Buberl

CEO
AXA, France

Thomas Buberl has been CEO and director of French insurance group AXA since 2016. His mandate was extended for a further four years in April 2022.

Thomas began his career as a banking and insurance consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and he joined the Winterthur Group in 2005 (acquired by AXA in 2006), first as chief operating officer and then as chief marketing and distribution officer. He moved to Zurich Insurance Group in 2008 as CEO for Switzerland.

At the beginning of 2012, Thomas was appointed CEO of AXA Germany and member of the AXA Executive Committee. In 2015, he also joined the AXA Management Committee and became CEO of global health business, and then in 2016, of global life and savings.

He is a member of the supervisory board of Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft and a member of the IBM board. He also sits on the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum.

Jonathan Dixon

Secretary general
International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS)

Jonathan Dixon has been secretary general of the IAIS since 2017. He has had a long association with the IAIS, having been a member of the Executive Committee since 2009 and chair of the Implementation Committee since 2012. He also chaired the Governing Council of the Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii), a joint initiative of the IAIS and development partners aimed at strengthening responsible and inclusive insurance.

Prior to joining the IAIS, Jonathan was deputy executive officer at the Financial Services Board of South Africa, with responsibility for insurance regulation and supervision. He was appointed to this position by the Minister of Finance in 2008. Before that he worked for 10 years for the National Treasury of South Africa on economic and financial sector policy issues.

Geeke Feiter

Member of the board of directors
Dutch Association of Insurers

Geeke Feiter has worked in the insurance industry for over 20 years, starting with the ING Group as a management trainee. She has held various positions in distribution and strategy and was responsible for the non-life retail business for Nationale-Nederlanden in the Netherlands and Belgium, serving 1.4 million customers.

Before joining the Dutch Association of Insurers, she was managing director of CVW, a company under government supervision settling claims for Shell/Exxon caused by induced earthquakes as a result of gas drilling.

Her affinity with the non-life insurance sector and passion for technology is reflected in her responsibilities within the VVN, including non-life, innovation and new risks such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Since 2021, Geeke also chairs the working group on disruptive technology of the Global Federation of Insurance Associations.

Monique Goyens

Director general
BEUC (the European consumer organisation)

As director general of BEUC, Monique Goyens represents 46 national consumer associations in 32 European countries to the EU institutions and the media.

Monique is a member of the Euro Retail Payments Board as well as of the European Commission’s Consumer Policy Advisory Group. She is also a member of the Advisory Group on noncommunicable diseases of WHORegion Europe. Previously, she was a member of the EC Expert Group on online disinformation (2018), the Expert Group on trade agreements (2018-2019), the EU High-Level Forum on capital markets union (2020) and sub-group on AI, connected products and other new challenges in product safety (2020), and the EC Platform on sustainable finance and Expert Group High-Level Roundtable on chemicals strategy for sustainability (2021-2022). She was also vice-chair of the European Advisory Board of the Open Society Foundations from 2017 to 2020.

Monique is EU co-chair of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, a network of EU and US consumer organisations, and she represents BEUC at Consumers International, the international consumer organisation.

Balz Grollimund

Head of P&C risk management
Swiss Re, Switzerland

Prior to becoming head of property and casualty risk management for Swiss Re, Balz Grollimund was head of the P&C reinsurance underwriting team for Canada and the English Caribbean at Swiss Re Canada.

Before that, he held several roles in the catastrophe perils unit of Swiss Re, where he was responsible for overseeing the underwriting tools the company uses to assess earthquake and tsunami risks for treaty and single-risk businesses. There he supported the development of non-traditional risk transfer instruments, as well as guiding the organisation through the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 and the New Zealand earthquakes in 2010 and 2011.

Petra Hielkema

Chairperson
European Insurance & Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA)

Petra Hielkema has been EIOPA’s chairperson since September 2021. She is also a member of the steering committee and the general board of the European Systemic Risk Board and is a voting member of the executive committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), as well as being the champion of the IAIS Fintech Forum.

Prior to becoming EIOPA chairperson, Petra was division director, insurance supervision at De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank. She joined DNB in 2007 as a policy advisor, contributing to the development of Solvency II. In 2013, she became head of insurance policy and, in 2015, she was appointed head of the DNB Expert Centre for fit and proper assessments. In 2017, Petra became director of payments and markets. Prior to joining the central bank, Petra had an international career in the oil and gas industry.

Lindsay Keenan

European coordinator
Insure Our Future

Lindsay Keenan is the European coordinator of the Insure Our Future network. He has 30 years of experience campaigning on environmental and social justice issues including as a senior international campaigner with Greenpeace working on corporate and political policy on sustainable agriculture, the governance of oceans, climate change and the Arctic.

David Knibbe

CEO
NN Group, Netherlands

David Knibbe was appointed CEO and chair of the executive board and management board of NN Group in 2019 and is responsible for the strategy, performance and day-to-day operations of the group.

He was appointed to the management board in 2014 and had been CEO, Netherlands since 2014. In this role, David was responsible for all insurance and banking business in the Netherlands and was leading the integration of Nationale-Nederlanden and Delta Lloyd and the acquisition of VIVAT Non-life.

David’s experience in the financial services industry dates back to 1997. He is treasurer and member of the board of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers and a member of the board of the Johan Cruyff Foundation.

Bertrand Labilloy

CEO, CCR, France
Chairman & CEO, CCR Re, France

Bertrand Labilloy took over as CEO of the Caisse Centrale de Réassurance (CCR) in January 2015 and has been chairman and CEO of CCR Re since September 2016. He is also vice-president of APREF (the Association of Professionals of Reinsurance in France).

He began his career in the civil service in 1993 in both supervisory and regulatory roles at the French Insurance Supervisory Authority, the French Treasury Directorate and the European Commission.

He then joined Calyon, the corporate and investment banking division of Crédit Agricole, as corporate finance director until 2006, when he became director for economic and financial affairs at the French Federation of Insurance Companies.

Florence Lustman

President
France Assureurs

Florence Lustman has been president of the French insurance federation, France Assureurs, since 2019. She was previously chief financial officer and public affairs director and a member of the executive committee of France’s Banque Postale.

From 2007 to 2012, she headed the team providing interministerial leadership of France’s Alzheimer Plan and promoting it internationally on behalf of the French president.

Between 2000 and 2007, she was general secretary of the French Insurance Supervisory Committee (Commission de Contrôle des Assurances).

Didier Millerot

Head of insurance & pensions unit
European Commission

Didier Millerot has been head of the European Commission’s insurance and pensions unit since 2019. He is currently in charge of the Solvency II review and also represents the EC at the board of supervisors of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the executive committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors.

Didier has worked for the EC since 1994. He held several legal posts at DG MARKT, which he joined in 1997 and where, the same year, he was appointed deputy head of the asset management unit.

After a year of secondment to the cabinet of Commissioner Barnier, Didier was appointed head of the accounting and financial reporting unit in 2012 and worked there as the Accounting Directive was simplified and new transparency requirements were introduced.

He joined the FISMA/D2 unit in 2015 during the period when new EU legislation on covered bonds was introduced. Didier also led the review of prudential requirements for investment firms.

Susan Neely

President
Global Federation of Insurance Associations (GFIA)

President & CEO
American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI)

In addition to being president and CEO of the ACLI, whose member companies hold 94% of the US life industry’s assets and serve 90 million families, Susan Neely is president of GFIA and serves on the B20 Task Force on Financing for Global Economic Recovery.

In her ACLI role, Neely has forged initiatives and partnerships on tax and retirement security policy, including significant retirement legislation — SECURE 2.0 — signed into law by US President Biden in December 2022.

Thierry Philipponnat

Chief economist
Finance Watch

Thierry Philipponnat started his career in finance in 1985, holding various positions in commercial and investment banking. In 2004, he was appointed global head of equity derivatives of Euronext.liffe and a member of the executive committees of Euronext in Paris and LIFFE in London.

Thierry then crossed into the NGO world, campaigning and lobbying on behalf of Amnesty International, with a particular emphasis on corporate social responsibility and on the impact of the financial sector on human rights. He was later elected to the executive board of Amnesty International France.

In 2011, he co-founded the European NGO Finance Watch, which he managed as its first secretary general until 2014. Subsequently, he became chairman of the French Sustainable Investment Forum (FIR), a board member of the European Sustainable Investment Forum (EUROSIF) and director of the economic think-tank Institut Friedland. He is a member of the Sanctions Committee and the Scientific Committee of the French Banks and Insurance Companies Supervisor (ACPR).

Between 2013 and 2022, Thierry was a member of the board of the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) where he chaired the Climate and Sustainable Finance Commission and the Market Consultative Commission. He was also a member of the European Commission’s first Platform on Sustainable Finance between 2020 and 2022. He is a member of EFRAG’s Sustainability Reporting Board.

In 2019, Thierry became Finance Watch’s head of research and advocacy and, in 2022, its chief economist.

Alexander Sarrigeorgiou

Vice-president
Insurance Europe

Chairman & CEO
Eurolife FFH Insurance Group, Greece

As well as being Insurance Europe’s vice-president, Alexander Sarrigeorgiou is chairman of the Hellenic Association of Insurance Companies and chairman and CEO of the Eurolife FFH Insurance Group. He previously held senior executive positions in the insurance and asset management industries in Greece and the USA.

His many board positions include membership of the board of the Hellenic Institute for Insurance Studies and the executive board for EMEA of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, USA, as well as chairmanship of the Hellenic Advisory Board of South-East European Studies at the University of Oxford, UK.

Lucia Silva

Group chief sustainability officer
Assicurazioni Generali, Italy

Lucia Silva became Generali’s group head of sustainability and social responsibility in September 2015 and became group chief sustainability officer earlier this year. She leads the definition and implementation of the group’s sustainability strategy and policies.

A senior sustainability professional with 20 years of experience, Lucia works on some of the most pressing challenges of our time, such as climate change, ageing populations, demographic changes and digitalisation. Her focus is on integrating sustainability into the business, looking at insurance products and investment strategies.

Lucia is a board member of Generali Italia, Generali Real Estate and of “Fondazione Generali — The Human Safety Net”, a non-profit organisation supported by the Generali Group, whose mission is to unlock the potential of disadvantaged people.

Prior to joining Generali, Lucia worked for 15 years at KPMG, where she supported various companies from a wide range of sectors in defining and developing their sustainability strategy. During this period, Lucia was also instrumental in the development and implementation of KPMG’s own sustainability strategy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, leading an international network of colleagues.

Professor Karel Van Hulle

KU Leuven, Belgium and Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

Professor Karel Van Hulle lectures in the economics and business faculty of KU Leuven, Belgium and in the economics faculty of the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

After eight years with the Belgian Banking Commission, he joined the European Commission in 1984, where he held responsibilities for accounting, auditing, company law, and insurance and pensions and was responsible for the development of Solvency II.

After his retirement from the EC in 2013, he became a member of the Public Interest Oversight Board until April 2021 and a member of the board of the Bermuda Monetary Authority.

Karel is a lawyer by training. He was nominated distinguished international lecturer in accounting by the American Accounting Association in 1990, distinguished fellow of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors in 2013 and honorary fellow of the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in 2014.

Sam White

Founder & global CEO
Stella Insurance, UK & Australia

Sam White is the founder of Freedom Services Group and Stella Insurance Australia (chair and CEO respectively).

Having started her first company in 1999 aged just 24 in her sister’s conservatory, 22 years later she employs over 250 staff with offices in Cheadle, UK, and Sydney, Australia.

Sam cares passionately about diversity, equality, innovation and, above all, making business human. She is a vocal advocate for levelling the playing field for women and championing female leaders within the industry.

In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Sam is a regular business commentator in the media. She also hosts her own podcast “Human Business with Sam White” where she candidly discusses successes and failures with fellow business owners.

Suzanne Williams-Charles

Director of policy & regulation
Association of Bermuda Insurers & Reinsurers (ABIR)

Suzanne Williams-Charles is the director of policy and regulation, corporate secretary and data privacy officer at ABIR. She joined ABIR, with over 25 years’ of industry experience, to manage its policy development work. In her role, she is involved in every aspect of the association’s work including corporate organisation, data privacy, government and industry relations, and financial management.

Suzanne began her career with KPMG as an auditor. Prior to joining ABIR, she was head of reinsurance compliance at Hiscox Re and she spent over a decade at the Bermuda Monetary Authority, culminating in the position of deputy director of insurance supervision.

Suzanne also serves as a director of WeSpeak Bermuda, which focuses on women’s professional development.

William Vidonja

Head of conduct of business
Insurance Europe

As head of the conduct of business department, William Vidonja contributes to the global and European debates on legal and consumer protection issues, including insurance distribution, data protection, differentiation, contract law, competition issues and financial education.

William is also part of the employers’ delegation of the Insurance Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee (ISSDC), the only forum at European level in which insurance employer and employee representatives discuss topics of common interest with the support of the European Commission.

He joined Insurance Europe as a trainee in 2002. After his traineeship he was hired as deputy manager of the insurance of the person department before moving to the conduct of business department.

Allegra van Hövell-Patrizi

CEO
Aegon the Netherlands

Allegra van Hövell-Patrizi was appointed CEO of Aegon the Netherlands in June 2021. She joined Aegon at the end of 2015, when she was appointed chief risk officer of Aegon N.V., and she became a member of Aegon’s management board in January 2016.

Allegra has over 25 years’ experience in the financial services industry. Educated in France, she has extensive international experience, having worked in the UK, Benelux, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Russia. Among the youngest ever to be elected as a partner at McKinsey, Allegra was a member of the leadership team for banking, wholesale banking, and asset management and insurance.

Prior to working in the insurance sector, Allegra held various positions at the UK asset management company F&C Investments. She joined Prudential plc in 2009, where she was involved in helping define the group strategy and managing the US business, before focusing on risk, culminating in her appointment as Prudential’s group risk director in 2013.

Anne Mette Toftegaard

Group deputy CEO
Alm. Brand Group, Denmark

Anne Mette Toftegaard is a trained lawyer and she has been with Alm. Brand Group, the second largest insurance company in Denmark, since September 2022.

Prior to taking on her current role as deputy CEO, she had worked for member-owned Danish insurer LB Forsikring since 2000, the last eight years as CEO.

In addition to her daily duties, Anne Mette is a non-executive member of the board of EIFO, the Danish Export and Investment Fund. She was previously non-executive vice-chair of the board of the Danish industry association Insurance & Pension, as well as holding non-executive positions at the board of the Teachers Pension Fund, the Danish bank Lån & Spar and the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation.

Michaela Koller

Director general
Insurance Europe

Michaela Koller has been director general of Insurance Europe since 2007. She is currently secretary general of the Global Federation of Insurance Associations and is vice-chair of the Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority.

Prior to joining Insurance Europe, Michaela was a member of the management committee of the European Savings Banks Group and the World Savings Banks Institute.

Olav Jones

Deputy director general
Insurance Europe

Olav Jones has been deputy director general and director, economics and finance at Insurance Europe since 2011.

He is a member of the Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority.

Olav studied both engineering and finance and started his career with financial services consultancy Oliver Wyman. He then spent 15 years working for Prudential, Fortis and Ageas in roles related to risk, capital management and strategy, most recently as group chief risk officer.

Nicolas Jeanmart

Head of personal & general insurance
Insurance Europe

Nicolas Jeanmart has been head of Insurance Europe’s personal and general insurance department since 2010. Prior to joining Insurance Europe, he worked for the European Savings Banks Group, where he held various positions, culminating in four years as head of the banking supervision and economic affairs department.

Adrien Couret

CEO
Aéma Groupe, France

Adrien Couret became the first CEO of Aéma Groupe in January 2021. The group is France’s fourth largest insurer, composed of brands including mutual insurance company Macif and OFI Invest.

Since 2008, Adrien had held successive executive roles at Macif: chief of staff to the CEO, deputy CEO in charge of strategy and transformation and deputy CEO in charge of life and health insurance. He was named CEO of Groupe Macif in 2019. That same year, he became vice-chairman of the Association des Assureurs Mutualistes (AAM). In 2020, he took on the chairmanship of OFI Asset Management and became a board member of reinsurer SCOR.

Dyogo Oliveira

President
National Confederation of Insurance Companies (CNseg), Brazil

Dyogo Oliveira, president of Brazil’s National Confederation of Insurance Companies (CNseg), is an economist who, over the last 20 years, has held a number of positions in the federal government including: Minister of Planning, Development and Management; president of Brazil’s state-owned development bank, BNDES; executive secretary of the Ministries of Finance and Planning; and deputy secretary of economic policy in the Ministry of Finance.

Also in government, he was a member of the National Private Insurance Council (CNSP) and the National Supplementary Pension Council (CNPC).

Dyogo has been responsible for formulating and implementing the structuring of the economic area including: establishing the federal government’s spending ceiling; pension and tax reforms; the creation of the Growth Acceleration Program (CAP); the taxation of profits made by companies abroad; and the privatisation of state reinsurers IRB Brasil RE.

He was the President of the National Airport Management Companies Association (ANEAA) from 2019 to 2022, where he worked on the implementation of the concession programme for Brazilian airports.

In the same period, he was a member of the board of directors of major business groups, especially in the finance and technology sectors.

Leigh Wolfrom

Policy analyst, Capital Markets & Financial Institutions Division
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

Leigh Wolfrom is a policy analyst in the OECD’s Capital Markets and Financial Institutions Division where he leads its work on the financial management of catastrophe risk.

In this role, he has produced analysis and reports on a variety of disaster risk financing issues, including the financial management of flood risk, the contribution of reinsurance markets to managing catastrophe risks and the role of catastrophe risk insurance programmes in enhancing insurance availability and affordability. He led the development of the OECD guidance on establishing disaster risk financing strategies.

Leigh has also developed a number of reports on emerging catastrophe perils, such as cyber risks and infectious disease outbreaks, including a report on responding to the pandemic protection gap and an examination of insurance coverage for cyber-terrorism. Prior to joining the OECD, Leigh worked in the Financial Sector Policy Branch at the Canadian Department of Finance and at Global Affairs Canada on international financing issues.

Benoît Chasseguet

Country president, France
Chubb, USA

Benoît Chasseguet became Chubb’s country president for France in March 2023 and is responsible for the performance, strategy and development of Chubb’s business in France.

He joined Chubb (ex-ACE) in 2013 as regional marine manager for continental Europe. Prior to that, Benoît spent six years at Achmea as non-life senior regional manager, following more than 10 years as senior marine manager at Eurapco, the alliance of primarily mutual insurers in Europe.

Benoît was previously at Cigna, where he spent eight years as a marine underwriter.

Philippe Dumont

CEO
Crédit Agricole Assurances, France

Philippe Dumont has been deputy general manager of Crédit Agricole S.A., head of insurance and CEO of Crédit Agricole Assurances since January 2020. He is a member of the executive committee of Crédit Agricole S.A.

In 2015, Philippe was appointed deputy managing director of Crédit Agricole S.A., in charge of specialised financial services, and he has been CEO of Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance since 2009.

In 2004, he was inspector general in charge of internal audit and a member of the management committee of Crédit Agricole subsidiary and retail bank LCL, before being appointed group inspector general in 2006, a member of Crédit Agricole S.A.’s executive committee in 2008 and a member of Crédit Agricole S.A.’s management committee in 2011. Philippe joined the Crédit Agricole group in 1997 as head of the economics, finance and tax department at Fédération Nationale du Crédit Agricole (FNCA), of which he became deputy CEO in 2004.

In his earlier career, Philippe worked for France’s Ministry of the Economy and Finance and later with Michel Barnier in the Ministry for the Environment from 1993 to 1995. He then became deputy director of François Fillon’s private office when he was at the Ministry for the Post, Information and Space Technologies from 1995 to 1996.