Sigma Event 2017: Catastrophes - Protecting the uninsured. Solutions for a resilient world

Lucia Bevere, Senior Catastrophe Data Analyst, Swiss Re

Lucia Bevere holds a Masters degree in Business Administration from the Università Bocconi - Milan, Italy.

Since 2005, she has been working in the Economic Research & Consulting department at Swiss Re and has authored six sigma studies. Lucia is currently responsible for the sigma catastrophe database, the only internationally available commercial catastrophe database to record natural catastrophes and man-made disasters.

She is also member of the Working Group on Human and Economic Impact Characterization at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters-CRED of the Université Catholique de Louvain.

Jean-Jacques Henchoz, Chief Executive Officer Reinsurance EMEA

Jean-Jacques Henchoz started his career in 1988 at the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Jean-Jacques Henchoz joined Swiss Re in 1998 as facultative property underwriter in the Europe Division, and in 1999 moved to the Swiss Re New Markets Division as finite risk underwriter. From 2000 he served as Head Financial Solutions until becoming Head of Strategy for Property & Casualty in 2003. From 2005 to 2010, he was Chief Executive Officer of Swiss Re Canada. Jean-Jacques Henchoz assumed leadership of the Europe Division in March 2011. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer Reinsurance EMEA, Regional President EMEA and member of the Group Executive Committee in January 2012. Jean-Jacques Henchoz, born 1964, is a Swiss citizen.

Edi Schmid, Head Property & Specialty Reinsurance

Edouard Schmid served as Head Property & Casualty Risk and Actuarial Management since 2008 and, concurrently, as Chief Risk Officer Corporate Solutions since 2011, being based in Zurich. During his tenure as Head Property & Casualty Risk and Actuarial Management, he led, among other tasks, the expansion of the Risk Management Hub in Bangalore, India. From 2003 until 2008 he was based in Hong Kong as Chief Underwriter Property & Specialty Asia. Prior to this assignment, he became Head Cat Perils & Retrocession in 2002.

Edouard Schmid was a team leader at the Cat Perils unit since 1996, where he arranged the first Catastrophe Risk Swap with Tokio Marine in 2001. He also was a key contributor in developing Insurance Linked Securities and the lead underwriter for the California Earthquake Authority from 1997 until 2000. Edouard Schmid joined Swiss Re in 1991 as a risk analyst first developing catastrophe models and supporting property catastrophe underwriting on a global basis. Edouard Schmid, born in 1964, is a Swiss citizen. He holds a Master degree in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Francesca Tamma, Behavioral Research Consultant, Swiss Re

Francesca is a Behavioral Research Consultant (VP) at Swiss Re's Behavioral Research Unit, working on non-life projects both with clients and internally to the company. Some of the topics she focusses on include: the application of behavioural economics to sell Nat Cat products, the design of customer journeys and products together with Swiss Re's clients, how to decrease noise and bias in underwriting judgment, how to use the information recorded by telematics and smart home sensors to increase safe behaviors.

She is an economist by background (MSc Economics with merit at the LSE), and joined Swiss Re in 2016 from the UK Behavioural Insights Team where she gained extensive expertise in applying behavioural economics to public finance and energy and climate change projects.

Sebabrata Sarkar, Underwriter Engineering, Swiss Re

Seba joined Engineering Underwriting team of Swiss Re America in September 2016, and is primarily responsible for parametric products for Renewable Energy sector. Prior to this, he was a part of the Agriculture team of Swiss Re in India for nearly 2 years, wherein he was engaged in development and underwriting of various weather, yield and price index products for Asia. Before joining Swiss Re in 2014, he worked as a Product and Business Development Manager for MCX and NCDEX, two of the largest Commodity Futures Trading Exchanges of India, for a total of 8 years. He has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.

Carlos Boelsterli, Chief Executive Officer MICRO

Carlos is a Swiss-Colombian citizen, who after graduating at Bern University in Economics and Business Administration in 1989, joined Swiss Re in Zurich working in the Marketing Department, initially focused on Central American countries. He soon started a career with local and then regional responsibilities within Swiss Re, which included P&L management for Andean countries out of Switzerland, and representing Swiss Re as Office Head in Colombia and Mexico, before moving to Armonk, NY, as Commercial Director for Latin America. In 2011, he was appointed Head of the Miami office, a start-up of Swiss Re in that city with focus on Latin America. As of September 1st, 2014, Carlos was appointed CEO of MiCRO, a Reinsurer domiciled in Barbados and specialized in protecting low segments of the population against natural hazards with latest risk management solutions.

Hans Feyen, Head of Agriculture Reinsurance Europe & Products Centre

Hans Feyen is Director, Head Agriculture Reinsurance Europe as well as Head Products Centre Agriculture.

Hans joined Swiss Re in Zürich in 2002 as a Nat Cat modeler for flood. In this position he signed responsible for developing stochastical flood models for UK and USA.

In 2005, Hans moved into treaty underwriting, taking care after SwissRe's Lloyds cat reinsurance book. In addition, he took care of the reinsurance underwriting for global clients like AXA and XL Insurance.

In 2009, Hans moved to risk management. Here he supported the Chief Risk Officer for P&C in managing nat cat risk (reporting, deal referrals).

Since 2010 Hans works in the area of agricultural reinsurance. At first as the Head of Products, later also with direct market responsibility for Europe.

Tetsuya Kusumoto, Product underwriter, Property Centre Reinsurance

Since November 2015, Tetsuya Kusumoto has been working in Property Centre Reinsurance in Zurich as a product underwriter. The job mainly entails product research and development of specific topics (such as BI, CBI, non-damage BI), working on underwriting guidance and best practice papers, as well as being involved in an internal project on closing the nat cat protection gap globally. Before this position, he was a property facultative underwriter based in Swiss Re Japan for 3 years. Prior to this, he worked for Guy Carpenter for 6 years as a property treaty broker, located both in London and Tokyo.

Tetsuya is a Japanese citizen and was born in 1984. He holds a BSc degree in Business Management and a MA degree in Asia Pacific Business, both from Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom.

Thomas Hlatky, Head of Reinsurance, Grazer Wechselseitige Versicherung AG

He was born in Judenburg, Styria, Austria in 1960. In 1982 he finished his legal studies/jurisprudence at the Karl Franzens University of Graz with a Dr. juris degree. He started working as a lawyer in Graz and finished in 1986 with his legal examination and a court admission. He held several managing positions in Austrian industry companies and in 1998 became head of property insurance of Grazer Wechselseitige Versicherung AG, an insurance group working in 14 CEE countries. Since 2012 he is head of reinsurance of GRAWE Group and board member of GRAWE Re.

Today he holds several board memberships at the Austrian insurance association VVO in Vienna and is head of WG sustainable non life and Vice Chair of the General Insurance Committee at the European Insurance Association “Insurance Europe” in Brussels.

Luigi D'Angelo, Heads the International Relations Unit within the Institutional Relations Office of the Italian Civil Protection Department

Heads the International Relations Unit within the Institutional Relations Office of the Italian Civil Protection Department (Prime Minister’s Office). The service under his responsibility manages relations with international organisations and individual states in the field of civil protection as well as within the framework of the Civil Protection Mechanism and liaises with the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC). His service is also involved in supporting emergency interventions and humanitarian aid abroad.

Luigi D'Angelo graduated in Civil Engineering (Hydraulics). He was a researcher at the University of Basilicata before joining the Civil Protection Department. He coordinated several emergency interventions in Italy and abroad, and was head coordinator of the European team following an earthquake in China (2008), the Haiti earthquake (2010) and the Typhoon in the Philippines (2013).

Gerry Lemcke, Head Business Development Global Partnerships

Dr. Gerry Lemcke is Head of Business Development of Global Partnerships at Swiss Re. Global Partnerships focusses to provide insurance solutions to governments, public sector entities, development organizations and NGOs (altogether "Public Sector").

His work aims to strengthen the sectors financial viability and economic resilience. In this global function he oversees consultancy, specialized insurance structuring and pricing as well as business and product development, tailored to the specific needs of public sector clients. Products are brought to market via insurance and reinsurance solutions, or capital market placements. The majority of the products developed to date focus on risk transfer solutions to protect against the economic impact of natural catastrophes, also adverse weather patterns affecting the agricultural sector.

Dr. Lemcke received a Master in Geology from the University of Göttingen (Germany) in 1993, and a PhD in Environmental Physics from the ETH (Switzerland) in 1996. A fellow of the American Meteorological Society he started his career building probabilistic risk assessment programs with focus on atmospheric perils.

Patrice Tscherrig, Expert Earthquake

Patrice Tscherrig is currently heading the Earthquake team of Swiss Re. The model development for SwissRe's risk assessment is a core pillar of his team. But providing innovative solutions to our clients and original product development is a an increased focus area.

He joined Swiss Re in 2006 from ETH Zurich as earthquake specialist and developed many country specific earthquake models. Besides the earthquake topic, Patrice was deeply involved in developing many of the software solutions for SwissRe's NatCat framework. Patrice gained extensive underwriting experience in North America, Europe and Asia.

Fahri Altıngöz, Assistant General Manager, Aksigorta

Mr. Fahri Altıngöz holds a graduate degree from Middle East Technical University, Department of Statistics. Master’s degree at Istanbul University, Technology and Industrial Economics. Mr. Altıngöz worked as the Founding General Manager of TEB (Zurich) Insurance Company, between 1997-2005. In 2005, Mr. Altıngöz rejoined Aksigorta Insurance Company and worked as Assistant General Manager responsible for claims and recovery; corporate, marketing, health insurances, risk management and reinsurance respectively. Mr. Altıngöz is currently working as the Assistant General Manager responsible for corporate sales, corporate relations, corporate legal and reinsurance.

Since 2002, he has been the chairman of Insurance Practitioners Association. Since 2009, he has been the board member of Agricultural Insurance Pool (TARSIM). Currently, he has been the president of International Investors Association of Turkey Insurance and Pension Working Group (YASED) and member of the insurance working group of Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD).

Mr. Altıngöz has been providing trainings and lectures on insurance since 1997. Mr. Altıngöz has experience over 30 years in insurance sector, speaks English and German. He is married and has two children.

Martin Bertogg, Head Cat Perils

Martin is responsible for Swiss Re's Nat Cat research and model development globally. Preceding this, Martin has been responsible for property treaty underwriting for international clients headquartered in Europe. In this function he has overseen the underwriting of mostly catastrophe and fire business. Up to 2010 he headed the earthquake team, responsible for building Swiss Re's proprietary earthquake models, as well as Swiss Re's catastrophe modelling unit in Bangalore in India.

Martin joined Swiss Re in 1999 as a researcher for catastrophe peril vulnerabilities and catastrophe modeller. Prior to joining Swiss Re, Martin worked as a consulting engineer in risk assessment with Ernst Basler & Partner AG.

Martin, a Swiss citizen, born in 1969, holds a degree in structural engineering of ETH Zurich as well as a Master of Science in Fire Protection Engineering, from WPI, Worcester, USA.

Onur Muzaffer Selçuk, Reinsurance Executive, Aksigorta

Onur Muzaffer Selçuk completed his BSc in Mathematical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and currently doing his MBA in Istanbul Bilgi University. Prior to joining Aksigorta in January 2015, he was working as a Motor & PA Underwriter at Eureko Sigorta. Onur is working in Aksigorta Reinsurance Department as a reinsurance executive. He is currently responsible for the management of the multinational accounts, existing and new reinsurance agreements. He played an important role in the development process of the parametric earthquake insurance product within Aksigorta.

Marcel Andriesse, Senior Underwriter Agriculture, Swiss Re

Marcel is Agriculture Underwriter for Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan at Swiss Re. He's currently working on a larger Agro digitization initiative at Swiss Re. Marcel has a Master of Science in Geo-Informatics from Delft Technical University in the Netherlands.

Mike Van Elsberg, Deputy Senior Vice President of Claims for Intact Insurance in the West

Mike has worked in the insurance industry since 1988 and has been with Intact Insurance for the last 18 years. Throughout his career, Mike has managed many different catastrophic claim events including water, hail, wind, tornado and fire. In his current role, Mike leads all claims activities for Intact Insurance across the West including the areas of auto, casualty, property and commercial lines.

Markus Konz, Expert Flood, Swiss Re

Markus is a hydrologist by training and holds a PhD in fluid mechanics. He spend several years in academy with major research focus on alpine risk modelling. Markus develops SR's river flood models and Global Flood Zone maps and is involved in product design for Swiss Re's flood solutions.

Konrad Schoeck, Expert Flood, Swiss Re

Konrad is working in Swiss Re's flood modelling team since 2012 and has developed various probabilistic river flood models, including Swiss Re's new probabilistic model for river flood in Italy. He also co-authored the publication 'Flood resilience in Italy' which aims to quantify the flood insurance protection gap in Italy. He is currently involved in the development of several consumer flood products. Konrad holds a Master of Science in environmental engineering from ETH Zurich.

Andreas Lindemuth, Senior Structurer

Andreas currently holds a double role at Swiss Re. In his first function, he is a Senior Structurer in the Retro & Syndication team, responsible for designing and placing hedging transactions for Swiss Re's group-wide Property and Casualty exposure. His second function is pipeline management for initiatives aiming at the closure of the nat cat protection gap, where he provides a decision basis to management to deploy resources in the most effective manner. Previously, Andreas was heading the Cat Steering team, leading the development of innovative systems and processes to steer the company's exposure to natural perils.

Andreas has been with Swiss Re since 2002. He holds a Master's degree in Civil Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and a Master's degree in Business Administration from the Collège des Ingénieurs in Paris.