2024 Speakers

Andrea is a Partner and Head of Financial Services for Inflexion where he is responsible for leading the origination and execution of majority and minority investment opportunities in this sector across Europe.

Prior to joining Inflexion, Andrea spent twelve years at Cinven where he covered Financial Services. During his time at Cinven, Andrea invested in several businesses including Avolon, Eurovita, Guardian, Just, Viridium and True Potential. Andrea began his career at Citigroup where he worked in the Investment Banking division.

Andrea holds a cum laude degree in Economics and Business Administration from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.

Chris is the Managing Director for Cyber at Travelers Insurance. Responsible for growing the cyber portfolio and ensuring its place in offering a market leading product supported by first class incident response, and pre loss service proposition. With over 20 years of experience in the insurance industry, Chris has worked with some of the largest specialist carriers in the market. Prior to joining Travelers Chris was a Cyber Product Manager covering UKI, Continental Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific providing expertise and gaining insight into Cyber Insurance markets worldwide

Charles is a principal at Aquiline. Prior to joining the firm in 2019, he was Head of Corporate Finance at Howden, a global (re)insurance intermediary headquartered in London. Charles previously worked at General Atlantic, where he focused on financial services and technology investments. He began his career as an investment banker at Barclays Capital.

Graziano Brady is a senior economist on AM Best’s country risk team. His primary focus is on analysing the economic and political risks affecting economies around the world, and determining how these risks impact an insurer’s creditworthiness. Prior to joining AM Best, Graziano worked at NERA Economic Consulting’s energy practice, where he specialised in analysing energy markets to help quantify damages in international arbitration disputes.

Graziano is a CFA charter-holder, holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of St Andrews and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Oxford. He is also pursuing a part-time degree in artificial intelligence from the University of Bath.

James is a Senior Risk Management Consultant at Travelers Insurance, specialising in cyber security. He is responsible for the analysis of larger or more complex risks’ security postures, enabling Travelers underwriters to confidently offer larger limits. With extensive experience across multiple industries including insurance, James has worked on organisational technology transformations, as well as remediation of compromised environments. Prior to joining Travelers, James played a pivotal role in enhancing software used to help protect Critical National Infrastructure, bolstering defences against both known and emerging zero day cyber threats.

James O’Gara is based in London, joined Warburg Pincus in 2014 and co–leads the Financial Services team in Europe. James led the firm’s investments in the AA, McGill and Partners and Specialist Risk Group, and has also been involved with Warburg Pincus’ investments in Evelyn Partners (formerly Tilney Smith & Williamson), Blau Direkt, Max (formerly Leumi Card), Allfunds, IONOS by 1&1, Santander Asset Management, and DBRS. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, James was an investment professional at H.I.G. Capital. He received a BS in Business Administration from Georgetown University and an MBA from London Business School.

Peter Blanc ACII is Head of M&A, Howden Group Holdings. He is based at Howden’s head office at One Creechurch Place in London.

Heading up Howden’s mergers and acquisition strategy allows Peter to fulfil his ambition of making Howden the world’s leading independent (re)insurance broker, employee benefits advisor and MGA.

With over 100 acquisitions of insurance broking and MGA businesses during his career, Peter is an industry veteran with decades of experience behind him. Notably, after starting his career in motor underwriting and then building his own commercial insurance brokerage, Peter has led three successful private equity exit events, totalling over £1.5 billion.  As CEO at Oval, he led the sale for £210m to Gallagher in 2014, and as Group CEO of Aston Lark, he led a round 1 sale for £325m in 2019 to Goldman Sachs and Aston Lark’s final exit to Howden for £1.1 billion in 2021.

Alongside these leadership roles, Peter has served as non-executive chairman of Hastings Insurance Services Ltd, as chairman of the Large Brokers’ Advisory Board at the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) and in 2022 he served as President of the Chartered Insurance Institute. Peter has recently been reappointed to the BIBA Large Broker’s Advisory Board.

Peter is a passionate advocate of expert-led insurance leadership, employee-owned businesses and the Early Careers Programme; in short, using his own experiences and expertise to help make a difference to those around him.

Peter lives in Colchester, Essex, where he is a proud husband and the father of three grown-up children. He can often be found keeping fit on a bicycle, going to the gym, or mucking out his daughter’s horses! 

Richard has just shy of 40 years’ insurance experience having started his career with General Accident in 1986. In 2000, Richard moved to Hiscox Insurance Company where he took on responsibility for establishing the London branch, before moving to HCC International as Director of its professional indemnity (PI) division in 2004. In 2008, he took on the role of Head of Marketing & Broker Development working with all underwriting divisions of HCC International until 2010, when Richard joined the newly established Manchester Underwriting Management (MUM) as a Director working across the business.

In 2021, Pen Underwriting acquired MUM as a full-service, multi-class underwriting agency specialising in professional indemnity, management liability and casualty insurance business. Following integration, Richard took on the role of Managing Director for UK Financial Lines & Specialist Liability, which encompasses MUM and Pen’s specialist teams in UK professional indemnity, specialist liability, recruitment and UK solicitors’ PI business.

Nick has more than 22 years’ insurance experience, starting his career with RSA where he held a variety of roles before becoming the youngest Broker Development Manager in the company.  In 2009, Nick moved to Fusion as Regional Sales Manager in the South and was then promoted to Regional Manager for the whole Southern region.

In 2014, Nick joined Pen Underwriting during its formation, as Regional Director for the Midlands & South and was part of the commercial leadership team that set up Pen Risk Managed, its mid-market regional commercial offering.  Nick was subsequently promoted to Head of Sales & Distribution across Pen’s five divisions and multiple product lines. Nick’s responsibilities include managing Pen’s distribution strategy, management of Pen’s broker relationships and driving organic growth through both digital and transitionally traded distribution routes. 

Jeff joined Acturis in 2012 with 20 years of industry experience with Close Premium Finance where he specialised in business development and e-commerce.

He has a vast experience of managing strategic business relationships and heads up the Acturis sales, marketing and customer experience function as well as managing a number of key insurer, broker and partner relationships.

Tony joined Acturis as a Technical BA where he worked on the development of the initial version of the Acturis Platform. During his 23 years at Acturis, Tony has led the core platform development team and the data and document functions and was appointed as the CTO for Acturis Limited in 2020. In February 2023 Tony was appointed CEO of the Acturis Platform Business with responsibility for operations in the UK, Ireland, Poland, France and Canada.

Tony passionately believes that to continue to be successful Acturis must deliver both a 1st class service and a market leading product. In order to achieve this, Acturis should look to leverage technology and to partner with likeminded companies. 

Gordon joined Acturis as a data developer on the Data Warehousing team in 2008. In the 16 years since, Gordon has held various data roles at Acturis including leading the MI and data warehouse teams responsible for all of Acturis’ reporting, dashboard, and MI functions. In 2019, Gordon formed the Acturis Data Science team and has lead it since, building out Acturis’ AI and machine learning capabilities for its customers.

He is enthusiastic about data and the technologies that can unlock its potential.