Longevity 18 Plenary & Panel Speakers

Chris Anderson is an actuary and Director within EY’s life insurance consulting team, and is a member of the IFoA’s Scottish Board. He leads EY’s bulk annuity consulting team and the longevity research team, and specialises in bulk annuity proposition and strategy, including reinsurance strategy. He is currently supporting multiple potential new entrants to the UK bulk annuity market, as well as supporting existing providers through the transition from Solvency II to Solvency UK. He also leads the actuarial audit of the Phoenix Group and Prudential.

Douglas Anderson FIA CERA FSA - Chief Visionary Officer.  Having developed the concept in the UK, and proven it in Canada, since 2018 Douglas has been focussing on establishing Club Vita US. The smarter collection and structuring of data enables more cost effective ways both to reduce the risks of financing in later life and to help our societies face up to the challenges of ageing populations. Before committing to an entrepreneurial life, Douglas practiced for thirty years as a consulting actuary, across a diverse spectrum of engagement s in the public and private sectors. He is a fellow of the UK’s Institute of Actuaries, the US’s Society of Actuaries and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary.

Douglas passionately believes that the creation of an international longevity “currency” will increase the security of pension promises. Career wise, he has much unfinished business. To maximise his own longevity, he enjoys trail running, cycling and skiing. Douglas lives in London.

Professor David Blake is Director of the Pensions Institute at, City University of London, and chairman of Square Mile Consultants, a training and research consultancy. He is also: co-designer of the PensionMetrics life-cycle financial planning software; co-author of the A2Risk attitude to risk

questionnaire; co-inventor of the Cairns-Blake-Dowd stochastic mortality model; and co-founder with JPMorgan of the LifeMetrics Indices. In 2014, he was appointed Chair of the Independent Review of Retirement Income. Its report We Need a National Narrative: Building a Consensus around Retirement Income was published in March 2016 (pensions-institute.org/IRRIReport.pdf). He won the 2016 Robert I. Mehr Award for ‘A Two-Factor Model for Stochastic Mortality with Parameter Uncertainty: Theory and Calibration’ (with Andrew J. G. Cairns and Kevin Dowd) published in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the journal of the American Risk and Insurance Association. This Award is presented each year for the paper published in the JRI ten years before that has best stood the test of time.  He has a PhD from LSE.

Professor Andrew Cairns is Professor of Financial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and Director of the Actuarial Research Centre of

the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.  He is well known internationally for his research in financial risk management for pension plans and life insurers. In recent years, he has been working on the modelling of longevity risk: how this can be modelled, measured and priced, and how it can be transferred to the financial markets. Amongst his work in this field, he has developed a number of new and innovative stochastic mortality models.

He has been awarded a number of prizes for his work on mortality including the Halmstad Prize from the Society of Actuaries and the Robert I Mehr Prize from the American Risk and Insurance Association.

He qualified as an actuary in 1993, was elected as a corresponding member of the Swiss Association of Actuaries in 2005 and, in 2016, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh - Scotland's national academy of science and letters.

Jamie Campbell is Vice President, Global Financial Solutions (GFS), for RGA and is based in the United Kingdom. In his role, he is primarily focused on client relationships and negotiating, structuring, and executing U.K. longevity swaps and funded reinsurance transactions.

Jamie has been with the company since 2014. Prior to his current role, Jamie worked as a Pricing Actuary for GFS, where his predominant focus was pricing longevity swap transactions as well as establishing infrastructure for the U.K. GFS small schemes offering. Prior to joining RGA, Jamie was a Senior Pricing Analyst in the Valuations team at ReAssure, focusing on the statutory reporting of Swiss Re’s longevity swap business.

Jamie received a Master of Mathematics and Statistics degree from the University of Newcastle, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

Patrick is a Senior Vice President and Head of Longevity Product at RGA.  He is based in London.  He leads a broad range of initiatives around longevity products, risks, assumptions, data and modelling.

Patrick has been with the company since 2012.   Prior to RGA, Patrick worked in the pension consultancy industry and for insurance companies in the annuity area.

Patrick holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Applied Finance and a MSc in Financial Engineering.  He is a Fellow of the Institute & Faculty of Actuaries.

Guy Coughlan has c. 30 years of experience in pensions, investments and risk management. He is currently Chief Operating Officer at Clota Varde, a boutique corporate finance broker focused on impact investment. He is also a non-executive director of J.P. Morgan Pension Trustees.

Guy’s career spans investment and risk advisory, pension advisory and pension management. He spent 17 years at J.P. Morgan where he was a Managing Director holding different global, US and European roles.

After leaving J.P. Morgan Guy was Chief Risk and Analytics Officer at Pacific Global Advisors, a US pension investment advisor and fiduciary manager.

Most recently he spent nearly eight years at the University Superannuation Scheme (USS), a UK pension plan with £90bn of assets as at 31 March 2022. At USS he held the positions of Chief Risk Officer, Valuation Programme Executive and Senior Strategic Advisor, serving on the executive committees of both USS and its investment management subsidiary.

Guy has a D.Phil (i.e., PhD) from Oxford University and an MBA from Henley Business School in the UK.

A veteran finance professional with over 27 years experience across consulting, asset management and investment banking, Eugene Dimitriou focuses on the nexus of pension and life risk and capital management, actuarial matters and investments.

Eugene led the structuring and distribution of one of the inaugural capital markets transactions on behalf of Aviva and presented at the Longevity 1 conference in 2005.

His firm, Farsight Partners is a life insurance linked securities specialist investment manager that invests in the many opportunities available within the global life insurance space, targeting actuarial risks such as mortality/longevity, accident and health and policy lapsation. The strategy is diversifying to all other asset classes and provides long-term, stable and predictable cash-flow generating returns over time, resulting in genuine alpha.

Eugene is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, holds an MBA in Finance from New York University, and a Bachelors in Mathematics and Actuarial Science from the University of Waterloo.

Amal Elfassihi joined Milliman Paris office in June 2019 as a Consultant within the Research and Development Team.

Amal holds an engineer's degree in Applied Mathematics from École des Ponts ParisTech, a Master's degree in Management from HEC Paris and a Master's degree in Actuarial Science from ENSAE Paris. He is an associate member of the French Institute of Actuaries (IA).

Amal has been working on various insurance projects covering a wide range of risks, with a particular focus on life and financial risks and applied within both Solvency II and IFRS 17 frameworks.

Richard Faragher is Professor of Biological Gerontology at the University of Brighton and is past Chair of the British Society for Research on Ageing, the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology and the American Aging Association.  He read Biochemistry at Imperial College, London and undertook doctoral studies on human premature ageing at the University of Sussex. His primary research interest is the relationship between cellular senescence and organismal ageing.   He has published widely on the phenotype of senescent cells and on compounds that reverse the process.He holds the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Conference Science Medal for his work on the mechanisms of Werner’s syndrome, the Help the Aged ‘Living Legend’ award for his championship of older people, the Paul F Glenn Award for research into the mechanisms of ageing and the British Society for Research on Ageing’s highest honour, the Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal. He is a Fellow of the American Aging Association and serves on the Editorial Boards of Advances in Biogerontology, Mechanisms of Aging and Development, Biogerontology and Advances in Biogerontology.Professor Faragher has served as a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Charity Research into Ageing and on strategy and funding panels for the BBSRC, the US National Institutes on Ageing and the European Union.  From 2005-2008 he was Co-director of the BBSRC-EPSRC SPARC programme, a research network designed to build national capacity to conduct inter-disciplinary ageing research.  He is currently a Director of the American Federation for Aging Research, serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Longevity Vision Fund, co-directs the Building Links in Ageing Science and Translation (BLAST) research network.

Baroness Greenfield, Founder and CEO of Neuro-Bio Ltd (www.neuro-bio.com) is a neuroscientist, writer and broadcaster. She has published over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals, based mainly at Oxford University but has held research fellowships at the College de France Paris, NYU Medical Center New York and Melbourne University. She holds 32 honorary degrees from UK and foreign universities, has received numerous honours including the Legion d’Honneur from the French Government, an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians, The American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, and The Australian Medical Research Society Medal. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Jerome Grenier is responsible for investment origination and structuring in Securis' Life team providing customised capital management and financing solutions to life insurance carriers, investment advisors, MGAs and brokers worldwide.  Jerome is a member of the Life Origination Committee.  Prior to joining Securis in June 2021, Jerome had 15 years of professional experience in investment banking in London, Paris and Montreal, most recently as Director, FIG M&A.  Jerome holds a MSc Banking and International Finance from Bayes Business School, City, University of London and BCom from McGill University.

Khurram Khan is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and joined PIC in 2007.

PIC was set up to provide de-risking solutions to defined benefit pension schemes and is now a market leader in this field.

Khurram has been instrumental in the strategy and execution behind PIC’s commercially successful transfer of longevity risk to the global reinsurance market, utilising a range of innovative techniques. Some of these methods have now gained widespread market adoption.

He also led the development of PIC’s longevity risk pricing and capital infrastructure - whilst helping to forge the industry narrative around “longevity catastrophe” events.

Separately, Khurram has chaired and participated in a number of industry-wide committees. He has also been a Non-Executive Director and holds a first class honours degree in Mathematics.

He recently left PIC in order to pursue a range of diverse projects and personal interests.

Amy Kessler is Senior Vice President and Head of International Reinsurance Strategic Initiatives at Prudential Financial.  Until 2021, she was theAmy Kessler founding leader of Prudential’s International Reinsurance business, which grew to $90 billion of profitable sales across five lines under her leadership. In 2011, she led Prudential's successful launch of its longevity reinsurance product and, together with her exceptional team, has closed over $95 billion in international reinsurance transactions since, covering members of nearly 200 pension funds in the United Kingdom including British Airways and Rolls-Royce.

Amy led the groundbreaking $27.7 billion captive longevity reinsurance transaction for British Telecom in 2014, which was named “Deal of the Year” by Risk magazine and earned Prudential top honors as “Reinsurer of the Year.” Amy’s leadership enabled Prudential to repeat as “Reinsurer of the Year” in 2015, 2016 and 2017 for continuous innovation in the reinsurance of pension and longevity risk.

With nearly 30 years of experience, Amy is an innovator whose work has helped pension funds proactively manage longevity risk and create retirement security for their members. She was chosen as one of the “2014 Women to Watch” by Business Insurance magazine, and she was named to Institutional Investor’s “Pension 40” list—a ranking of the 40 most influential people in pensions—in both 2014 and 2015. Amy possesses both capital markets expertise and in-depth insight into the innovative pension risk transfer transactions occurring globally. Before joining Prudential, Amy served as a principal at Bear Stearns and as Global Head of Pension ALM at Swiss Re in London.

Amy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in economics and a Master’s Degree in international economics and finance from Brandeis University, where she is the Co-Vice Chairperson of the Board of the International Business School and the 2013 recipient of the Dean’s Medal.

Prudential Financial Inc. (PFI) and its affiliated companies are not affiliated in any manner with Prudential plc (United Kingdom) or with Prudential Assurance Company, a subsidiary of M&G plc, incorporated in the United Kingdom.

Paul  Kitson is an Actuary and UK Leader of EY’s Pensions Consulting team who advise pension funds, their corporate sponsors and several providers in the pension fund eco-system. Paul has led several ground-breaking longevity hedging transactions in the UK, including British Airways Pension Fund’s longevity swap with a panel of global reinsurers.

Paul has developed several techniques to use technology to better understand longevity risk for UK pension funds, and has acted as a longevity expert in relation to insurance company transactions.  Most recently Paul has been helping pension fund clients think about how best to manage longevity risk as they consider whether to run-on or move to insurance.

Kirsty Maclean is a partner in the London office and member of the Corporate & Financial Services Department. Kirsty advises insurance, reinsurance and other financial institution clients on a broad range of transactions and non-contentious matters. Kirsty has gained a reputation as a notable lawyer in the longevity and pension de-risking market, having advised European and US-based clients on many of the largest and highest-profile longevity transactions completed to date. Kirsty regularly advises on complex collateralised reinsurance transactions and has a particular focus on the interface between (re)insurance and the capital markets. Kirsty is recognised as “Up and Coming” by Chambers UK (2023) and as a “Next Generation Partner” by The Legal 500 UK (2023) for Insurance.

Prior to Willkie, Kirsty gained substantial experience working in-house in the insurance and reinsurance sectors. In particular, she advised Swiss Re's life and health structured transactions business in Europe and Asia.

Rohit Mathur leads Prudential’s International Reinsurance business, where he is responsible for the longevity risk transfer (LRT) and funded reinsurance businesses in the UK and Europe. Prudential's reinsurance activities have led the firm to being named “Reinsurer of the Year” for four consecutive years. The team has closed over $95 billion in longevity reinsurance transactions since 2011, covering members of nearly 200 pensionRohit Mathur funds in the United Kingdom including British Airways, HSBC, Marks and Spencer, and Rolls-Royce.

Prior to this role, Rohit was head of Global Product and Market Solutions, where he was charged with assessing the corporate finance implications of pension risk management to cultivate a consistent recognition of pension de-risking solutions. Partnering with Prudential's distribution team in the service of its clients, Rohit focused on promoting an understanding of pension risk issues among credit and equity analysts, treasurers, chief financial officers and investment bankers. Rohit has been involved in structuring and executing several large and innovative transactions in the United States, including the agreements with Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Philips and J.C. Penney to transfer pension liabilities.

Before joining Prudential, Rohit was an executive director and led the Capital Structure and Strategy advisory team for UBS Investment Bank. There, he advised clients in multiple industries, focusing specifically on corporate finance, risk advisory and pension issues. Prior to that, Rohit was with Moody's Investors Service, where he published research on accounting and pension issues and worked with credit analysts to incorporate those risks more systematically into company ratings. He also co-authored Moody's methodologies on assessing risk of multi-employer pensions and other post-retirement healthcare obligations.

Prudential Financial Inc. (PFI) and its affiliated companies are not affiliated in any manner with Prudential plc (United Kingdom) or with Prudential Assurance Company, a subsidiary of M&G plc, incorporated in the United Kingdom.

Professor Les Mayhew is Associate Head of Global Research at ILC and Professor of Statistics in the Faculty of Actuarial Science and Insurance at Bayes Business School, the business school of City, University of London (formerly known as Cass Business School). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries and a former senior civil servant, having worked for the Department of Health and Social Security, Department of Social Security and the Treasury where he was a Director in the Central Statistical Office and subsequently in the Office for National Statistics.  In 2009 he published a report entitled ‘Increasing longevity and the economic value of healthy ageing and working longer’ which was commissioned by the then Cabinet Office Strategy Unit. In his time at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna in the early 2000s, he worked on global ageing, pensions and health care systems, co-authoring a book on the economics of population ageing in Japan, and was the first to produce forecasts warning of the global rise in health care costs due to population ageing.

Avery Michaelson is the Founder & CEO of Longitude Exchange, a digital marketplace dedicated to trading longevity risk, and Founding Partner of Longitude Solutions, a transaction-oriented consultancy with expertise in longevity risk management. He has extensive experience in the longevity risk and insurance-linked securities markets having previously held positions at Société Générale and Deutsche Bank, with posts at Coventry and Peachtree in the Life Settlement market. Beyond his work in insurance, Avery has applied his passion for market-based solutions to the world of climate change by founding the green-tech company UCapture. Mr. Michaelson graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and is a frequent speaker at financial and longevity conferences.

S. Jay Olshansky received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1984. He is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Research Associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc. -- a company that he co-founded. The focus of his research is on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, forecasts of the size, survival, and age structure of the population, pursuit of the scientific means to slow aging in people (The Longevity Dividend and Geroscience), and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases. During the last 39 years, Dr. Olshansky has been working with colleagues in the biological sciences to develop the modern "biodemographic paradigm" of mortality – an effort to understand the biological nature of the survival and dying out processes of living organisms. Dr. Olshansky is the first author of The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (Norton, 2001); A Measured Breath of Life (2013); The Rise of Generians (2020); Pursuing Wealthspan (2020); and co-editor of Aging: The Longevity Dividend (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2015). An updated version of this book will be published in 2023. Dr. Olshansky's recent work is focused on linking the scientific study of aging with investments in longevity and mortality related products.  Dr. Olshansky is a Board member, American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR) and he served on the Board of Scientific Advisors at PepsiCo. In 2016, Dr. Olshansky was honored with the Donald P. Kent Award from the Gerontological Society of America, the Irving S. Wright Award from the American Federation for Aging Research, he was named a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging; and in 2017 he received the Alvar Svanborg Award. Dr. Olshansky received the Glenn Award from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research in 2018. In 2022 Dr. Olshansky testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the topic of aging and Geroscience and how advances in aging biology are about to transform what it means to grow old.

Cord-Roland Rinke is Managing Director of Hannover Re - Life & Health Analytics and Longevity, which includes the global responsibility for longevity business and a data analytics team. During the last years, Hannover Re has actively worked on transferring longevity risks from pension schemes and insurance companies onto its books. Cord and his team have written various longevity deals with a number of insurance carriers. His team has written business not only in the UK but also in North-America, Continental Europe and the Australian continent. Before that he was in charge of the life reassurance business in Asia and the annuity reassurance business in the UK. His team structured tailor-made life reassurance solutions for Hannover Re’s clients in the UK and the clients of the branch offices in Asia and Scandinavia. In the advent of Solvency II, he was also responsible for the corporate actuarial department building a life internal model for Solvency II and managing the calculation of Hannover Re’s market consistent embedded value. He joined Hannover Re in 1990. In the middle of the 1990s he was largely involved in the establishment of Impaired Live Annuities and Enhanced Annuities in the UK. Since then Hannover Re has successfully become the market leader in the reassurance of UK Enhanced Annuities. Cord holds a degree in Mathematics, is a member of the Deutsche Aktuar Vereinigung and a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries.

David Schrager is Co-Founder of Longitude Exchange, an InsureTech start-up aiming to be The Longevity Risk Marketplace. Active in the financial industry for 25 years his previous roles include Head of Financial Engineering, Head of Trading Desk, Managing Director of Pricing and Hedging. Since 2018 David has advised longevity market players on various strategic and hedging assignments. David has extensive experience modelling, structuring and trading financial and insurance derivatives and holds a PhD in Quantitative Economics from the University of Amsterdam.

Member of the French Institute of Actuaries since 2017, Eve is a Senior Consultant in the R&D department of Milliman Paris. She handles numerous technical and R&D assignments covering a wide range of risks, including: mortality, health/pension, reserving and rating models for credit risk. Eve is also involved in research on current topics such as climate risks, the impact of connected objects on health, cyber risks, and individual reserving models.