Conference Chairs

Professor Marco Morales

Marco MoralesProfessor Marco Morales - Associate Professor of Economics at the Universidad Diego Portales. Ph.D. in Economics from Boston University.

Previously he has served as Chief of the Research Division of the Superintendency of Securities and Insurance, Economic Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, and Economist at the Research Department of the Superintendency of Banks and Financial Institutions. He has also been consultant to the Corporate Affairs Division of the OECD, Division of Operations and Financial Sector Policy of the World Bank, and to the Division of Statistics and Projections of ECLAC.

He has published in journals including the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Applied Economics, Journal of Applied Statistics, Macroeconomic Dynamics and Emerging Markets Finance and Trade on issues related to annuities markets, yield curve, econometric time series, total factors productivity, and shock transmission and coupling between financial markets.

Professor David Blake

nullDavid Blake is Director of the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School, and the chairman of Square Mile Consultants, a training and research consultancy. He is also: co-founder of the International Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions Conferences; co-inventor of the Cairns-Blake-Dowd stochastic mortality model; and co-founder with JPMorgan of the LifeMetrics Indices. In 2011, he won the Robert I. Mehr award from the American Risk and Insurance Association for his seminar paper on mortality risk transfers. The paper is credited with helping to develop a new global capital market in mortality risk transfers between pension funds, life assurers and capital market investors, leading to the world's first pension buy-out in 2006 and the world's first pension buy-in and first longevity swap in 2007.

Professor Richard MacMinn

richard macminnProfessor Richard D. MacMinn, BA, MA, PhD, is the first holder of the Edmondson-Miller Chair in Insurance and Financial Services at Illinois State University and was previously the first holder of the Swiss Re Chair in the Management of Risk at the University of Nottingham. He was editor of the Journal of Risk and insurance, the lead journal in the world on insurance and risk management, published by the American Risk and Insurance Association from 1998 through 2006. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Journal of Insurance Issues and the Quarterly Journal of Economics and Finance. Professor MacMinn served as a board member of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association from 2000-2003, as a board member for the American Risk and Insurance Association from 2003-2006 and is a member of the American Risk and Insurance Association, Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association, European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists, Southern Risk and Insurance Association, Western Risk and Insurance Association, American Economic Association and American Finance Association. He has published in journals including the journal of Risk and Insurance, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Geneva Papers, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Journal of Finance. He has thrice won the prestigious Mehr Award in addition to a number of other awards from the American Risk and Insurance Association, Casualty Actuarial Society, and General Insurance Research Organization in the United Kingdom and Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association for his publications.