Plenary and Panel Speakers
Andrew Cairns
Andrew Cairns is Professor of Financial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. He is well known both in the UK and internationally for his research in financial risk management for pension plans and life insurers. Within this field he has developed a new model for bond-price dynamics for use in the measurement and management of long-term interest-rate risks in pensions and life insurance. More recently 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 is an active member of the UK and international actuarial profession in both research and education. He is editor in chief of ASTIN Bulletin - the Journal of the IAA, and he played a significant role in the development of the syllabus for the intrenational Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary qualification.
Stephen Coles
Dr. L Stephen Coles, M.D., Ph.D. is a Co-Founder and Director of the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group (GRG). He is a Director of the Los Angeles Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). He served as an Assistant Researcher in the Department of Surgery at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, a Visiting Scholar in the UCLA Department of Computer Science, and is currently a Lecturer in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Molecular Biology Institute) as well as a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford University Department of Development Biology. Dr. Coles is the author or co-author of 166 scientific papers and holds two parents.
He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, his Master's in Mathematics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Systems and Communication Sciences from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His thesis work was in Computational Linguistics under Prof. Herbert A. Simon, a Nobel Prize winner in Economics.
After attending Stanford University Medical School, Dr. Coles completed his Clinical Internship in OB/GYN at the Jackson Memorial Hospital of the University of Miami School of Medicine. He has taught at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Dr. Coles also served as a Lecturer at UCLA, SUC, and CalTech.
Guy Coughlan
Guy is a member of the management team at Pacific Global Advisors (PGA), a business providing fiduciary management and advisory services to pension plans that was acquired from J.P. Morgan by Pacific Life Insurance Company in 2011.
Prior to joining PGA, Guy was a managing Director at J.P. Morgan and most recently held the positions of Global Head of ALM Advisory, Global Head of Longevity Solutions, and Co-head of European Pension Advisory.
Guy joined J.P. Morgan in 1994 and over nearly 17 years was involved in advising pension funds, corporations and insurers on strategic investment, risk management and capital structure. Early in his career Guy was engaged in fixed income research and was a member of the pioneering RiskMetrics team, leading the development of the first general-purpose value-at-risk system called FourFifteen. In 1999 he founded the Global ALM Advisory group and set up J.P. Morgan's longevity business in 2007. In this role, Guy led the development of LifeMetrics, an open-source platform for longevity risk management that includes mortality and longevity indices. In 2008 he was involved in executing the world's first longevity hedges using capital markets swaps. He also played a central role in establishing the Life & Longevity Markets Association (LLMA), a cross-industry body set up to promote the development of the market for longevity risk transfer that includes insurers, reinsurers and banks. He served as the inaugural chairman of the LLMA's Technical Committee.
Guy is currently serving on the US Society of Actuaries' Longevity Task Force. He has a DPhil (i.e., PhD) in physics from Oxford University. He also holds a BSc degree from the University of Western Australia and an MBA from Henley Business School in the UK.
Roger Douglas
Roger Douglas, Managing Director, is Co-Head of DB's Longevity Markets Group. He joined Deutsche Bank in 1997 and has a background in Rates. Before longevity, Roger was responsible for setting up and developing Deutsche Banks successful fixed income ETF platform (db x-trackers) and DB's Fixed Income index trading capabilities.
Geoff Eaton
Chief Executive of Uniq Plc (formerly Unigate), a successful turnaround of an international group manufacturing convenience food involving extensive operational and financial restructuring, change management, value creation and realisation and the delivery of a highly innovative "deficit for equity swap" for a significant legacy pension deficit, totally disproportionate to the size of the business. Previously CEO of Isis Research Plc, a fast growing international market agency serving the pharmaceutical industry where value was increased 3.75x and crystallised through a sale to Aegis Plc. Part of a small team who built Tomkins Plc, from a small midlands fastener company into a £5 billion "Buns to Guns" international industrial conglomerate. A chartered Accountant who qualified with Arthur Anderson, spent time with the Commercial Crime bureau of the Hong Kong police and became a corporate financier at Hill Samuel in the run up to Big Bang.
Richard Farr
Richard leads the BDO Pensions Advisory team. His formerly Head of Pensions at Swiss Re from 2007 to 2009, Richard was responsible for creating a new team of broadly based pension specialists to help Swiss Re assess risk transfer opportunities and is FSA CF30 approved. He led the Pension Corporate Advisor initiative at PwC from 2005 to 2007. Richard advised the Pension Protection Fund on its initial risk-based levy and the Pensions Regulator on its original Clearance Guidance rules. This included ground-breaking work on the development of the Employer Covenant, the use of Contingent Assets, the price for obtaining Clearance, and the PPF's innovative 33% stake in restructurings.
Richard Co-founded two high-profile public to private turnarounds, including the first ever pre-pack, as well three highly successful IPOs. He is a member of the Institute for Turnaround, and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Malcolm Hamilton
Malcolm Hamilton is a Partner of Mercer. He specializes in the design and funding of employee benefit plans in both the private and public sectors, with particular emphasis on registered pension and savings plans, unregistered pension plans, and retirement compensation arrangements. His clients include the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Ontario Power Generation, the Bank of Montreal and Manulife.Malcolm graduated from Queens University in 1972 as the Gold Medalist in Mathematics. He attended McGill as a National Research Council scholar, receiving his M.Sc. in 1975. He became a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 1977. He is a frequent speaker at pension conferences.
Amy Kessler
Amy Kessler is a senior vice president and head of longevity reinsurance within Prudential's Pension Risk Transfer business. Amy recently led Prudential's successful launch of this product with a transaction to reinsure the pension longevity risk of Rothesay Life, Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. She joined Prudential in the fall of 2009. Prior to joining Prudential, Amy served as a Principal at Bear Stearns and as Global Head of Pension ALM at Swiss Re in the United Kingdom. With over 20 years of financial services experience, she possesses both capital markets expertise and in-depth insight into the innovative pension risk transfer transactions occurring in the U.K.
Amy holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in international economics and finance from Brandeis University, where she is a member of the Board of Overseers of the International Business School.
John Kiff
Since 2005, John Kiff has been a Senior Financial Sector Expert at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prior to that, John worked at the Bank of Canada for 25 years, where he spent most of his time managing the funding and investment of the government's foreign exchange reserves. During his last five years at the Bank, John was heavy involved in several BIS working groups that focused on credit risk transfer markets.
This all led John to the IMF, where he is part of the team that produces the semi-annual Global Financial Stability Report, and he has continued to publish articles and papers on risk transfer markets. More recently John has been focusing on mortgage market microstructure, OTC derivative market infrastructure, and securitization and risk transfer markets. He's an occasional blogger and fairly frequent twitter under the "Kiffmeister" moniker.
Pretty Sagoo
Pretty Sagoo is a director in the Structured Insurance Solutions Group at Deutsche Bank. She has been working in Asset Liability Management for Pension Funds and Insurance companies since 2002, in roles ranging from ALM quant to client coverage for Corporate Pension Funds and European Insurance Companies.
She joined Deutsche Bank in 2007. Prior to that she worked for Goldman Sachs and Axa Life Insurance UK. She is a Trustee of the Abbey Life Pension Fund and Chair of the Longevity Basis Risk Working Group - a joint initiative between the Life and Longevity Markets Association (LLMA) an The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK. She holds a PhD in Physics from Imperial College London.
Eytan Sheshinski
Eytan Sheshinski is the Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor of Public Finance (emeritus) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He received his Ph.D. at MIT, taught at Harvard University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. His recent research has focused on social insurance and annuity markets, behavioral public economics and the social implications of bounded rationality. He made contributions to the theory of optimum income and commodity taxation and the taxation of exhaustible natural resources. Sheshinski is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy, and a numerous of other honors.
He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Stockholm School of Economics and was elected last year a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association.
Brent Simmons
Brent leads Sun Life Financial's Defined Benefit Solutions business, providing a wide array of customized de-risking solutions for defined benefit pension plan sponsors.
Brent has been in the pension and insurance industry for 17 years, as a consultant, strategist and executive. His experience includes the design, pricing and governance of insurance and pension products, including buy-in and buy-out annuities, GMxB products, registered pension plans, executive pension plans and group RRSPs.
Michelle McGregor Smith
After graduating from City University Business School (now Cass Business School) with a BSc (Hons) in Banking and International Finance, Michelle joined BAPIML as an Equity Portfolio manager. She became Head of UK Equities and was also involved in a number of hedging transactions for the Funds before moving to her current role as CEO and CIO. She is responsible for the day to day management of c. £17bn. of pension assets invested in a broad range of asset classes and assists the Trustees and their Investment Committee on new investment ideas and strategic issues, including de-risking and liability management, and transitions as required.
BAPIML manages a broad ranges of assets, predominantly through an in-house team of 40 on behalf of two defined benefit schemes both now closed to new members. The Schemes have very different strategic asset allocations with the Airways Pension Scheme reflecting the maturity and the nature of, being predominantly index-linked, liabilities, with c.85% in bonds and matching assets and only c.15% in equity and other risk assets. Increasingly the focus has been on de-risking and improving the matching of the liabilities. In the last two years this had been extended to include executing both a £1.35 bn buy-in and a longevity swap. In comparison, the New Airways Pension Scheme has c.70% in equity, property and alternatives reflecting the relative immaturity of liabilities and lower funding levels. Both funds have a broad range of alternative assets including, but not exclusively, infrastructure, commodities, private equity and credit opportunities such as leveraged loans and distressed debt. Michelle is also an Advisor to the Investment Committee of the Daily Mail and General Trust Final Salary Schemes and is a member of the Investor Steering Committee of the Alternative Investment Managers Association. She is also an independent member of the Investment Committee of the Health Foundation, a UK based Charity. Michelle is a CFA charter holder and a member of the UK Advisory Council which assists the CFA society to best serve its members.
Eric Stallard
P.J. Eric Stallard, A.S.A., M.A.A.A., F.C.A., is a Research Professor in the Social Science Research Institute, and Associate Director of the Center for Population Health and Aging, in the Duke Population Research Institute, at Duke University.
Professor Stallard is a Fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries, Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and Associate of the Society of Actuaries. He is Chairperson of the Academy's Federal Long-Term Care Task Force; and he serves on the Academy's Health Practice Council, Social Insurance Committee, and State LTC Task Force. Previously, he served on the Academy's Board of Directors and on the Society of Actuaries' Long-Term Care Insurance Section Council.
Professor Stallard is currently a Member of Genworth Financial, Inc.'s Medical Advisory Council. Professor Stallard has served as a Deputy Editor at Demography with responsibilities for the demography of aging, actuarial science, and mathematical demography. He also served on the Social Security Advisory Board's 2007 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods.
Professor Stallard is currently serving as Principal Investigator on research grants from the National PACE Association and the Society of Actuaries and on research subcontracts to Duke primed by Purdue and Colombia Universities, funded by grants from the U.S. National Institute on Aging grant. He is also serving as Senior Investigator on three other research grants from the U.S. National Institute on Aging covering the areas of health, disability, LTC, and mortality.
He has previously served as Principal Investigator on research grants from the Veterans Health Administration, the National Council on the Aging, the Bayer Corporation, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and General Electric Capital Assurance Co.
Thomas Terry
Since 1975, Tom has been a pension actuary and business leader. He is a Vice President on the Board of the Society of Actuaries and he is currently the Chair of the American Academy of Actuaries' Public Interest Committee and is the Academy's incoming President-elect. Tom is president of TTerry Consulting LLC. He formerly held roles as CEO of JPMorgan Compensation and Benefits Strategies, President of CCA Strategies, and Principal/Vice President of Towers Perrin.