About our speakers

Giovanni Cucinotta, Member of the Managing Board, CEIOPS

Giovanni Cucinotta is Head of Research Department, ISVAP (Italian Insurance Supervisory Authority) and ad interim Head of off- site Supervision Dept. II.
He graduated in Political Science (Italy) and holds a Master of Arts in Financial Economics (UK). He worked for several years in the banking sector, mainly involved in financial area.
He has published articles on finance, banking, securities markets and insurance issues and is also co-author of several books on finance and insurance. He also attends international meetings as ISVAP representative (CEIOPS and IAIS) and is a member of Managing Board of CEIOPS.

Tom Wilson, Chief Risk Officer, Allianz

Tom is the Chief Risk Officer for Allianz Group, responsible for global risk controlling and risk management policies and guidelines. Tom has spent most of his professional career in Europe, having lived and worked in Munich, Amsterdam, New York, London and Zurich. Tom earned his BSc in Business Administration with honors from the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD in Economics from Stanford University. Tom is a dual American- / Swiss-citizen.

Pauline de Chatillon, Chair of Solvency II Financial Requirements Expert Group, CEIOPS

Pauline de Chatillon is International Director in the French Insurance Supervisory Authority (ACAM, Autorité de Contrôle des Assurances et des Mutuelles). She also chairs the CEIOPS’ Solvency II Financial Requirements Expert Group that deals with technical provisions, SCR and the capital requirements.
Pauline started her career at the ACAM as an insurance supervisor. She went on to work in Madrid for an insurance company for 4 years, came back at the ACAM before leaving again for Stratford-upon-Avon (UK) to study Shakespeare. After a new period in the ACAM, she joined the European Commission as a National Expert to work in the Insurance and Pensions Unit in Brussels for 3 years.
Pauline was educated at the « Ecole Normale Supérieure » (Paris) and the Political Science Institute (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris) and subsequently qualified as an actuary.

Olav Jones, Chief Risk Officer, Fortis Insurance

Olav Jones is the Chief Risk Officer for Fortis Insurance. He has 18 years of experience working in the fields of risk, capital and value-based management within large financial organisations. Before joining Fortis, he started his career with Oliver, Wyman & Co and then worked for Prudential Plc.
He has a degree in engineering from Exeter University and a Masters in Finance from Cambridge University. He is based in Brussels where he lives with his wife and three children.

Carlos Montalvo Rebuelta, Secretary General, CEIOPS

Mr. Carlos Montalvo Rebuelta has been the Secretary General of CEIOPS, Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Supervisors, since the 1st of November, 2007. Before that he has worked as an insurance supervisor for the DGSFP, Spanish insurance supervisory authority, where he headed the International Area of the Supervisory Department and coordinated insurance groups and financial conglomerates related issues. He is a lawyer with a diploma in economics and has carried out both national and international tasks, such as on-site inspections or participation in different legislative initiatives. He’s also been involved in qualitative supervision related issues, including the chairmanship of CEIOPS working group on internal control for insurance undertakings (Madrid Group), and has participated as invited professor in different fora.

Thaddeus Nyahasha, Director of Group Solvency, Aviva

Thaddeus Nyahasha is the director of group solvency at Aviva. Group Solvency has overall responsibility for Aviva’s prudential requirements as well as leading the Group’s work on future prudential regulatory developments, including Solvency II.
Prior to working for Aviva, Thaddeus worked for the FSA, specialising in fair valuation matters and insurance accounting. In his current position, Thaddeus continues to interact with the FSA and various other regulatory bodies and rating agencies.
Thaddeus has served on a number of external committees including: the CRO Forum; the Basel Capital and Accounting working group; the CEIOPS pillar III working group; IAIS accounting subcommittee; the IAIS disclosure subcommittee; and was also the CESRfin observer to the EFRAG.
Thaddeus has also previously held positions at Coopers & Lybrand and Arthur Andersen, where he specialized in securitizations, audit of financial institutions and IAS implementation work.
Thaddeus is a graduate in statistics, accountancy, a chartered accountant and a certified fellow of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). He plans to start MBA studies in September 2009.

Patricia Plas, Senior Vice President, Public Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Aegon N.V.

Patricia Plas joined AEGON NV as Director of Group Regulatory Affairs in January 2007. Her main responsibility is to monitor and assess at group level regulatory developments affecting the AEGON group as a whole and to coordinate the AEGON response. She is also the spokesperson towards European Union institutions and international bodies on public policy and regulatory developments.
From 2003 to 2006, she was the Economics and Finance Director at the CEA (Comité Européen des Assurances). Her main responsibilities included the management of the CEA Solvency II project and the monitoring of the European accounting debate on behalf of the European insurance and reinsurance industries.
Patricia is a former Director of the Financial Services Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers (1989–2003) where she specialised in the audit of insurance companies and pension funds.
A graduate in Economics and Finance, she is also a Chartered Accountant registered at the Belgian Institute.

Gregor Pozniak, Secretary General, AMICE

Since March 2008, Gregor Pozniak has been the Secretary General of AMICE, the Association of Mutual Insurers and Insurance Cooperatives in Europe.
He joined AMICE from ICMA (the International Capital Market Association) where he was Senior Advisor with a focus on European regulatory developments. Before this assignment, he was the Deputy Secretary General of the Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) for seven years (1998-2005).
He holds Masters’ and Doctoral Degrees from Vienna University of Economic Sciences and has studied at London Business School and Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
Gregor lives in Brussels with his wife and three children.

Marc Propper, Senior Policy Advisor, De Nederlandsche Bank

Marc Pröpper works as a senior policy advisor in the quantitative risk department of DNB. Areas of his work include the Financial Assessment Framework (FTK) for pension funds and Solvency II. He is active in the field of stress testing for banks and a member of the Basel II Risk Management and Modelling Group. Marc has graduated as a physicist from the University of Utrecht and added two years of economy on the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. Previously he worked for the Fortis in Treasury, ALM and central risk management. He regularly publishes articles on insurance and pensions.

Zuzana Silberova, Deputy Executive Director, Czech National Bank

Zuzana Silberova, Ph.D., CIA – graduated from Faculty of Science, Masaryk University in Brno, 1992-4 lecturer at the Department of Mathematics, Pedagogical Faculty, Charles University in Prague. She finished Ph.D. studies at the Faculty of Economics and Public Administration, University of Economics, Prague in 2002. In 2003 she successfully passed CIA Certificate issued by IIA.
She has been working in the Czech National Bank since May 1994, she had been on the position head of on-site examination team for internal control systems of banks (included corporate governance, internal audit, compliance function and AML systems) at the Banking Regulation and Supervision Department since 2001.
Since October 2006 she had been appointed on the position Supervision Division Director, Insurance Companies Regulation and Supervision Department of the Czech National Bank. Since January 2008 - after the reorganization of supervisory departments of the CNB to the “functional” model - she was on the position Insurance Supervision Division Director, Financial Market Supervision Department. Since October 2008 she has been appointed on the position Deputy Executive Director, Financial Market Supervision Department of the CNB.

Peter Vipond, Director, Financial Regulation & Taxation, Association of British Insurers

Peter Vipond is Director of Financial Regulation and Taxation at the Association of British Insurers (ABI). He represents the UK insurance industry on these matters in discussions with the regulators, government and EU authorities as well as the Comité Européen des Assurances (CEA). In addition he co-ordinates the business planning activities of the ABI. Previously he worked at the British Bankers Association (BBA) dealing with market risk (CAD) and credit risk (Basel 2), as well as risk-based supervision. Initially he was a university professor in political economy, then in financial services strategy and regulation.