Insurance Industry Digital Transformation

Rainer Baumann leads the Group Digital and Information (GDIS) unit since April 2017. GDIS aims at transforming business and work by (1) increasing Swiss Re’s profit and digital quotient, (2) connecting the unit with internal and external partners, integrating applications & information, leveraging future innovation and providing a helping hand, and (3) making more efficient and effective usage of information.

From 2014 until April 2017, Rainer Baumann led Swiss Re's newly created Shared Information Services (SIS). The mission of SIS was to drive digital and information innovation and to enable Swiss Re to perform better through a more efficient and effective use of information. SIS deals with all information aspects, from capturing and storing to governing and using information, including the emerging fields of smart analytics, big data and digital.

Previously, Rainer Baumann was responsible for Swiss Re's IT strategy. Until the beginning of 2013, he was a non-equity partner at McKinsey's Business Technology Office. As a European Leader of the IT Performance Management, Cyber and Digital practice for four years, he drove various transformation projects, mainly in the financial services and high tech industries. Before joining McKinsey & Company, he worked as a team leader in an SME for two years and for eight years ran a small IT start-up providing innovative end-to-end services and solutions for small businesses.

In the years from 2005 to 2015, he lectured on Technical Computer Science and Information Security at ETH Zurich in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. Rainer Baumann holds a PhD in Information Technology, an MSc in Computer Science and two master's degrees in Secondary and Higher Education from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).

Sebastiaan started at Swiss Re in 2008. After working as a product developer, he joined the strategy team working for Swiss Re's CEO in 2010. He was responsible for implementing a number of strategic concepts as well as executing organizational realignment programs. Currently Sebastiaan is Head of Automotive Solutions. As such he is looking into developments with respect to automated vehicles and telematics, assessing their impact on the insurance sector and correspondingly shaping Swiss Re's strategic actions. Sebastiaan holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from the RSM Erasmus University in Rotterdam as well as a CEMS Master degree in Management.

Dr. Didier Bonnet is a Corporate Vice President and Global Practice Leader at Capgemini Consulting. He also acts as the Executive Sponsor for Capgemini's Digital Transformation offering, a key strategic initiative including a six-year joint research collaboration with the MIT Sloan School’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

Prior to this, Didier was the Global Leader of the Telecom, Media & Entertainment practice at Capgemini Consulting for 15 years. He has more than 25 years' experience in strategy development, globalization, internet & digital economics as well as in business transformation for large multinational corporations.

Didier has been published by the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review and is frequently quoted in the press, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Financial Times and The Economist. He also regularly provides commentary for broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN, Reuters and CNBC. Didier graduated in business economics from a French “Grandes Ecoles” and earned his Doctorate from New College, University of Oxford. He is based in London.

Didier is co-author of the best-selling book: Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation, published by Harvard Business Review Press. Leading Digital makes the provocative argument that the next phase of digital technology adoption will make everything that’s happened so far look like a prelude. Based on researching over 400 global corporations, Leading Digital presents the DNA of Digital Masters, those companies that have mastered digital transformation to gain strategic advantage. What strategy to adopt; Where and how to invest in digital; and how to lead the transformation?

Follow Didier on twitter @didiebon.
e-mail address: didier.bonnet@capgemini.com

Iordanis in his current role is responsible for the strategy development and the implementation of alternative analytical methods with the use of "Big Data" for Swiss Re's P&C Business Management department.

Previously in his career within Swiss Re was a Senior Risk Manager working more specifically for the Emerging Risk Management team with a focus on the modeling, analysis and quantification of emerging risks.

Before joining Swiss Re, he worked in the finance industry predominantly as a quantitative analyst with a strong emphasis on sustainable finance.

Iordanis is a Mechanical Engineer by training holding a PhD in Computational Bioengineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ). Following his doctorate studies he worked for a year as a Post-Doctoral assistant at the Institute for Swiss Banking of Zurich University.

Iordanis was raised in Thessaloniki Greece and for the past 14 years is living in Zurich, Switzerland.

Dr. Andrea Cornelius has been working for more than 20 years in management consulting, as well as managing business units in the insurance, telecommunication, and IT industry. Her focus areas are innovation, analytics, and cognitive solutions.

In her role as Vice President she is responsible for the global IBM Cognitive Solutions Team for Insurance.

Christian Elsasser joined Swiss Re in 2015 as a manager for data analytics project. In this role he is responsible for the development of new projects in connection with large external data sets and for the embedding of advanced analytics in P&C Business Management.

Before joining Swiss Re he worked for five years at CERN as a physicist where he was responsible for the analysis and interpretation of data samples collected by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Christian studied physics, economics, and computer science and holds an MSc degree from the University of Zurich. For his research at CERN he was awarded a PhD in natural science. He is also currently appointed as a lecturer in scientific computing by the University of Zurich.

Jennifer Fitzgerald is the CEO and Co-Founder of PolicyGenius, an independent digital insurance company for consumers. Previously, she was an associate principal at McKinsey & Company, where she advised Fortune 100 financial services companies on marketing and strategy. Jennifer regularly shares her insights on personal finance and insurance tech and serves as an expert on the insurance industry and entrepreneurial path. Her articles have appeared in TheNextWeb, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Huffington Post and she has been quoted as a source in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The New York Times and Forbes Magazine. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School and Florida State University.

Nic is a technology entrepreneur focused on transformative software solutions in the marketing world. Nic founded Rocketer to build a software solution to serve targeted advertising campaigns on Facebook. Previously Nic founded and exited two technology companies both focused on making online advertising easier to control and more efficient.

Rocketer’s platform allows clients to run campaigns on Facebook made up of unlimited advert variants, allowing users to be displayed adverts specifically tailored to their age, gender, location and personality. The granular level of targeting means that campaigns can be hyper efficient, dynamically moving spend to the best performing segments.

Nic works with the world’s biggest insurers to implement Facebook as a sustainable marketing channel, delivering performance that beats search whilst delivering volume. 

Jean-Jacques Henchoz started his career in 1988 at the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Jean-Jacques Henchoz joined Swiss Re in 1998 as facultative property underwriter in the Europe Division, and in 1999 moved to the Swiss Re New Markets Division as finite risk underwriter. From 2000 he served as Head Financial Solutions until becoming Head of Strategy for Property & Casualty in 2003. From 2005 to 2010, he was Chief Executive Officer of Swiss Re Canada. Jean-Jacques Henchoz assumed leadership of the Europe Division in March 2011. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer Reinsurance EMEA, Regional President EMEA and member of the Group Executive Committee in January 2012.

Jean-Jacques Henchoz, born 1964, is a Swiss citizen.

Educational background

• Master’s Degree in Political Science, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• MBA, International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Switzerland

Peter works on predictive modelling in the Property and Casualty area. He joined Swiss Re in Zurich in 2014.

Prior to joining Swiss Re, he was a Quantitative Analyst for six years in the banking sector, creating new models for pricing and hedging interest rate and equity products. He has given guest lectures from 2012-2015 at the University of St. Gallen on Mathematical Finance and published a book on the topic. Peter has a PhD in Mathematics from York, Masters in Mathematical Finance from Oxford, Masters in Mathematics from Cambridge and Bachelors in Physics from Imperial College.

Peter was brought up in Halifax, UK. He enjoys baking, keeping active, and spending time with his partner and daughter.

Dr Lubczanski manages Swiss Re's global Behavioural Research Unit's applied research projects within Life & Behaviour R&D in London. She joined Swiss Re after obtaining her PhD in Health Psychology from University College London. Transferring her expertise from psychology, she sits in a core team of researchers who are bringing insights from behavioural economics into the world of insurance in order to better understand and predict customer behaviour. Some of her current projects include reducing bias in decision making and learning how to improve the health of policyholders.

Christoph Nabholz and his team do applied R&D aimed at improving the understanding of trends and developments in human behaviour, morbidity and mortality. The gained R&D insights are used to strengthen the performance and innovation of L&H products. Through providing thought leadership on key strategic topics for L&H such as, genetic testing, ageing populations and consumer health behaviours, he and his team prompt debate and initiate the co-creation of novel insurance solutions.

From 2007 to 2016 Christoph Nabholz headed Business Development at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue, where he and his team were mandated to develop dialogue and debate, with experts at world class institutions, on key insurance industry topics. The team addressed issues across the many lines of business written by the firm and helped position Swiss Re as a knowledge company and industry leader.

From 2002 to 2006, Christoph Nabholz was in Swiss Re Global Life & Health Underwriting and served as Swiss Re’s Global Genetics Consultant.

From 1999 to 2002, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in genomics and functional genetics at Harvard University.

Christoph Nabholz received a diploma in biochemistry from the University of Basel and a PhD with honours in molecular genetics from the University of Freiburg in Switzerland.

Nathalie Nahai is a web psychologist, international speaker and author of the best-selling book, Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion (Pearson).

The foremost expert in web psychology, Nathalie helps businesses apply scientific rigour to their website design, content marketing and products. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, design agencies and SMEs, including Google, eBay, Unilever and Harvard Business Review, to name a few.

Nathalie lectures internationally on the digital application of behavioural sciences, co-hosts theGuardian’s Tech Weekly podcast, and contributes to national publications, TV and radio on the subject of online behaviour.

You can tweet to her @NathalieNahai

Pascal D. Nef joined Swiss Re early 2015 as a Data Scientist and since then worked on various property & casualty related projects that require statistical modelling and advanced analytics.

Prior to joining Swiss Re, Pascal spent two years at Stanford University, CA, working as a postdoctoral researcher in the field of high energy physics. Through his research, Pascal gained extensive experience in machine learning and statistical analysis of large datasets. His work significantly contributed to the research programs at CERN leading to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Pascal earned his PhD at ETH Zurich in 2013.

Jayne Plunkett was appointed as Head Casualty Reinsurance with effect from 1 April 2012.

Jayne Plunkett served as Head of Casualty Underwriting Asia from 2008, responsible for casualty treaty underwriting throughout Asia. She had joined Swiss Re as Head Regional Underwriting in 2006 as a consequence of the acquisition of GE Insurance Solutions.

She was Head of Planning and Analysis at GE Insurance Solutions from 2005 to 2006. Before this assignment, she was Head of Casualty Risk Management (2004) and Deputy Chief Reserving Actuary (2003). She had joined GE Insurance Solutions in 1999 as Insurance Pricing Team Leader.

She started her career at John Deere Insurance Company in 1992, where she held various positions focused on the Commercial Lines segment of the Property and Casualty Insurance business.

Jayne Plunkett is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. Additionally, she was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2010.

Jayne Plunkett was born in 1970 and is an American citizen. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Drake University (1992).

Steven is Zurich’s Chief Digital Officer, with responsibility for Zurich’s digital transformation. Steven's role is to put digital at the heart of Zurich’s business and stretches from strategy development to sales & marketing effectiveness, new business models and greater efficiency. Together these aim to deliver a consistent, world-class digital experience for Zurich customers.

Steven joined Zurich from Bupa from where he was responsible for their global digital propositions and the creation of a digital centre of excellence to drive best in class customer experiences and business performance. Prior to this, Steven had a number of senior roles at Prudential at Barclays PLC, including interim Online Banking Director for the retail bank, where he oversaw the rapid development of its digital assets and capabilities.

Steven lives in Surrey with his wife and two children and travels frequently to his home town of Florence in Italy. He enjoys travelling, cooking (Italian of course), keeping fit and investing in property.