Meet the Speakers

The MIA is proud to announce the following presenters at this year's Reinsurance School

Sandeep Asthana- RGA Services India Pvt. Ltd.

Sandeep is the Managing Director of RGA Services India Pvt. Ltd. RGA is the largest specialist global life reinsurer, and is a leading reinsurance partner for life insurers in India. Sandeep joined RGA in January 2003 as its India Representative to establish the RGA brand in Indian market; and now leads RGA's Indian business. An Engineer and MBA, he started his career with Unit Trust of India in 1993, and was closely involved with its plans for entry into life insurance and pensions. He joined Zurich Financial Services in 2000, and headed the life insurance planning team.

S. Balasubramaniam-DHAN Foundation

Balasubramanian S. is Chief Executive of People Mutuals project of DHAN Foundation. He has served in the banking sector for two decades and has been in the development sector for the past seven years. He is a post graduate in Agricultural Economics from Tamilnadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. His broad thematic areas of work experience and competence include designing mutual insurance solutions to address the risks and vulnerabilities of poor and farmers, civil society organizations working for poverty reduction in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, promoting and enabling civil society organizations through thematic programmes of microfinance, programme management, system development and control for the projects of micro finance and micro insurance, rural development and banking, and commercial banking. In addition Balasubramanian has organized countless national and international conferences on micro insurance.

Jeff Blacker- Actuarial Consultant

Jeff is a member of the American Academy of Actuaries and a Fellow in the Society of Actuaries. He has been a volunteer with MIA since 2007, bringing 11 years of health insurance experience. He and his wife, Rachel, live in Indiana where Jeff works as a consulting actuary. His recent projects include insurance product development, reserve calculations, audits, and claim experience analysis.

Shreeraj Deshpande-Bajaj Allianz

Shreeraj heads the Health Insurance portfolio of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Ltd. He is a Master of Management Science (Marketing) and is a Fellow of the Insurance Institute of India. He has been with Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company ltd since April 2004 and prior to that worked in various functional capacities in a public sector insurance company for 13 yrs. He has two years research experience at the National Insurance Academy Pune and was also awarded the C D Deshmukh Research Award for his Ph.D thesis on Health Insurance by National Insurance Academy, Pune.

R. Devaprakash- Care

R.Devaprakash works as a Team Leader for CARE India based in Chennai where he manages a Tsunami Response Program in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, a long term reconstruction intervention. He manages a sophisticated micro insurance program of CARE India offering technical leadership involving outreach, innovation, sector building initiatives with plans to reach over 250,000 community members through 30 NGO partners throughout Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Previously, Devaprakash was a Technical Support Specialist for the Credit And Savings for Household Enterprise (CASHE) project of CARE India in New Delhi. Devaprakash also worked for the Indian Bank in various capacities heading the Gramodaya Kendras(Rural Development Centers) of the bank contributing towards livelihood financing, poverty lending, rural finance and micro finance mandate of the bank. He was a Faculty Member in the banks’ Rural Development Training-cum-Research Center, a national capacity building institution training the cadres of the bank on rural lending skills and practices. He was on secondment from Indian Bank to Tamil Nadu Corporation for four years to manage a women focused micro enterprise initiative funded by IFAD.

David Dror- Micro Insurance Academy

Dr. David M. Dror is the Chairman of the Micro Insurance Academy (MIA). He is currently Professor of Health Insurance in low income countries at Erasmus University Rotterdam Medical Center (Institute of Health Policy and Management) and leads field research related to health economics and health insurance in India and elsewhere. Dr. Dror holds a DBA (Magna cum Laude) and a PhD (Summa cum Laude).

Iddo Dror- Micro Insurance Academy

Iddo brings with him over a decade of experience in various sectors working in four continents. He joined the MIA after an assignment as a management education specialist with the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where he led the creation of an innovative international MBA programme. Dr. Dror has experience consulting large international organizations as well as grassroots NGOs on microinsurance, international trade, and management issues, and is a frequent speaker in India and abroad on microinsurance and development issues. In his current assignment at the MIA, Iddo is responsible for the strategic development and expansion of the MIA as well as overseeing its operational units (finance, HR, resource mobilization and general administration). He holds a PhD in Economic and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva, where he also earned a Masters of Business Administration.

Annette Houtekamer-Eureko Re

Annette Houtekamer, née van Dam is currently employed by Eureko Re, the reinsurance company of Eureko. Annette is a manager in business development for structured reinsurance. She provides support to large international companies, as well as some Agricultural Governments outside the Netherlands, in the form of risk analyses and risk finance solutions based on the results of these analyses. The devising, implementation, and monitoring of solutions for risk management of such undertakings, the development of products in the field of risk financing, and accountability for realising commercial objectives are also part of her professional duties.

Annette holds two bachelors degrees (one in economics and business management and another in social science) as well as an MBA. Furthermore, she is the project manager of the DHAN Foundation People Mutuals microinsurance project.

Liyaquat Ali Khan- HSBC Global

Liyaquat’s career has spanned more than 40 years and four countries: India, United Kingdom, Mauritius and Sultanate of Oman. He has worked in middle and senior management positions in life insurance, pensions, actuarial consulting and general insurance including CEO of Life Insurance Company in Sultanate of Oman and in India. Liyaquat has performed various functions relating to insurance regulation, such as serving as reviewing actuary to the government run employees' pension scheme and developing actuarial standards of practice for Appointed Actuaries. Since January 2007, he has served as Head of HSBC (Global Actuarial Function) in Kolkata, India.
 

Alok Kumar- Swiss Re

Alok Kumar is a natural hazard expert at Swiss Re. He currently leads part of Swiss Re’s outsourcing operation with Genpact, a third-party service provider in India, which became part of the organisation in 2006. Alok is responsible for integrating the Genpact team into Swiss Re and driving development in the areas of high-end analytics, such as natural hazard risk assessment and underwriting.
 

Alok joined Swiss Re in 2001 as a property reinsurance pricing specialist in the USA and has since gained international experience in a various positions in Switzerland and South Korea. His responsibilities for Swiss Re have included underwriting and accumulation control of natural catastrophe exposure, providing input into Swiss Re’s natural catastrophe risk assessment tools, consulting, training, portfolio steering and risk management of Swiss Re’s property and engineering treaty business. Before joining Swiss Re, Alok worked as an engineer at RMS Inc., a leading global provider of products, services, and expertise for the quantification and management of catastrophe risk.

Ralf Radermacher- Micro Insurance Academy

Before joining the MIA as the Director of Research and Training, Ralf worked at the University of Cologne where he was involved in teaching and research on cooperatives, where he is still affiliated as a research fellow. He coordinated the EU funded project "Strengthening Micro Health Insurance Units for the Poor in India" and undertook several consultancies for GTZ. Prior to this, Ralf worked with one of the largest German development NGOs (Deutsche Welthungerhilfe) and gained insight into work of further public (Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation & Development) as well as private (GFA Umwelt) players in the development domain. Ralf holds a postgraduate degree in economics from the University of Cologne and spent a term abroad at Birmingham University.

Anupama Raina- Bajaj Alliance

Anupama is the Head of Health Underwriting for Bajaj Allianz as well as the Chief Medical Officer. Has more than 13 years of clinical experience before joining Bajaj Allianz in September 2004. He also handles new product development in health insurance and is in charge of the Micro Health Insurance ventures for the company.