Broker Extra Speakers

Hailing from Sweden, Ida worked as a news reporter and sub-editor at a regional newspaper before making the decision to move to England in September 2013.

She undertook a year-long master of arts in international journalism at City University London and joined Insurance Age as a reporter in October 2014.

She was recognised by the British Insurance Brokers' Association in its 2015 awards ceremony scooping highly commended in the newcomer to insurance journalism category.

Siân has been writing about the insurance sector since 2014 and is currently editor of Insurance Age.

@InsuranceSian

Post and Insurance Age content director Jonathan Swift has written and commented about the insurance industry since 1998. He has appeared on television speaking about topics as diverse as the insurance implications of Michael Jackson's death to the consequences of consolidation on motor premiums; and is a past winner of the British Insurance Brokers' Association journalist of the year and Association of British Insurers general insurance trade journalist prizes.
Jonathan has chaired/ hosted over 100 insurance events from roundtables involving a small specially invited audience, to addressing over 2000 people at the British Insurance Awards at the Royal Albert Hall. He is listed as a top 50 insurtech influencer by Insurtech News and presently coordinates the All Party Parliamentary Group for Insurance and Financial Services.

After gaining a Management Science degree at Warwick University Business School, Phil worked in the Motor industry with the AA, before moving to the outsourcing sector with Motability Financial Operations. Phil joined Aviva in 2002 initially as Partnerships Director looking after our strategic relationship with Santander.

In the last 18 years Phil has undertaken a number of trading and distribution roles in the broker and partnerships channel. In April 2013 he was appointed into the role of Intermediary and Partnerships Director, leading the trading, sales and branch network across the UK. Phil was appointed as Intermediaries MD in May 2017 with responsibility for sales and distribution across Aviva’s Broker & GI Partner business. In September 2019, Phil was appointed Chief Distribution Officer with additional responsibility for sales and distribution for Aviva’s Bancassurance relationships.

Phil is a member of the General Insurance Council Management Committee of the Association of British Insurers and was recently appointed as Chairman of NEOS.

Phil lives on the South coast and is married with 4 children.

Mark is a freelance PR consultant with more than 25 years' experience in the insurance industry.  In the early part of his career he was a regular on television and radio talking about a wide range of insurance topics.  More recently he has been at the forefront of advising on a range of sensitive issues including the use of private investigators in the claims process, the terrorist attacks in London and the Grenfell Tower disaster.

His favourite saying is: "In the end an organisation gets the reputation it deserves". 

Sharon is an organizational leader, with a proven track record of delivering transformational yet sustainable commercial results. Her breadth of experience in successfully harnessing cultural change, strategy and proposition development, and complex technology innovation have been honed over 30 years in the UK Financial Services industry - including retail banking, mortgage lending, commercial and consumer finance.

Sharon is the CEO of the Premium Finance business within Close Brothers Group plc, an FTSE 250 company. This position reflects a 15-year journey across a variety of businesses and roles within the Group

Branko’s insurance career started in Luton in 1987 and has worked across the sector since then and has had it easy for the last 16 years being self employed.  He has a quirky (odd) presentation style and has been told on many occasions that he is the only person in the world who can make compliance sound interesting (not that hard is it!!??).  He has spoken at virtually all the CII’s local institute dinners (was 12 stone when he started) and has never used the same joke on more than 100 occasions.

Branko was Thomson Reuters Compliance Personality of the Year 2012 and in 2017 received the London Market Outstanding Contribution to Legal and Compliance Award.  He also is a proud recipient of the CII’s Bridgewater Award which is the highest award a member can receive for exceptional service.

He joined the Luton & St Albans CII council in 1991 and has never left and has been president on three occasions and just loved being dinner secretary.  He is now Regional Forum Rep.

He was Vice-President of the CII from 2008 to 2014 and became a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Insurers and a Freeman of the City of London in 2002.

With over 40 years of experience in the insurance industry, Mark has been a jack of all trades, a Lloyds Underwriter, Lloyds Broker, general Insurance Broker, the list is endless.

Mark has been the entrepreneur setting up and selling a number of highly successful insurance businesses and is the founder of Be Wiser Insurance, the leading independent insurance brand.

Matt was appointed Director of General Insurance and Conduct Specialists in January 2020 following four years as Head of the CEO’s office at the FCA. Prior to that, Matt worked at the Bank of England for 15 years, most recently in Supervision at the PRA. He also worked on the Bank’s response to the financial crisis and the transition from the FSA to the FCA and PRA. 

As CEO of Atlanta Group, Ian leads a 2,000 people strong digital business that arranges two million policies on behalf of its customers.
Atlanta proudly houses several leading customer facing brands including Swinton, Carole Nash and Autonet. 

Ian co-founded Autonet aged 24 and led the business through a defining period of organic growth and throughout its becoming part of the Ardonagh Group in 2017.  A former semi-professional football player, Ian continues to coach youth football at Kidsgrove Athletic FC.

Ian was named Broker Personality of the Year at the UK Broker Awards in September 2019.

Lee Elgie joined Erimus Insurance Brokers on the 1st January 2020 in a specifically created role as Operations Director and his mandate is to take full responsibility for all aspects of the business, including Broking, Technical & Compliance, Finance, Claims, Sales and Marketing and to report directly to the Main Board.

Lee is ACII qualified and has worked in the Insurance Industry for almost 20 years. Experience gained includes overall responsibility for a Group of Businesses Compliance and Operations functions, management of teams and servicing of large UK/Global insurance programmes.

Erimus Bio

Erimus are one of the largest independent insurance brokers headquartered in North East England. We are also a top 100 UK independent insurance broker, specialising in the arrangement of business insurance. We have grown our business on Teesside since 1986 and our ethos of providing competitive premiums and great service ensures that the business continues to expand.

Our client base ranges from owner managed SMEs to £200m + turnover companies. We endeavour to work with our clients creating high level, service driven, long term relationships.

Bio to come shortly ....

Sara Fardon is the Managing Director of Willis Towers Watson Networks, a position she has held since 2011. Sara has had a distinguished career in insurance working within household names, before joining Willis Towers Watson. Sara then took the helm at their Network division as it was starting out and has guided it to deliver over £400 million GWP into the markets.

Sara invests in the future: she ensured Networks was the first Network to achieve Chartered Status and proudly continue to hold this recognition. As Network celebrated 20 years of delivering to its Network Members, Sara has embraced the digital future pushing Networks to the forefront of this opportunity.

She is keen to ensure her Network delivers solutions for the independent insurance broker of tomorrow and deploys the resources of Willis Towers Watson to back her Network.

In addition to her all-encompassing role within the Network Sara is a member of the BIBA Networks and MGA Advisory committee, and a very active member of the Worshipful Company of Insurers.

Away from work Sara is a very active volunteer in her local community and relaxes at her allotment turning new season produce into delicious dishes.

Jonathan Guard has been with LexisNexis Risk Solutions for over eight years. He works with the commercial markets across the UK and Ireland to provide support for LexisNexis commercial insurance products and solutions.

Prior to LexisNexis® Jonathan worked at Avego, a start-up focused on innovative car ride sharing technology. He has also worked with Mapflow, Ericsson and the CSA Group in sales and business development roles. Jonathan has an MBA from University College Dublin, an MPhil in Geology from Cardiff University, and has worked in several fields including tin mining, gold exploration and telecommunications.

Bio to come shortly.  In the meantime, please see the speaker's LinkedIn profile here.

Rahma is the Director of Engineering for the Restaurants group at Deliveroo. She focuses on helping Deliveroo become the preferred partner for its restaurants and driving growth and profitability for them.

Prior to this, Rahma was a senior engineering leader at Wealthfront where she led the financial services area that focussed on building products in the financial advisory space like the 529 College Savings Plan as well as the Portfolio Line of Credit. 

Steve has more than 35 years’ experience in Financial Services and is a Chartered Insurance Practitioner. Much of his early career was spent working in various roles in AXA Group, latterly as Head of Bancassurance. Steve joined the CII in 2006 with a brief to lead its corporate and market relationships. He was instrumental in building the CII’s international presence and working with employers, local regulators, and training providers, and more recently, played a key role in the review of Corporate Chartered Status. Steve now has responsibility for CII’s UK Commercial activity and sits on the Confederation of British Industry’s London Regional Council

With several decades of experience working within independent, corporate and public sector environments at executive level, I specialise in Marketing, Operations, Licensing, Logistics and System Implementation. With significant senior management roles within Luminar Leisure Plc, The Drinks Group and the University of East Anglia and now as the Chief Executive of the Night Time Industries Association have been exposed to a considerable range of businesses within the night time economy business sector.

I have been involved within many high level initiatives both within local and national government, alongside key stakeholders. Many of my roles within this industry have involved the facilitation of best practise for independants and multi site operators of venues, bars and pubs, with more recent experiences working very closely with festivals and live venues in shaping operational efficiencies and best practise on a regional level in conjunction with the Police and Local Authorities.

Within my role as Commercial Director at the University of East Anglia I was seconded to the Central Office of National Union of Students (NUS) where I was responsible for the restructuring of their Procurement Strategy for all licensed premises for their University retail sites across the country.

I have been responsible for several multi business procurement contracts with international retail suppliers which have generated circa £50M plus in listing merchandise and retrospective agreements.  I have also been fundamental to the roll out of a national music event strategy for the largest late night entertainment multi venue operator in Europe. 

I have worked closely with a considerable number of artists and music brands in developing bespoke shows for both stand alone events and larger scale festivals across the UK and still maintain a strong relationship and excellent reputation within the industry as an operator, promoter and procurement specialist.

I’m a Chartered insurance broker, working as a Commercial Account Executive for Hayes Parsons. My current role involves business development and account management, predominantly specialising in the Tech and Life Science sectors. I also oversee our training and apprenticeship schemes. I initially joined Hayes Parsons as an apprentice, and have worked up through the business via a range of roles whilst navigating through the CII qualifications, very recently submitting my Fellowship application.

I’d definitely say that I have a vested interest in the industry bringing through the next generation of talent. It has its challenges, but being an attractive proposition for graduates/school leavers and providing a clear pathway is really important to our future, and that’s something I’m enjoying tackling at Hayes Parsons. Clearly how we embrace technology against the backdrop of emerging threats such as Amazon is also pivotal too, and another area of keen interest. Away from work I have the usual interests of travelling, music/festivals and football, supporting Bristol City which feels like a curse most of the time!

Taking on the role of Head of Development within the Real Estate practice at Gallagher in January 2020, Dominic joined an almost 50 strong team of Real Estate and Transactional Risks specialists. Alongside this role, Dominic is heavily involved in co-managing the relationship between Gallagher and the Structural Timber Association (STA), having first engaged with the STA 4 years ago - aiming to improve lines of communication between the industries, and attempting to de-bunk certain myths around the risks that timber frame developments pose.

Prior to his current role, Dominic spent 4 years working within the closely-aligned Construction division at Gallagher, combining both client account management with development. During this period, his focus was steered towards Owner Controlled Insurance Programmes (OCIPs) and the associated risks. Before Gallagher, Dominic started his career with Zurich, first as a graduate, and then spending 2 years as an Underwriter in the London Market. 

Brendan has worked in the insurance industry for over thirty years; running large insurance companies and start up’s in both personal and commercial business lines. His previous role was CEO of AXA Insurance.  He was also founding CEO of Flood Re, between 2014-2017, overseeing the creation of one of the industry’s most enduring recent success stories. 

Brendan is a qualified accountant with previous roles that include President, Willis UK at Willis and Associate Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1996 to 2002.

Brendan is married with three children and is a keen Liverpool FC supporter.

Martyn Mathews serves as Senior Director, Motor Insurance, LexisNexis Risk Solutions UK&I. Martyn Mathews joined LexisNexis Risk Solutions in October 2016 through the acquisition of Insurance Initiatives Limited (IIL), and is currently tasked with developing and executing the sales, alliances and customer delivery strategy. Prior to LexisNexis, he worked for Experian for 14 years in a variety of roles, most recently as Head of Vertical for Insurance, Life, Pensions & Investments. Mathews also spent time with Vodafone Corporate and the logistics company TNT Mail.

Bio to come shortly.  In the meantime, please see the speaker's LinkedIn profile here.

Ed is Head of Analytics for Aon’s UK Reinsurance business.  Ed has 13 years’ experience in London Market catastrophe management, having spent 11 years at Aon.  Ed leads a team of modelling experts across a range of reinsurance classes.  

More recently, Ed has been coordinating Aon Reinsurance Solutions approach to climate change, having led several client engagements on the topic.  He is particularly interested in the changing nature of physical risks associated with anthropogenic climate change and how to help clients manage these changes through the conditioning of catastrophe models.

Ant Middle has been Chief Executive Officer of Ageas UK and a member of the international Ageas Group Management Committee since June 2020.

Since joining Ageas in 2014, Ant has played an instrumental role in further strengthening Ageas’s relationships with brokers and partners, as well as building its profile with customers through his position as Managing Director of Partnerships and, more recently, Chief Customer Officer.

Ant has more than 25 years’ experience in the insurance industry and has held a number of senior positions in the general, health and life insurance sectors.

Deputy CEO of a niche scheme broker who commenced her career in the early 90’s. Obtaining her fellowship in 2010. Winner of the Women in Insurance Awards Insurance Broker of the Year 2019. Suzy started her career in a high street broker working across all size broking houses. In her current position she controls over £40m GWP with a high profit margin. This is a dynamic niche scheme business with over 80% DA business, this continues to grow organically year on year. The team are actively pursuing acquisitions in sectors that fit the business vision.

• ACII / Chartered
• Over 30 years industry experience including over 10 years working for major insurers
• Director of Sutton Winson since 1999 with day to day responsibility for the management of major clients relationships
• Board member of the AESIS international broker network
• Away from insurance, I support of Brighton & Hove Albion FC, I’m a keen golfer and I’ve very recently celebrated my 25^th wedding anniversary

Why are you involved in iCAN?: I am involved in iCAN to help tackle the lack of representation of leaders from culturally diverse backgrounds, lack of multicultural specific Employee Resource Groups (ERG’s) and lack of role models from a multicultural background. Also to work with mentors and interract with like minded individuals who see the benefit of a diverse and inclusive industry.

John Oughton, Head of UK Professional Services, is responsible for the overall definition and delivery of professional services in the UK. With over 30 years of industry experience, John is an industry expert and focuses on delivering operational improvement through transformation. Previously, John served as the Client Implementation Director at CDL where he transformed software presentations to a new commercialised model, and analysed business functions to identify operational improvement. Prior to CDL, John has worked as Operations Director for Markerstudy Retail, and as a Director for Thames City Insurance.

Howard is a broker though and through – most recently as a founder of Innovation Broking – a 2015 start -up which has grown organically to £12m GWP this year, likely to nudge Innovation into the top 100. 

Howard has held almost every role in a broker from office junior in a London West End broker, to being MD at Miller (UK) and Giles, and CEO at OAMPS, then a top 50 broker. Along the way he has collected an FCII, worked as a Lloyd’s broker, picked up business qualifications from Cranfield, been a Director at BIBA, and sat on several international broking group and technical boards. This vast experience gives Howard great ability to support and nurture new talent coming through the business

Howard cites the two most enjoyable parts of his career being founding and building Miller’s biotech practice, which in the early 2000s held 65% UK Biotech market share, and the last 5 years at Innovation, returning to his true passion of building a broker by winning and retaining great clients. Howard considers himself privileged to be able to name several of the UK’s fastest growing businesses, and best-known charities, as current clients. Howard still very much gets the buzz from the insurance industry and there is not a great deal Howard has not seen both technically or tactically over the years.   

John Pennick is a Director of Insurance brokers Berkeley Insurance Group.

He has over 30 years’ experience of advising organisations on how to manage and insure the risks they face. In recent years, this expertise has centred on the rapidly-developing area of cyber risk and the specialised area of insurance that has emerged in response.

John’s multi-faceted work on Cyber insurance and risk management led to Berkeley Insurance Group being awarded Cyber Broker of the Year by Insurance Age in 2019.

As a regular speaker and panellist at Cyber conferences and business networking events, John has worked with CBI, Willis Towers Watson Network and various insurance publications amongst others.

He is also chairman of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association’s Cyber Focus Group. In addition to representing the interests of the UK’s insurance brokers, this committee has been working with government departments and other interested parties to raise awareness of cyber risks and insurance.

Lisa Powis has worked prominently in the Insurance Industry for over 30 years winning many Industry awards. She is known for the role of founder and CEO of the Fresh Insurance Group, a multi-niched Personal Lines Brokerage with over 80,000 policyholders, writing over £60 million Gross Written Premium. After sixteen years of impressive trading, Lisa sold Fresh to the Vantage Group in May 2018. 

Lisa  maintains an active interest in InsureTech, disruptive technologies and sits on a two advisory boards, Iotatech and PremFina. She is also part of Scale Up Group UK, helping grow global champions and has recently mentored Technology organisations with the Accelerator Academy.

In 2016, Lisa founded the charity ‘Painting Our World in Silver, dedicated to fight loneliness in the elderly population

Sean Rowley leads insurance product development at Collective Benefits. Sean is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries with over 25 years’ experience in the insurance industry. He has performed a number of senior financial, commercial and strategic roles for major companies such as Old Mutual, ReMark, SCOR and Gen Re, in a range of markets across the globe. Most recently he has been heavily involved in the insurtech sector, focusing on supporting insurers to integrate new tech/data offerings into their customer propositions, with a view to improving marketability and deriving operating efficiencies.

Claire has had a corporate career spanning 20 years, having managed and directed businesses in the financial services sector since she was just 20 years old.

This has given her a very broad business knowledge and a great deal of experience in facing and overcoming the challenges that all business owners face at some time in their business careers. Latterly, since selling her Insurance business, she has worked in a consultancy capacity as a strategic development director, helping businesses to look at all areas of development of their business.

Claire started to use some of her time to help others as a volunteer with Samaritans, after experiencing a difficult period in her life. She realised that she wanted to use her skills and experiential knowledge to help other people facing difficult times; and in particular, mental health issues. This led her to undergo various additional training programs via Samaritans, Mental Health First Aid England and as a Coach; to begin volunteering and working privately with people; and to start speaking candidly about issues relating to mental health and suicide.

In March 2018 Claire experienced a double tragedy- the loss of her partner due to suicide and shortly after the loss of their unborn child. Experiencing loss like this has made Claire all the more determined to take her experience, training and knowledge and help as many people as possible. Her vision is to lead a global shift in attitudes towards mental  health and suicide.

In the last few years, having become increasingly concerned by the growing epidemic of mental health problems, she has become passionate about helping to effect change by educating people, by breaking down taboos and opening up the conversation about mental health.

Claire leads our program development, delivers training and coaching; and is a prolific speaker. She continues to be a committed volunteer, giving much of her time to her local Samaritans branch.

As well as being a listening volunteer with The Samaritans, Claire is also qualified as a Mental Health First Aider and CLARITY Practitioner

Dean Sobers is a senior writer and researcher at Which?, who writes about insurance for a consumer audience. His investigations and advice features have won awards from Headlinemoney, BIBA and Willis Towers Watson.

Mark Shepherd is Assistant Director, Head of General Insurance within the Policy Directorate. Mark leads the UK insurance industry's policy on a range of cross-cutting General Insurance issues, responsible for all matters affecting General Insurance reputation, civil justice reforms, motor insurance, property insurance, cyber insurance, travel insurance, trade credit insurance and the ABI's work with the Lloyd's / London markets.

Mark has been instrumental in some major projects for the industry in recent years, including helping lead the development of Flood Re from concept to reality and managing the industry's co-ordinated response to major incidents such as severe floods, storms or riots. He has also led the ABI’s recent work on the Personal Injury Discount Rate, whiplash reforms, the post-Grenfell case for improved fire safety regulation and various industry-led initiatives to improve reputation, including around vulnerable customers and renewal pricing.

Johnny Timpson is Scottish Widows’ financial resilience and protection specialist, he has over 40 years’ experience across a variety of individual and group protection technical roles and distribution models.

He is currently the DWP Disability Champion for the Insurance Industry and Profession, Chairs the Access to Insurance Working Group and is a member of the Money & Pension Service FinTech and Mental Health Advisory Group. He is also a member of the CII’s Insuring Women’s Futures Programme Expert Advisor Panel and London Insurance Institute Inclusion and Diversity Committee. In addition, Johnny is a member of the Resilience Task Force chaired by Baroness Drake and also the Income Protection Task Force where he sits on both it’s Welfare and Building Resilient Households Working Groups. 

Johnny is a former chair of TISA’s Consumer Protection Policy Council and member of the ABI Protection Committee plus until its close, he was a member of the Seven Families Project team where he lead its corporate relationship work stream.

Highly regarded in the industry, Paul started his career with National Mutual Insurance Company of Australia, Paul joined Close Brothers in 2010 having previously held senior sales positions at HSBC for nine years and Citibank for 11 years. With many years’ experience in the Financial Services industry, he now heads up the Sales Team responsible for building and developing relationships with our brokers. When not working, he can be found playing golf, supporting West Ham and spending time with his wife and family.

Steve joined Close Brothers in 2017 and is responsible for driving the commercial strategy of premium finance. Having worked within the industry for over 15 years he provides a vast amount of industry knowledge and experience. A Physics graduate from the University of Manchester, he started his career at RSA, prior to being a consultant for a general insurance solution provider, giving him a strong background in both Insurance and IT. Steve is married with three daughters and enjoys a range of active pursuits including running and skiing.

Bio to come shortly ...

Phil has been part of the management team at Simply Business for 6 years where he has looked after pricing, strategy and operations prior to taking his current role as Managing Director MGA.  Before joining Simply Business Phil spent 10 years in roles throughout the insurance value chain, latterly as Commercial Director at Capita Insurance Services.

Phil is a Chartered Insurance Underwriting Agent, holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Bath.  He's a passionate supporter of Arsenal football club and lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and two sons.

Rob joined Marsh as Director of Service Operations in January 2020, following a long career with Aviva where he held a number of senior roles across Operations and Transformation. He has extensive experience working with operational teams internationally, and spent the final 3 years of his career with Aviva based in Paris, leading the operational transformation of its French business and establishing an Automation Centre of Excellence. In his role at Marsh, he has responsibility for over 1200 colleagues across the UK & India covering invoicing, claims & fiduciary operations.

Matt's been building By Miles since the start, joining the team pre-launch back in 2017. He has 20 years insurance experience across both personal & commercial motor, and is the former Head of Pricing at LV= and ERS. Knowing the way car insurance has worked for the last few decades, he's passionate about finding ways to make it fairer.