Adrian Gore’s presentation entitled OPPORTUNITY, EXCELLENCE, LEADERSHIP on Wednesday, 20 October at 08:30 AM will address how global trends have the power to transform insurance markets and these have been accelerated by COVID-19. The blurring of boundaries between three big trends – the behavioural nature of risk, the acceleration of technology and the rising importance of purpose and social responsibility – creates a unique opportunity to transform insurance markets from transactional to shared value, and in the process enlarge and broaden the role, scope and impact of actuaries.
Adrian Gore founded Discovery in South Africa in 1992 – with a core purpose “to make people healthier and enhance, and protect their lives”. Discovery is now multinational and is renowned for Vitality, the largest global platform that creates behaviour change and financially integrates this behaviour into insurance and financial services pricing. This pioneering model of insurance – coined Vitality Shared Value – is transforming insurance markets and financial services globally and concurrently making a significant share of the global insured population healthier and extending life expectancy. Discovery listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1997 and has a market cap of $4 billion as at 30 June 2020.
Certain global trends have made the Vitality Shared-Value model even more relevant today than in 1992. Given these trends, Adrian through Discovery applied the model to its own companies in the United Kingdom and is now transforming the global market by embedding its model into the world’s largest insurers. This is achieved through an ecosystem of reward partners, technology assets, clinical capabilities, and actuarial data and structures, to help partners integrate behaviour change into products and pricing. The Global Vitality Network includes national insurance champions such as AIA, Generali, John Hancock, Manulife, Ping An Health, Sumitomo Life, IGI and Saludsa and Equivida – representing more than 30% of the global personal protection market, with over 20 million Vitality members, across 23 countries.
Ekhosuehi Iyahen is the Secretary General of the Insurance Development Forum (IDF), a Public-Private Partnership led by the insurance industry and supported by the World Bank and the United Nations, aiming to enhance the use of insurance to build greater resilience against disasters and to help achieve the United Nations Global 2030 Agenda.
Ekhosuehi has extensive experience working with Governments, international development agencies, private sector entities and academic institutions on public financial management and strengthening risk management and financing systems and the role of insurance.
She has been directly involved in establishing and operationalising a number of pioneering initiatives including regional risk pools in Africa (African Risk Capacity), the Caribbean (Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) and the structuring of a novel tripartite agreement between the IDF, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to increase insurance protection in 20 climate-exposed countries.
She is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government and was selected as a 2018 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Resident Practitioner Fellow.
She serves as an expert advisor to the Centre for Disaster Protection and is a member of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance Advisory Board. She is also a member of High-Level OECD Advisory Group on Loss and Damages from Climate Change and the UNFCCC Warsaw International Mechanism technical experts group on comprehensive risk management.
In 2021 she was appointed a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the former Statistician-General of South Africa, a position he held from 2000 up to 2017. He served in several global capacities such as co-chair of PARIS21 and Chair of the United Nations Statistics Commission, Chair of the Statistics Commission of Africa (StatCom Africa), Chair of the African Symposium for Statistical Development (ASSD), Vice President of the International Statistics Institute (ISI), and sponsor of the Young African Statistician (YAS) movement. In 2014 he was one of the twenty-five member panel on Data Revolution appointed by the UN Secretary General, and from 2015 to 2018 he was a member of the Independent Accountability Panel of the UN Secretary General for the health of women, children, and adolescents.
Dr Lehohla has been a forceful advocate for improving the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems in Africa. He has consulted extensively in in-conflict, out-of-conflict, and fragile states on matters statistics, which has seen him cover Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Cambodia to mention a few. His alma mater the University of Ghana recognised him in 2015 for his contribution to the development of statistics, Stellenbosch University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 2015, in 2018 the University of KwaZulu-Natal awarded him an Honorary Doctorate, and in 2020 the University of Zululand awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Science. He is a Professor of Practice in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Johannesburg and a Research Associate at Oxford University.
Isaah Mhlanga is the Chief Economist of Alexander Forbes. In this position he is responsible for formulating the macroeconomic strategy for the business, which entails identifying systemic economic risks and opportunities that benefit the business and its clients. He contributes to the Alexander Forbes investment process through generating the macro backdrop for asset allocation and the investment committee.
His qualifications include an MCom in Financial Economics, a BCom (Hons) in Econometrics, and a BCom in Economics and Econometrics, all from the University of Johannesburg.
Isaah has 12 years’ experience spanning both public sector and private sector. He started his professional career as an economist at the local office of the International Monetary Fund where he was involved in econometric modelling and monitoring of South African macroeconomic and financial indicators. He also worked at the National Treasury, Absa Capital, and Rand Merchant Bank before joining Alexander Forbes and has lectured undergraduate economics and econometrics at the University of Johannesburg.
Isaah is a Fellow of Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA) and a columnist for Business Day and Fin24. He was named Economist of the Year in 2019 by the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals (ABSIP).