Elayne Grace
CEO, Actuaries Institute

Elayne Grace is CEO of the Actuaries Institute. She was previously Deputy CEO and Head of Public Policy from 2013 – 2017, responsible for the development and implementation of the Institute’s public policy strategy. Elayne has 25 years’ international experience with leading consulting firms and major insurers. She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia and of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK) and has a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting and Finance. 

Margaret Cole was appointed as an APRA Member from 1 July 2021 for a five-year term.

Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Margaret graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in law, and spent more than 20 years in private legal practice specialising in commercial litigation with an emphasis on financial services.  She was formerly a partner at Stephenson Harwood and White & Case.

She joined the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2005 and rose to become Managing Director of Enforcement and Financial Crime and interim Managing Director of the Conduct Business Unit, as well as a board member of the FSA.

Prior to joining APRA, Margaret spent a year as PwC’s Global Regulatory Leader based in Melbourne.  Before that, she was PwC UK Chief Risk Officer and General Counsel from 2012 to 2020.

Margaret has also been an independent non-executive director of Toronto Dominion Bank Europe Limited, Chair of Toronto Dominion Securities Limited and a trustee and exco member of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.  She is an Honorary Fellow of her Cambridge College, Murray Edwards College (formerly New Hall).  She has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Law, London.

Sir Paul Collier CBE FBA
Professor of Economics & Public Policy

Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College. From 1998–2003 he took a five-year Public Service leave in which he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. He is now Director of the International Growth Centre.

As the co-founder and CEO of EG, Adam is the driving force behind the vision and strategic direction of the company. With a passion for team culture, Adam maintains an overall focus on guiding, leading and training the team.

Danny Gilbert AM
Managing Partner, Gilbert + Tobin  

Danny Gilbert AM is co-founder and Managing Partner of Gilbert + Tobin, which he co-founded with Tony Tobin in January 1988.  The firm is now one of Australia’s leading corporate law firms with over 90 partners, 430 lawyers and a total staff of 900 with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

In his role as co-founder and Managing Partner of Gilbert + Tobin, Danny has been the recipient of many awards over the past 20 years.  More recently he received the Australasian Law Award for Law Firm Leader of the year 2020, the Lawyers Weekly Australian Law Awards Managing Partner of the Year 2018 and the 2017 Financial Times Asia-Pacific Innovative Lawyers first ever Special Achievement Award for his extraordinary contribution to law and commitment to innovation.

Ilan Leas,
Managing Director, Retender

Ilan is an actuary and one of the founders of a start-up seeking to disrupt the wholesale insurance space. Prior to his current role, he was one of the founders of a new life reinsurer in Australia and has spent most of his career at some of the largest global financial services companies in Australia, the UK and South Africa. He is also the former chair of the Life Insurance and Wealth Management Practice Committee at the Actuaries Institute.

Ilan has a passion for encouraging others to step out of their comfort zones and have a go at following an entrepreneurial path.

Dr Simon Longstaff AO
Executive Director, The Ethics Centre

Simon Longstaff began his working life on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is proud of his kinship ties to the Anindilyakwa people. After a period studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, he pursued postgraduate studies as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Simon has been Executive Director of The Ethics Centre for 30 years. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.” Simon is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University, a Fellow of CPA Australia, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Risk Policy Institute.

Nghiep is the AIA General Manager of Data Analytics and Optimisation and has over 20 years of experience in a broad range of roles in the life insurance and energy industries. In life insurance, Nghiep’s experience has mainly focussed on data analytics, pricing and capital. He is responsible to take forward the data strategy at AIA and to drive better data driven outcomes for customers and AIA. He is a fellow of the Actuaries Institute of Australia.

Ian Macfarlane

In 1992 he was appointed Deputy Governor by the Keating Government, and in 1996, he was appointed Governor by the Howard Government. On taking up the position, he signed a memorandum of Agreement with Treasurer Peter Costello which introduced Australia's inflation-targeting monetary policy regime. The ten years during which Macfarlane was Governor was a period of good economic growth and low inflation. On Macfarlane's retirement in 2006, Treasurer Peter Costello, said: "Ian Macfarlane has been an exceptionally successful governor of the Reserve Bank... and when history of the last ten years is written, it will show as one of, if not the greatest periods of economic management in Australian history. Prime Minister John Howard wrote in his autobiography "Macfarlane was the stand-out economic official in the lifetime of my government. His advice and sense of balance was far superior to that of anybody else who provided economic advice to us".

After retiring from the RBA Macfarlane was appointed as a director of three public companies - Woolworths Limited (2007-2015), Leighton Holdings (2007-2013) and ANZ Bank (2007-2016). He was also on the International Advisory Boards of Goldman Sachs (2007-2016) and the China Banking Regulatory Commission (2011-2014). He continued to be a director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy (2004-2017).

Andrew Matthews
Principal, Finity Consulting

Andrew is a principal of Finity Consulting and is an actuary with a passion for Organizational Development. He works with a range of insurers informing sound financial decisions, exploring growth possibilities and ensuring compliance with prudential requirements. In addition to commercial experience he is an Associate Professor at Monash Business School and a Board Director at The Stroke Foundation. He is passionate about health and education. 

Andrew works with leaders and their teams to apply analytics and build capabilities to put a shared vision into action.

Alison Pennington

Alison is the Senior Economist at the Centre for Future Work, associated with The Australia Institute. She conducts research on economic issues facing working people including the future of jobs, skills and training, collective bargaining, and the role of government.  Alison is a regular national media commentator on TV and radio, with writing published on platforms including The Guardian and The New Daily. Alison has held previous roles in public finance, public sector unions, and music teaching.

Craig is the Institute’s Chair of the Data Analytics Practice Committee and is Head of Data Science & AI CoE at Suncorp. He is a qualified actuary with over 20 years’ experience in Financial Services. Prior to his current role he led the technical pricing team for Suncorp Insurance’s mass market portfolio which includes consumer brands such as AAMI, GIO, Suncorp & Apia. In his current role he has a particular interest in the application of Data Science and AI capabilities within the Insurance and Banking sector to improve the value that customers get out of their interactions with the organisation. His team also focusses on the use of these technologies to drive intelligent automation and the decision support of core operational processes. He sees great potential for data to help organisations do well while also doing good.

Elise Sharpley
Partner, Deloitte Consulting

Elise leads Deloitte’s national Workforce Strategy, Planning and Analytics practice and helps organisations plan for and build their future workforce. Elise has deep technical expertise in workforce transformation and planning, analytics, talent management, leadership and diversity and inclusion practices. She has worked with some of the world’s largest global brands to redefine work models, capability shifts and integrated planning approaches.

Brett Ward
Group Chief Actuary, IAG

Brett is currently the Group Chief Actuary of IAG.  Brett has spent his entire 30 plus working years as a general insurance actuary.  From 1990 to 2000, Brett worked with actuarial consultancies including MIRA Consultants and KPMG Actuaries focusing on liability valuations, specialising in workers compensation.  In 2000 he started his corporate career as the Chief Actuary at Royal & Sun Alliance, where he had responsibility for actuarial services in Australia and South-East Asian countries.  Brett was the Chief General Insurance Actuary for Promina before joining IAG in 2007.  At IAG, Brett has held a variety of roles across pricing, risk and technology and Group strategy.  Brett is the Chair of the General Insurance Education Faculty with the Actuaries Institute.

David’s current position is Chief Risk Officer, Advice & Insurance at CBA.  He has had more than 30 years of experience in the insurance industry in a variety of business and actuarial roles.  His career has spanned general and life insurance, three different multinational insurers and three consulting firms, encompassing roles in reserving, pricing, underwriting, risk management and general management. David was previously Chief Reserving Actuary for Zurich’s Asia-Pacific general insurance businesses, spanning nine countries, from 2013 until October 2018.  Prior to that he was a Partner at KPMG, and before that he headed up Product Management and Pricing at Allianz Australia for five years.

Danielle Wood,
CEO, Grattan Institute

Danielle Wood is the CEO of Grattan Institute and also leads Grattan’s Budgets and Government Program. She has published extensively on economic reform priorities, budgets, tax reform, generational inequality, and reforming political institutions.

Danielle previously worked at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, NERA Economic Consulting, and the Productivity Commission. She holds an Honours degree in Economics from the University of Adelaide and two Masters degrees, one in Economics and one in Competition Law, from the University of Melbourne.

Danielle is the President of the Economic Society of Australia and was the co-founder and first Chair of the Women in Economics Network.

She is a member of the Parliamentary Budget Office Expert Advisory Committee, the Commonwealth Bank CEO Advisory Council, and the PWC Future of Work Committee.

Alan Kohler AM
Expert, Financial Journalist and Speaker

Alan Kohler has been a financial journalist for 52 years, starting as a cadet on The Australian in 1970. He became Chanticleer columnist for the Australian Financial Review in 1979 and was appointed editor of that newspaper in 1985. He returned to writing the Chanticleer column in 1988 and after a brief period as strategist for stockbroker, James Capel Australia, he was appointed editor of The Age in 1992.

In 1995 he joined the ABC’s 7.30 Report as its economics and business correspondent, while also writing commentary and features for Fairfax newspapers, The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Financial Review. In 2002 he moved from the 7.30 Report to presenting finance on ABC News.

In 2005 Alan Kohler created Eureka Report, a subscription newsletter for investors, and in 2007 added Business Spectator, a free online financial publication. These were sold to News Corporation in 2012 and Alan began writing columns for The Australian, as well as continuing to contribute finance reports to ABC News.

In 2016 Alan launched a new subscription newsletter for investors, called The Constant Investor, which was sold in 2018 to Investsmart Group, which had bought Eureka Report from News Corp.

Alan is now editor in chief of Eureka Report, finance presenter on ABC News and columnist for The New Daily.

Mark Samuels

Mark is the Vice President for the Young Actuaries Advisory Board and is a consulting actuary at Mercer who joined in 2018 following his move from Scotland to Australia in 2016. He advises trustees and sponsoring employers on their defined benefit and accumulation superannuation plans and provide strategic advice relating to member outcomes and retirement income covenant requirements. He graduated from Heriot Watt University in Scotland and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in Australia and the UK. Outside of work Mark is a keen runner and hopes to run a marathon on every continent of the world. 

Ayeeda is a qualified actuary currently working in the AASB17 team at BT. She has previously worked in consulting and regulatory roles at EY and ASIC. Ayeeda is part of the Best Interest Duty, and TPD and Trauma working groups for the Disability Insurance Taskforce. She is also an admitted lawyer to the Supreme Court of NSW.

Adam Butt

Associate Professor Adam Butt is the Head of Actuarial Studies and the Nominated Accreditation Actuary at the Australian National University (ANU).  He has over 17 years of experience in teaching actuarial studies and completed his PhD at ANU in 2011.  Adam has also developed a Massive Open Online Course for the edX platform titled "An Introduction to Actuarial Science".

Harrison Gee

Harrison is an Actuarial Consultant at The Heron Partnership, a boutique consulting firm specialising in Superannuation and Group Life Insurance.  Recently qualified as an Associate Actuary, Harrison enjoys aesthetic spreadsheets, good bargains and daily step counts. Harrison is currently a member of the Young Actuaries Advisory Board and the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, and previously lead the Young Actuaries Program Victoria in 2021.

Professor Roseanne Harris
BScHons FIA CFP® FASSA

Roseanne is Health Policy Actuary with Discovery Health and an adjunct professor in the School of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of the Witwatersrand. Roseanne has over 27 years of experience in the South African health care and employee benefits field.  Her current role involves industry engagement at a high level including with regulators, government, civil associations, industry bodies and supranationals.  She has participated in the Nedlac engagements on National Health Insurance (NHI) as well as presenting evidence and analysis to the Health Market Inquiry (HMI) of the Competition Commission.  She has been a member of the B4SA funding workstream working on the vaccine roll out programme since the beginning of 2021 and a member of the Covid-19 working group of the Actuarial Society of South Africa.

Roseanne served as the President of the Actuarial Society of South Africa for 2016-7 and was previously chair of the healthcare committee and NHI task team.  Roseanne is currently president of the International Actuarial Association for 2022.

Margarita Psaras

Margarita is a final year Bachelor of Actuarial Studies student at UNSW, where she is also part of the co-op program. She is currently an actuarial intern at icare NSW, and a Women in Business Ambassador for women in STEM disciplines at UNSW. 

Guy is the Australian Government Actuary (AGA), the Reviewing Actuary to the NDIS, the Reviewing Actuary to the newly established Cyclone Reinsurance Pool, and is a Board member of the Tuition Protection Schemes for international and domestic students. He is also a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Demographic Statistics Expert Advisory Group.

The AGA provides independent actuarial and policy advice across a wide range of matters to the Australian Government, its departments and agencies.  Subject areas include superannuation, retirement incomes, military compensation, insurance, reinsurance, education funding (income contingent loans) and social security. The AGA also publishes the Australian Life Tables every five years.

Guy’s appointment to the role of the Australian Government Actuary followed a career in the private sector, which included working in insurance, superannuation, retirement incomes and energy sectors. He has been an appointed actuary under the Life Insurance Act.

Douglas initially joined Platinum in May 2003 as an investment analyst covering industrials and as primary communicator for advisor presentations. He previously worked for CBA as a product actuary and prior to this as an investment manager for Aegon Asset Management in the UK. Douglas left Platinum in October 2008 to work in Singapore where he helped develop Standard Chartered Bank’s equities broking business.

Douglas rejoined Platinum in February 2013, as Investment Specialist, acting as an intermediary between the investment team and Australia/NZ based advisers. Over time he built a team to support this effort, and since 2017 he has, in addition, been introducing Platinum to US-based investors. Douglas was appointed as Head of Investment in March 2022 and is responsible for the investment team’s process and people. He has been a member of the firm’s Management Committee since 2013.