Insurance Risk & Capital Americas 2025

CRO panel – Strategic risk priorities in a shifting landscape

• Which key risks are top of mind?
• Rebuilding frameworks to address interconnected, macro driven risk
• Strengthening risk culture and engagement across the organisation
• Prioritizing agility and foresight in risk leadership
• Reputation, regulation and trust:
• Responding to shifting consumer behaviour and anti-insurer sentiment

Moderator:
Vinaya Sharma, Actuary and Managing Director, Quantitative Risk Management

Panellists:
Florian Richard, Chief Risk Officer, Axa XL
Julia Zhang, Chief Risk Officer, Equitable Holdings
Ophelia Engelhardt-Funke, Chief Risk Officer, Hannover Life Re

Panel discussion: CIOS in conversation: How to build resilient portfolios amidst an uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomic backdrop

• Which issues pose the greatest macroeconomic risk to your investment portfolio?
• Are investment opportunities improving, staying the same, or getting worse?
• Which asset classes are in favour? And are you planning to increase allocation to those? Conversely, which asset classes are coming out of favour?
• How are you thinking of liquidity, duration, equity and credit risk?
• Where are we in the credit cycle?
• What does AI mean for the investment function?
• What risk does it pose for certain asset classes and which sectors will be the winners and losers?
• Opportunities for alpha generation through AI-driven insights
• Future of investment decision-making under augmented intelligence

Moderator:
Bill Pauling, Director, Risk Solutions, Conning

Panellists:
Amit Agrawal, Chief Investment Officer, Axa XL
Peggy Huang, Group Chief Investment Officer, Ceres Life/ CC Capital
Lale Topcuoglu, Managing Director, Head Investment Strategy & Public Fixed Income, Swiss Re
Wen-Fu Wu, Deputy Chief Investment Officer and Head of Fixed Income, TIAA

Panel discussion: Navigating an era of defence foreign policy: Insurance Impacts

• Reacting to a trend of deglobalisation
• What deregulation, tariffs, and shifting policy mean for insurance and risk strategy
• Supply chain unravelling - building resilience, identifying vulnerabilities and opportunities
• Understanding liability exposures in a lighter-touch enforcement environment
• Scenario planning and modelling for political risk, war, and economic decoupling
• Evolving risk transfer needs in emerging markets

Moderator:
Ronan McCaughey, Commercial Editor and Deputy Editor, InsuranceERM

Panellists:
Thomas Holzheu, Chief Economist Americas, Deputy Head of Group Economic Research and Strategy, Swiss Re
Dave Snyder, Vice President, International Policy, American Property Casualty Insurance Association

Panel discussion: What is the next chapter for private market investments?

• Are private markets offering the stability that public markets no longer seem to enjoy?
• Innovation in private market structures
• Growth in secondaries, co-investing, and rated feeder funds
• Building vs. acquiring direct origination capabilities
• Tailoring structures to insurer-specific needs and constraints
• How is this space set to evolve over the next 5 years?
• Drivers behind appetite for more complex and nuanced exposure to private credit? Where are the risks and opportunities?
• How are market participants looking to differentiate themselves in sourcing and fundraising?
• How are insurers looking to add complexity into their privates portfolio?

Moderator:
Robert Leeming, News Editor, Insurance Asset Risk

Panellists:
Anisha Gangwani, Chief Investment Officer, Legal and General Retirement America
Sanjana Raturi, Head of Financial Risk, New York Life
Felix Lurye, Senior Managing Director, Head of ALM and Investment Strategy, Guardian

Panel discussion: Building and extending an appropriate and dynamic AI risk framework

• What are the main risks to the business from usage of AI?
• Establishing protocols for responsible AI integration into risk functions
• Clarifying ownership and accountability for AI oversight
• Understanding and accommodating for uniqueness in AI technology deployments
• Measuring return on AI investment and use-case success
• Balancing new risks against missing the new opportunities for growth and efficiency
• How can we test the efficacy of AI models?
• What level of regulatory oversight is appropriate?

Moderator:
Josh Geer, Staff Writer, InsuranceERM

Panellists:
Anita Afandy, Director – Fraud Risk and Model, AI Risk Management, Allstate
Anton Clennar, Managing Director and AI Lead EMEA, RNA Analytics
Liping Jiang, SVP, Enterprise Risk Management, Chubb
Paul Bianco, Chief Risk Officer, Aspen Insurance US

Panel discussion: The Real Estate market: Start of a new dawn?

• Is the real estate sector entering a new growth cycle?
• What does the expectation of fewer regulations mean for real estate investment opportunities?
• Key considerations in the asset selection process
• Emerging property types vs traditional sectors
• Diversification of assets - exploring opportunities in digital infrastructure and new energy infrastructure
• Persisting headwinds for the CRE market
• Risks and opportunities presented by the anticipated wall of liquidity

Moderator:
Josh Adcock, Staff Writer, Insurance Asset Risk

Panellists:
Chase Bolding, Managing Director, Invesco Real Estate
Ravi Anand, Portfolio Manager, Head of Private Real Estate Credit, Wellington Management
Sean Bannon, Managing Director, Head of US Real Estate, Zurich
Representative, Invesco

The challenge of insurance affordability and availability- where does the insurance industry have a role to play in bridging the protection gap?

• Are we heading for an uninsurable world?
• An affordability crisis driven by extreme weather and asset clustering
• Legal regulatory and inflationary pressures
• What additional challenges lie ahead?
• Addressing the increase of secondary perils
• Where does the solution lie?
• How can modelling become more relevant and evolve at a quick enough pace to effectively capture the risks from secondary perils?
• Public-private models and insurer roles in mitigation and education
• What reform and action is being taken by state regulators and how successful are these measures proving to be?
• Insuring the better risk – educating clients in loss preventative measures
• Use of parametric products and AI tools to create products to protect insureds
• Next steps

Moderator:
Ronan McCaughey, Commercial Editor and Deputy Editor, InsuranceERM

Panellists:
Reka Koerner, Chief Risk Officer Swiss Reinsurance America Corp. and Market Unit Risk Management Americas, SVP at Swiss Re
Robert Gordon, Senior Vice President of Policy, Research and International, American Property Casualty Insurance Association
Sheri Wilbanks, Head of Sustainability Metrics and Solutions GUO, Axa
Tony Cotto, Assistant Vice President and Counsel – Federal and Political Affairs, National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies

Panel discussion: Alternative assets: Balancing credit, liquidity and complexity risk

• Drawing a distinction between credit risk and illiquidity risk
• Where do the 2 intersect?
• Defining prudent illiquidity and credit exposure
• What is complexity risk? How can it be measured, managed and mitigated?
• What does it mean for portfolio strategy?
• Adjusting liquidity strategies to support portfolio goals

Moderator:
Josh Adcock, Staff Writer, Insurance Asset Risk

Panellists:
Bill Carton, Head of Investment Risk, Axa XL
Blake Witherington, Chief Credit Officer, Manulife
Xiaowei Han, Vice President, Head of ALM, TIAA

Panel discussion: Modernising operational resiliency frameworks - ensuring smooth operations in the face of disruption

• Defining resiliency risk
• Revising resiliency frameworks to address interconnectedness and systemic and vendor risks
• Identifying key strategic 3rd/4th party dependencies
• Governance and resource strategies for critical dependencies
• Promoting cross functional coordination and removing silos
• How do broader resiliency frameworks incorporate or align with cyber incident frameworks

Moderator:
Josh Geer, Staff Writer, InsuranceERM

Panellists:
Ari Moskowitz, Chief Risk & Reinsurance Officer, Selective Insurance
Brian Schneider, Chief Risk Officer and Treasurer, CNO Financial Group
Rachelle Flynn-Kasuba, Head of Business Risk & Resiliency, Guardian Life

Panel discussion: Reinsurance: investment, ALM and portfolio construction challenges in the underlying asset portfolios

• What operational structures and investment governance models are typically used in funded re deals?
• Liability constraints and asset flexibility - are duration or capital efficiency constraints limiting how much portfolios can be optimised?
• Life insurer expectations: What oversight, controls, and risk tolerances do ceding insurers demand—and are these guardrails becoming more defined?
• How are global regulators responding to the growth of funded re, particularly regarding transparency, cross-border risk transfer, and asset risk?
• Risks in outsourcing MA portfolios - For insurers with major buy-in/buy-out or annuity portfolios (e.g., in the UK or Asia), what are the risks in ceding liabilities and assets to a third-party funded reinsurer?
• ALM considerations for these types of deals between insurers and reinsurers.
• What volume of new, illiquid assets will be needed to sustain growth in the model? Are there still enough high-quality borrowers—beyond infrastructure, real estate, and aviation—to support the pipeline?
• What's next in funded re? How are investment strategies evolving to manage risk, generate alpha, and respond to capital and regulatory pressures?

Moderator:
Robert Leeming, News Editor, Insurance Asset Risk

Panellists:
Kamyar Moud, Head of Hedging Programs and Trading, Corebridge Financial
Peter McGloughlin, Chief Investment Officer, Canada Life Reinsurance
Anne Korenblit, SVP, Chief Counsel, Renaissance Re

Panel discussion: The next frontier of emerging risks - from longevity to legal shocks

• GLP-1 drugs and impacts on mortality/liability products
• Social inflation and the legal landscape
• Generative AI amplifying disinformation and liability
• How to model, monitor, and hedge complex latent risks

Moderator:
Ronan McCaughey, Commercial Editor and Deputy Editor, InsuranceERM

Panellists: 
Matthew Strulson, Vice President of Risk Insights, Enterprise Risk Management, Chubb
Steve Guijarro, Chief Risk Officer of US and Group Head of Exposure Management, Ascot Group
Ted Pine, Senior Business Development Manager, InsureAI, Munich Re

Panel discussion: Implications of enhanced regulatory oversight of investment risks

• How are insurers adapting to the new principles-based bond definition, particularly concerning asset-backed securities (ABS) and Issuer Credit Obligations (ICOs)?
• What challenges have arisen in reclassifying investments under this framework, and how is the NAIC addressing them?
• Anticipating impacts on insurers' capital requirements and investment strategies of revisions to the RBC framework?
• NAIC's approach to use of agency ratings, and way forward

Moderator:
Robert Leeming, News Editor, Insurance Asset Risk

Panellists:
Jon Godfread, Insurance Commissioner, North Dakota
Lauren Sarper, Vice President, U.S Financial and Macroprudential Policy Lead, Prudential Financial
William Moretti, Director, Fixed Income Portfolio Management, Equitable