Details
The UZH Blockchain Center invites you to the first event in the new series in which leading practitioners in the area of Blockchain are invited to share their expertise.
Title:
Platform Led Transformation of Insurance Industry:
Leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology
Keynote Speakers:
Antony Elliott, Chairman of the Board of Directors B3i
Alessandro Spadoni, Chief Architect B3i
Abstract:
New technologies can give end consumers of insurance better and faster access to insurance, by developing standards, protocols and network infrastructure to remove friction in risk transfer. The talk will address the vision, first successes and experiences of driving a transformation across the insurance industry leveraging cutting edge Distributed Ledger Technology.
B3i is an ‘Industry Start Up’ incorporated in Zürich in 2018 and owned by 20 of the world largest Insurers and Reinsurers covering the length and breadth of the globe.
Time
Tuesday, 27. October 2020
17:30-19:00
Online via Zoom
Zoom link will be sent to the registered participants
Speakers
Antony Elliott
Antony Elliott is Group Head of Business Transformation at Zurich Insurance Company in Switzerland. Antony stands for delivering customer centric, efficient and effective solutions and propositions for retail and commercial insurance customers. He believes that as Peter Drucker said ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’, and that in the insurance industry we need to embrace a ‘lean start up’ like innovative culture to drive meaningful transformation across the industry.
In his role at Zurich Antony is responsible for delivery of large programs, Enterprise Architecture, as well as Human Centered Design and Agile.
Antony also serves as the Chairman of the Board of B3i Services AG which was formed in 2018 and is 100% owned by 20 insurance market participants around the world. B3i’s vision is to see the insurance market deliver better solutions for end consumers through faster access to insurance with less administrative cost building applications leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology.
He has worked in the insurance industry since 1999 and for Zurich since 2005. Antony has played a variety of roles within operations including program management, enterprise architecture and innovation involving projects in Latin America, the Middle East and Europe. Antony has a BSc in Economics from the University of York and is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Alessandro Spadoni
Alessandro Spadoni has decades of software engineering and business experience in Insurance, Automotive, Telecoms, Aerospace and Engineering sectors and has been part of the Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative (B3i) since its inception as a round-table discussion in 2016 and a founding partner of the resulting consortium, representing Zurich Insurance at that time. Since then he has have become a full-time employee in the leadership team of B3i Services, as Chief Architect, conceiving the Fluidity Platform (based on R3 Corda), Network & Ecosystem strategy and leading the architecture function.
Alessandro is also a director on the Corda Network Foundation board.
Dr. Monica Mächler
Monica Mächler has substantial legal, regulatory and governance expertise in a national and international context. She served as vice-chair of the board of directors of the integrated Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) from 2009 to 2012, after having been the director of the Swiss Federal Office of Private Insurance from 2007 to 2008. From 2010 to 2012, Ms. Mächler chaired the Technical Committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS). She assumed the roles of Group General Counsel and Head of the Board Secretariat of Zurich Insurance Group from 1999 to 2006 and was appointed a member of the Group Management Board in 2001 after joining in 1990. During the years 1985 to 1990 she was in private practice specializing in banking and business law. Ms. Mächler has been a member of several Swiss federal expert commissions on regulatory projects and regularly speaks, lectures and publishes on matters related to international business law and regulation, and their impact. From May 2012 until May 2018 she was a member of the supervisory board of directors of Deutsche Börse AG. She has been a member of the boards of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd and of Zurich Insurance Company Ltd since April 2013. Ms. Mächler has been a member of the board of directors of Cembra Money Bank AG since April 2015. She also chairs the advisory board of the International Center for Insurance Regulation at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and serves on the boards of the Stiftung für schweizerische Rechtspflege and of the Europa Institut at the University of Zurich. Ms. Mächler earned her J.D. at the University of Zurich’s Law School and complemented her studies by attending programs on UK, U.S. and private international law. She is admitted to the bar of the Canton of Zurich
Porf. Dr. Thorsten Hens
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hens is a Swiss Economist born in Germany and a finance academic. According to the Handelsblatt ranking, Hens is among the top 10 finance professors in the German-speaking area (Germany, Switzerland and Austria) – measured by life-time achievements.
Hens is a Swiss Finance Institute Professor of Financial Economics and member of the directorate of the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zürich, Switzerland as well as an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen and at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland.
His research areas are—among others—evolutionary and behavioral finance. In researching how investors make their decisions, Professor Hens draws on work in Psychology and applies insights from Biology in order to understand the dynamics of financial markets. He was one of the pioneers of cultural finance, where he conducted the first large-scale international test on risk- and time attitudes (INTRA).
His consulting experience includes application of Behavioral Finance for Private Banking and evolutionary finance for asset management.
Thorsten Hens studied at the University of Bonn and at DELTA in Paris, and previously held professorships at Stanford University and at the University of Bielefeld.
Timeline
| 17:30 | Prof. Dr. Claudio Tessone, Chairman of the UZH Blockchain Center | Opening |
| 17:35 -18:20 | Anthony Elliot, Chairman of the Board of Directors B3i Alessandro Spadoni, Chief Architect B3i | Talk |
| 18:20 -18:45 | Anthony Elliot, Alessandro Spadoni, Dr Monica Mächler, Member of the Board of Zurich Insurance, Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hens, UZH Blockchain Center, UZH Department of Banking and Finance, Moderator: Xandra Farkas, Managing Director, UZH Blockchain Center | Panel discussion |
