Speakers

Alastair is the 696th Lord Mayor of London. The principal role of the Lord Mayor is as a Global Ambassador for the UK’s Financial and Professional Services, alongside championing charitable interests for the Lord Mayor’s Appeal and the wider community.  

Alastair qualified as a solicitor in the City of London in 1995. He practised in both London and Asia with the leading international law firm Baker McKenzie. He joined a leading venture capital firm, NewMedia Investors, in 1999, which provided early-stage capital for some of the UK’s leading technology companies. In 2002, he and a business partner took control of a small LSE-quoted investment vehicle, which they turned into a highly successful buy-out firm. In 2006, Alastair founded his own fund management company, and in parallel founded, raised and ran an LSE-quoted fund to invest into infrastructure projects.  

Currently, he is on the board of five City of London-based financial services companies, four of which he chairs. Of the five companies, four are FCA-regulated and he owns two – Naisbitt King Asset Management Limited (a fund manager) and Naisbitt King Limited (a family office).  

Alastair is Chair of the British Liver Trust – the national liver charity and Treasurer of the long-established City charity, the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.  

In his civic career, having lived in the Ward of Queenhithe in the City of London since 1991, Alastair was elected to the Court of Common Council for the Ward in 1999. He was appointed Deputy in 2006 and then elected as Alderman in 2016. During his continuing 24 years of service with the City of London Corporation (CoLC), he has had active roles in a number of key Committees. Through the CoLC, he is Chair of the Investment Committee and Trustee of Morden College and a Trustee of the Samuel Wilson Loan Trust.  

Alastair has substantial involvement in the Livery movement, being a Past Prime Warden of the Blacksmiths (his Mother company) and Past Master of the Masons (the Stonemasons).  

Alastair is a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London, and he is an Honorary Fellow - Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment (CISI), an Honorary Visiting Professor - Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London and an Honorary Bencher - Honourable Society of the Middle Temple  

Alastair is active in business groupings, both in the United Kingdom and around the world. He is Secretary of the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sovereign Wealth Funds. He is also Chair of the Institute of Directors, London Region. He is a member (and past three-time Chapter Chair) of the Young Presidents’ Organisation and a member of CEO,  an invitation-only group of 2000 leading CEOs from around the world.  

Of proud Scottish heritage, Alastair was educated at Oundle School and at the University of Bristol, the University of Kent, the College of Law in London and the London Business School. His interests include boxing and hill walking in Scotland with Florence, his wife and their Italian Greyhound.

Alastair will be giving the welcome and opening remarks; as well as be a panellist in the panel discussion: Optimising growth in geopolitical uncertainty.

Bim Afolami served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister from 2023 to 2024 in the Rishi Sunak government. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for Hitchin and Harpenden from 2017 to 2024. Educated at Eton College and Oxford University, Bim worked as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and as a senior executive in banking at HSBC, before entering Parliament.  After leaving government following the 2024 General Election, Bim now serves as Chief of Staff and Strategy at the large U.S. insurance business Acrisure, is a non-executive director of HSBC UK plc, and is a trustee of several charities. He is married to Henrietta, and they have three sons.  

Bim is a speaker of the keynote: Public office and private risk: How government insight can reshape understanding the private risk of tomorrow.

Chika joined Munich Re in April 2023 and is Group Chief Risk Officer of Munich Re Specialty – Global Markets, based in London. She sits on the executive committee and Board of Munich Re Specialty – Global Markets and heads the Legal, Risk and Compliance teams.  

Prior to joining Munich Re, Chika had a long-lasting career at Aviva plc, most recently as the Group Enterprise Risk Director, where she led a small team of risk experts tasked with looking across Aviva’s global operations. During her time at Aviva, she was Trustee Director of the Aviva Staff Pensions Scheme and co-sponsor of Aviva’s multi-cultural network. 

Chika is a non-executive director of the MDU, a leading UK medical defence organisation, and a member of the Audit and Risk Committee for UK Sport. 

Additionally, Chika is chair of the Diversity Action Group for the UK actuarial profession and is an advisory board member of RATL, a group of senior insurance leaders of colour promoting racial diversity and inclusivity within the sector. Chika recently completed an Executive MBA at the London Business School. 

Chika is a panellist of the panel discussion: Optimising growth in geopolitical uncertainity.

David Benyon is the founder and editor of The Political Risk Podcast, a geopolitics podcast for risk professionals and decision makers in specialty insurance markets and beyond. He is a freelance journalist who primarily writes about risk and re/reinsurance markets, also working as the Editor of Global Reinsurance magazine. His podcast links his experience writing about risk, insurance and financial markets, with passions for geopolitics and foreign affairs. David also serves in the Royal Navy Reserve and is a War Studies and History alumnus of King’s College London. 

David is the moderator of the panel discussion: Responding to challenges in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape.

Dr. Bryce is the Lord Mayor City of London's Research Fellow, where he drives crucial research, dissemination, and engagement on regulating and managing risk within the UK financial services industry. A prolific author, his industry reports delve into critical areas like leadership in boardroom decision-making and embedding robust risk management frameworks in FTSE 100 companies. His seminal publication, "Optimising Growth: The Evolving Role of the Chief Risk Officer", was a cornerstone of the Lord Mayor's 'Growth Unleashed' theme and instrumental in conceiving the CRO Global Summit. As Principal Investigator, he explored the evolving Chief Risk Officer (CRO) role, focusing on how they and their boards balance threat protection with value creation in the pursuit of corporate growth. 

Beyond his work at Mansion House, Dr. Bryce serves as the MSc Course Director for Insurance and Risk Management programmes at Bayes Business School. This distinguished portfolio of programmes holds the unique distinction of being the only ones in the UK to achieve Global Centre for Insurance Excellence status, reflecting the high calibre of education at Bayes, which is 9th in the FT UK Business School Rankings, and 5th in the UK for business and management research. 

Dr. Bryce is a panellist of the panel: Optimising growth in geopolitical uncertainty.

Esperanza is IFM Investors’ Chief Risk Officer, responsible for the management of the firm’s risk and compliance obligations globally.   

Esperanza is a member of the Executive Leadership Team, Investment and Valuation Committees. Esperanza is based in IFM Investors’ London office and is an experienced international Chief Risk Officer and Board member with a track record of successfully building risk and compliance teams, with an strategic and commercial focus, long-term horizon and culturally diverse, across US, EMEA and APAC, in private and public sectors. 

Esperanza is passionate about risk culture, social entrepreneurship, sustainability and risk management as a strategic tool. 

Esperanza is a panellist of the panel discussion: Responding to challenges in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape.

Jennifer Geary is a former MD, COO and CRO with over 25 years of experience in finance, technology, risk and legal, across diverse industries from financial services to not-for-profit.  

She is also a five-time author, speaker, Non-Executive Director and mentor to emerging businesses. She has attained qualification as a Chartered Accountant, PRINCE 2 practitioner, CISA and CISSP, with recent certifications in Sustainable Finance and ESG Investing and Ethical AI. 

Jennifer is a panellist of the panel discussion: Responding to challenges in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape.

Maxine joined LSEG 4.5 years ago as the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) for the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Head of Risk for Digital and Securities Markets. She has a strong focus on operational resiliency, which is essential for LSE in its role within the financial services sector and its designation as Critical National Infrastructure and highly experienced in Reputational, Strategic and other non-financial risk. In her role, she provides risk oversight and challenge to the businesses to promote robust operational resilience, safe growth and responsible innovation; and reports risk insights to the Chief Executive Officer, Dame Julia Hoggett, LSE plc Board and Regulators to support effective decision making with respect to the operation of the businesses. Maxine is passionate about developing and fostering an effective risk culture across the businesses which empowers all colleagues to take the lead on managing risks. 

Prior to joining LSEG, Maxine spent 5 years at Deutsche Bank,  responsible for payments resiliency, and technology and cyber risk management. Maxine holds an Information Technology degree and began her career in Technology with management roles in Standard Bank, RBS and Standard Chartered, focussing on trading technology before transitioning to risk management. This background has provided Maxine with an invaluable understanding of the objectives and challenges within the business contributing to her being an effective partner.   

Outside of work, Maxine enjoys playing tennis, running, cycling, and gardening.

Maxine is the speaker of keynote address: Risk as an enabler: How resilliency is key to market confidence and growth.

Ashok Gupta is Founder Director of the New Capital Consensus project and Chair of the Financial Systems Thinking Innovation Centre (Finstic). He led a review of the UK DB Pensions Sector as Chair of a PLSA Taskforce and was also Joint Deputy Chair of a Bank of England Working Group on Procyclicality. 

He is a Non-executive Director and Chair of the Board Risk Committee of Sun Life Financial Inc, and Chair of EV. 

He has played key roles in building several successful financial services businesses including The Phoenix Group, Quilter and SJP. 

Ashok is a speaker of the debate: Risk reimagined: A radical rethink vs. Tried and tested approaches.

Saj is Plexal’s Chief Commercial Officer and leads Plexal’s innovation services team. Saj specialises in building collaborative ecosystems between startups, government, industry, and academia and has led a number of high-profile initiatives during his time at Plexal. This includes LORCA - an accelerator that has helped 72 of the UK’s most promising cyber startups earn more than £68m in revenue and secure over £270m in investment - and the NCSC Innovation Partnership, which is delivering NCSC for Startups, and building a specialist innovation ecosystem to further the UK’s cyber ambitions and national security agenda. 

Saj leads some of Plexal’s most important relationships with UK Government, including the NCSC and DCMS. He is a member of the DCMS Cyber Growth Partnership Main Board and the UK5G Security Working Group. 

Saj started his career in the Royal Air Force, where he was a commissioned officer and pilot, and spent a number of years as a management consultant at Deloitte and PwC. He then moved into industry, leading strategic change at a private equity backed challenger bank where he helped them operationally scale towards achieving a UK banking license and improve their cyber and operational resilience in readiness for launching a new start-up business.

Saj is a speaker at the firechat session: Cybersecurity and risk.

Jared Kosky was appointed as the Connecticut Insurance Department’s (CID) Deputy Commissioner in 2022 serving as CID’s senior advisor to the Insurance Commissioner on strategic planning and policy development while also supervising the Department’s overall regulatory operations.  Jared joined CID in 2016. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Commissioner he acted as General Counsel, managing the legal functions and staff of CID.  Jared serves as a resource with respect to the many facets and complexities of regulating the insurance industry and advocating for legislation to improve the effectiveness of CID in achieving its mission of consumer protection.  He is currently Chair of the Supervisory Forum for the International Association of Insurance Supervisors and was recently Chair of the Deputy Commissioner Roundtable for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. 

A graduate of the University of Connecticut and Quinnipiac University School of Law, Jared is a lifelong Connecticut resident.  Prior to working at the Insurance Department, he served as counsel with the Connecticut Office of State Ethics and prior to entering state service he was an attorney for a Hartford-based law firm focusing on civil litigation.

Jared is a panellist of the panel discussion: Global rising protectionism.

Prior to joining Darktrace, Toby spent 15 years in the UK Government, including as the UK National Cyber Security Centre’s Deputy Technical Director for Incident Management. He has specialist expertise in Security Operations, having worked across Cyber Threat Intelligence, Incident Management, and Threat Hunting. He has presented at several high-profile events, including the NCSC’s flagship conference, CyberUK, the SANS CyberThreat conference, and the Cheltenham Science Festival. He was a lead contributor to the first CyberFirst Girls Competition, championing greater gender diversity and works with the 93% Club to promote social mobility more broadly. 

Toby is a speaker of keynote address and fireside chat: Cybersecurty and risk.

Lu Li, Managing Director at Nuveen, leads the investment, liquidity as well as credit risk function for the EMEA & APAC business across all asset classes. She has over 19 years of experience in the financial services industry, with her distinctive expertise in private markets. In her current role, Lu provides risk advisory and challenge on investment strategy and transactions; embeds effective risk management framework to drive better business decision making. 

Lu is a panellist of the panel discussion: Global rising protectionism.

Jo Lucas is Chief Risk Officer, EMEA at Mizuho. Mizuho’s presence in EMEA is an integral part of the Japan-based Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. Mizuho Financial Group is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, offering comprehensive financial and strategic services through its subsidiaries. Jo’s responsibilities cover both financial and non-financial risk across the banking, markets and capital markets divisions. She oversees risk across the EMEA region with team members in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. 

Prior to joining Mizuho, Jo has 19 years of experience in risk and regulatory management roles at large global institutions – including as EMEA Head of Market Risk for Nomura and various roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Jo holds a Mathematics degree from Cambridge University and a degree in Law from the Open University.

Jo is a panellist of the panel discussion: Optimising growth in geopolitical uncertainty.

Andrew McDougall is Head of Geopolitical Risk for Barclays and advises Barclays Board and executive leadership on global affairs. He joined Barclays from the UK Foreign Office, where he gained extensive experience working on some of the most important global issues over the past two decades. His particular expertise is Europe, Russia, and China, but also worked closely on Iran and South Asia (India/Pakistan/Afghanistan) earlier in his career.  Andrew’s final posting was in Brussels (Political Counsellor in the UK Mission to the EU and NATO) but also served in Switzerland, India, and the Middle East. As a British Army officer, he served in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Iraq, before joining the Foreign Office. He read Law and International Relations at university. 

Andrew is a panellist of the panel discussion: Responding to challenges in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape.

Jake is a global campaigns and communications professional with over ten years experience working with governments, the private sector, NGOs, and UN agencies across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. 

Within Edelman, Jake leads our digital crisis work out of the London office. He is an expert in managing issues online with a specific focus on tackling disinformation and managing activism campaigns. 

Jake helps clients develop and implement campaigns to tackle disinformation and misinformation for a number of global organisations and business in the global health, biomedical and transport sectors. 

Previously, Jake headed up the Government Relations Team for UNICEF in London, overseeing their political relations and campaigns across the UK, as well as managing several reputational issues including the international development safeguarding scandal and threats to the UK’s 0.7% Aid commitment.

Jake is the moderator of the panel discussion: Global rising protectionism.

Currently, Anastasia serves as the Trade and Investment Director at the City of London Corporation, leading the work to ensure the UK remains a top destination for global financial and professional services and capital investment. Ana leads a team of professionals delivering initiatives to enhance the UK's global trade and investment position across the financial and professional services sector. 

Ana is an experienced executive and ex-diplomat, specialised in trade and investment, international business and public affairs. She was previously Australia’s Trade and Investment Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, as well as Westcoast of the US.  

With over a decade of experience, Ana has successfully developed and implemented strategies to attract foreign investment and support businesses in expanding internationally.  

Having held roles across the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, Clean Energy Regulator and Australian Treasury, Ana’s experience ranges across international strategy, business development and policy engagement to deliver impact.

Ana is the speaker of the Closing remarks.

Fiona Robertson edits Insurance Insider and is editor-in-chief of Insurance Insider ILS. She covers global reinsurance, ILS and London market news. 

Fiona joined the company in 2010 and before that spent several years working at a business newspaper in New Zealand.

Fiona is the moderator of the panel discussion: Optimising growth in geopolitical uncertainity.

David joined Lloyd’s in September 2019 as Chief Risk Officer, where he has responsibility for the Corporation’s risk management framework and for Lloyd’s relationships with its regulators. His remit includes oversight of Lloyd’s Corporation and market risks in accordance with the risk appetites set by the Lloyd’s Council, and for running the Corporation’s Risk, Compliance and Capital Modelling functions. 

Prior to Lloyd’s, David worked as a Director in the Financial Services Risk Practice at EY where he led a broad range of risk management and regulatory engagements in the London Market and the wider insurance sector. He began his career working for the UK regulatory authorities with roles at the Financial Services Authority and HM Treasury. 

David is a panellist of the panel discussion: Global rising protectionism.

David Stark is Marsh UK’s Specialty Advisory Leader and Marsh’s Global Enterprise Risk Steward.  His 20+ years’ experience as a Consulting Director spans all areas of strategic, operational and insurance risk analysis, management and governance within the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa.   

Based in London, David leads on risk advisory engagement across Marsh’s Specialty Practice industries of Aviation & Aerospace, Construction, Energy & Power, Financial Institutions and Professional Services, Private Equity, Marine & Cargo, Mining, Real Estate and product areas of Credit, Cyber and Financial insurance lines.  

He has a strong track record in providing strategic risk advice and implementing solutions on business critical programs.  Consulting assignments typically involve David leading and directing teams, planning change programmes and providing tailored risk and insurance consultancy advice to client boards and their senior management teams. He and his team members’ deliver benefits to clients through designing, implementing and assuring enterprise risk management frameworks to protect and create business value.  

David has led research in thematic risk topics and governance over many years.

David is a panellist of the panel discussion: Global rising protectionism.

Savannah Thompson is the Head of Political Risk Insurance at the Fidelis Partnership. Having been at Fidelis for over 8 years, Savannah previously graduated from Queens University Belfast with an MA in Violence, Terrorism and Security.  

Savannah is a panellist of the panel discussion: Responding to challenges in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape.