Gideon Benari
Gideon Benari is the editor and owner of Solvency II Wire. He holds an Investment Management Certificate (IMC) from CFAUK, a Masters in Anthropology from the University of East London and is a qualified technical writer (ISTC). Before setting up the site he was a press officer for a number of organisations and prior to that worked as a freelance video editor for over twenty years for major broadcasters in the UK. His video editing portfolio includes, The Money Programme and Horizon for BBC 2, Dispatches for Channel 4 and a number of independent documentaries. He has also worked in the news rooms of Channel 4 and ITN. In 2001 he was nominated for an Emmy Award for “Outstanding performance in the field of editing” for his part in editing the landmark BBC documentary series Dawn of Man. Gideon is an IMC Member of the CFA society of the UK (CFAUK) and a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). [widget id=”mp_featured_posts-12″]Michael Blastland
Michael Blastland is a writer and broadcaster. Before going freelance, he was at the BBC, where he created the More or Less programme on Radio 4. He continues to present The Human Zoo (about behavioural science) and recently co-wrote and produced the ten-part History of Britain in Numbers. Michael teaches, speaks and advises widely on statistics and communication in government, business and academia, including: executive leadership at Oxford’s Said Business School; medical and lifestyle risk; data design; data journalism and creativity at the BBC Academy; statistical presentation to doctoral students at Lancaster University. Michael has written two books about numbers: The Tigers that Isn’t It with Andrew Dilnot, and The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger with Professor David Spiegelhalter. [widget id=”mp_featured_posts-9″]Andrew Cairns
Andrew Cairns is Professor of Financial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and Director of the Actuarial Research Centre. Andrew is well known in the UK and internationally for his research in financial risk management for pension plans and life insurers. Within this field, he has developed a new model for bond-price dynamics for application in the measurement and management of long-term interest-rate risks in pensions and life insurance. More recently, Andrew has worked on the modelling of longevity risk, and has developed a number of innovative stochastic mortality models. His interests in the assessment of financial risk have led to further research in the field of financial mathematics. Andrew is an active member of the UK and international actuarial profession, both in research and education. In 1996, he became editor of the leading international actuarial journal, ASTIN Bulletin: The Journal of the International Actuarial Association; he has been editor-in-chief of the journal since 2005. Andrew is a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries. [widget id=”mp_featured_posts-11″]Pierre du Toit
Pierre du Toit is head of big data analytics at Vitality (UK). He joined Vitality UK in 2012 and heads up their big data analytics team. In his current role, cutting edge actuarial and analytical techniques are applied across the insurance business with the goal of improving members’ health and creating shared value. Prior to joining the insurance industry, Pierre worked in retail banking. He is a fully qualified actuary and holds degrees in financial & actuarial mathematics as well as financial engineering. He is also an active member of working parties doing research for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Dherminder Kainth
Dherminder Kainth is head of model risk at the Royal Bank of Scotland. He joined RBS in February 2001, working for Riccardo Rebonato in developing and reviewing models used in the investment bank. He has developed / assessed models across most asset classes, including credit, equity, rates and inflation. He has held a number of positions firstly overseeing pricing models, then all models used in the trading book and finally his current position. Prior to joining QuaRC, Dherminder trained as a physicist at the University of Cambridge, where he conducted research into the physics of low energy collective modes of 2D electron gases. He holds an MA and a PhD from Cambridge. [widget id=”mp_featured_posts-10″]Pierre-André Maugis
Dr Pierre-André Maugis is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Technological Transfer at the Big Data Institute, and Senior Research Associate at University College London’s Statistical Science Department. He is a former student of the École Normale Supérieur and consolidated his strong background in mathematics and statistics by undertaking his Ph.D at the Sorbonne, with a focus on the Econometrics of risk in finance, leading to the publication of several articles in econometric journals. After his Ph.D, following his interest in adapting mathematics to practical problems, he spent several years as a consultant in the Banking, Finance and Insurance sectors in Paris. His interests in modelling dependent data led him back to academia, and he is now focusing on developing rigorously founded statistical tools for the analysis of networks, especially the roles hubs, triadic closure and community structures play in the structure and function of real world networks. Since joining UCL, Pierre-André has taken responsibilities within the Big Data Institute and the Stochastic Process Group, organizing conferences, and managing the group’s relationships with corporate and academic partners, especially in terms of knowledge and expertise transfers.Jeff Richmond
Jeff Richmond is a member of the Oracle Cloud Enterprise Architecture team in the UK, specialising in Information Management and Big Data. He joined Oracle in 2012 from Barclays where he was Head of Data Architecture for Prime Brokerage. Prior to that, Jeff spent ten years at Deutsche Bank in various roles, including Enterprise Architecture, and was responsible for building the bank’s first Hadoop cluster to explore use cases.]]>