Global Speakers

Victor was born and raised in the Ryde area. He went to school at Marist Brothers Eastwood before studying law. He was a partner in a commercial law firm, where he represented clients in a number of landmark cases.

Victor was elected as Member for Ryde at a by-election in October 2008. He was re-elected at the 2011 state election.

In April 2011 he was sworn in as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Minister for Citizenship and Communities. His portfolio responsibilities included multicultural affairs, veterans’ affairs, volunteering and youth.

Following the Liberals & Nationals Government’s re-election in March 2015, Victor was sworn in as the state’s first Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation.

Victor is responsible for the Office of Fair Trading, the State Insurance Regulatory Authority, Safework NSW and DFSI’s Services & Digital Innovation Division.

Since taking on the portfolio in April 2015, Victor has overseen a number of reforms including the establishment of a NSW Data Analytics Centre as well as changes to strata title laws, real estate underquoting laws and the use of sunset clauses in off-the-plan property contracts.

Victor is currently leading the Social Innovation Council, a partnership between NSW Government agencies and NGO leaders, established to drive sectoral reform in human service delivery.

Prior to his parliamentary career, Victor cherished the opportunity to travel to many places around the world and looks back fondly on his experiences in India, Central and South America, Europe, the US and Asia. He is also a passionate supporter of West Tigers rugby league team.

Chris Bayley is the cofounder of Cover Genius which is the parent company of RentalCover.com and other soon-to-launch vertical insurance sites. Chris has extensive experience as a startup founder and has been a thought leader and public presenter within the tech community since 1999. Prior to starting Cover Genius, Chris was an early Googler who was responsible for the Financial Services and Insurance vertical, one of the company’s most profitable verticals globally. He brings extensive Product, Sales and Executive experience within ultra-high growth environments and he has acted as an investor in or advisor to several breakout successes including Sequoia-backed 90seconds.tv.

Robert Whelan has guided Australia’s insurance industry through some of the most challenging issues of the past few decades, including 2010-11 season of natural disasters, the National Disaster Insurance Review, the Northern Australia Insurance Premiums Taskforce, Financial System Inquiry and five changes In Prime Minister.

Rob joined the Insurance Council of Australia on March 22, 2010, after a highly successful career in a diverse range of roles within the insurance, banking and healthcare sectors. He has particularly strong experience in managing the corporate affairs and policy functions in major insurers including AAMI and Suncorp, as well as extensive general business management experience in broader financial services with companies including AMP, Legal & General and Colonial Mutual.

He is highly regarded as a leader in the development of public policy, and has worked extensively with regulatory bodies, government and consumer groups.

Passiona is member of the DAC’s core team of data analysts. Having spent the past decade in the management of metadata, she has extensive experience in data architecture, platforms and tools.  Admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW as a solicitor in 2012, Passiona holds a current practicing certificate with the Law Society of New South Wales. Her Bachelor of Laws and Graduate Certificate of Legal Practice were both attained from University of Technology, Sydney.  To Passiona, these two diverse professions, data science and law, work hand-in-hand. “Issues of privacy, surveillance, intellectual property, discrimination and bias are prevalent in the application of data science. A firm grounding in the law lets me safely navigate these challenges, and guide the DAC, with sound data governance for the responsible generation of insights for the people of NSW”. Seeing first-hand the growing role of data within organizations and society, Passiona commenced a Master of Data Science and Innovation for the course’s inaugural intake at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2015. Passiona’s interest in data and data science extends beyond her role at the DAC.  Regularly spending weekends at hackathons, she views these challenges as vital to contributing to the community and continually learning and applying what is an ever-expanding set of data science software tools and techniques.

Peter has been in the life insurance industry for 25 years.

He has held roles as Chief Underwriter of ING and RGA thus experiencing the dynamics from both the insurer and reinsurer perspective. These roles have included responsibility for strategy , risk management , process re-engineering and people. He also held the role of Director Business Development at RGA which included responsibility for account management and generation of new revenue streams.

Peter’s passion is challenging the status quo and transforming the science of underwriting.

Clement Fredembach is a data scientist with Teradata Australia and New Zealand Advance Analytics group. With a background in Color Science, Computational Photography and Computer Vision, Clement has designed and build perceptual statistical experiments and models for the past 10 years.

Clement strives to combine his psychometric, perceptual and statistical knowledge to deliver insights and their story that are understandable and actionable to non-technical audiences.

Prior to joining Teradata, Clement collaborated with several Fortune 500 and academic institutions as a researcher, publishing and patenting large portions of of his research along the way.

Clement holds an MSc in Communication Systems from EPFL (Switzerland) on Image Classification and a PhD from UEA (UK) on Computational Imaging. His interests range from behavioral psychology to graph theory and photography.

Peter, a Chartered Insurance Practitioner, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters and European Loss Adjusting Expert, is a seasoned claims professional, having worked in the claims industry for more than 30 years.
Having held national management, executive and director roles since 1996 in Australia and the UK, Peter joined Gallagher Bassett in 2002 and in his current position is accountable for the organisation’s strategy, and implementation, of all new major business development opportunities in the AsiaPac region.
Peter has extensive experience in many areas of the claims business and has been involved in all aspects of Claims Management and Loss Adjusting. This expertise extends to property, business interpretation, people management, E-Technology, integration and change management and business development

Deirdre is a senior marketing leader with over 15 years’ working experience in some of Australia’s largest banking and insurance brands, designing and delivering customer-led marketing and product programs. She is currently the Head of Marketing at AIA, where she leads a team of strategic marketing, insights, analytics and digital professionals in the successful design and delivery of brand and channel marketing strategies, led by compelling customer insights & analytics and great digital experiences.

She has deep expertise in proposition design and customer experience development and is passionate about the application of customer’s behaviors and motivations in shaping effective insight-led marketing, channel and business strategies.

Glen is a senior analytics professional with over 15 years’ experience in the professional services and financial services sectors. Specializing in solutions across customer and digital analytics, geospatial analysis, industrial production optimization and network optimization, he has hands on technical experience in a range of emerging analytics technologies and well-developed stakeholder communication skills at the executive and middle management levels.

He has led analytics projects to extract customer insight from complex data using advanced predictive analytics, machine learning, data mining and customer segmentation. He has experience leading analytics teams in designing and implementing solutions in Amazon Web Services, redshift, R, SAS, SPSS, Python, SQL Server, Postgres, HTML5, Adobe, Javascript, Oracle, Salford Predictive Miner, DB2, ESRI, Mapinfo, Tactician, Teradata, Cold Fusion, Cognos and Business Objects. Having consulted banking, insurance, energy, water, gaming and telecommunications, he also has a wide range of cross-industry experience. He has domain experience in industrial production optimization, predictive asset maintenance, insurance, marketing, market research, pricing, customer, demand forecasting and sales channel strategy.

Dan has been a catalyst for corporate change for over 15 years, leveraging data and predictive analytics to create new propositions and experiences for some of the world’s largest companies. Dan is currently General Manager, Innovation at TAL, Australia’s largest Life Insurer, where he leads the innovation team and data lab.

Dan’s experience includes data commercialization projects in businesses across a range of industries including shopping basket data at Tesco, Smart metering and utility data at British Gas, and transaction data at MasterCard.

Dan is a thought leader and published author (The Secrets of Big Business Innovation) with deep expertise in customer-led proposition design and leveraging the power of data and technology to deliver step-change commercial growth.

Dipak is a senior Financial Services technology, operations and strategy professional, with significant experience with both demand and supply side across Asia Pacific. In the past 18 years, Dipak spent most of his career with large global financial services companies in senior leadership roles in the areas of technology, operations and transformation across APAC. He played the industry practice leader role within the APAC region with a leading consulting organization in setting up their Insurance/Financial Services practice in APAC, Middle East and Japan and leading several transformation engagements. Currently, he is an industry practice leader-Insurance for Australia and NZ, specializing in transformation programs around IT transformation and regional strategic target operating model.

Dr Tony Carter, the Chief Underwriting Officer at SLE Worldwide Australia is a Biostatistician with an extensive record of improving profitability by using rigorous statistical methods to: identify and manage existing and emerging threats to profitability; collect and analyze data; generate and implement innovative evidence-based solutions; and evaluate and report results.
Internally, Tony works with the underwriters of the SLE Group to: analyse short- and long-tail portfolios to ensure sustainable underwriting profits; understand and manage broker relationships; improve internal and external reporting standards; enable underwriters to determine their risk appetite by identifying emerging trends and monitoring identified losses in sub-groups of risk. Externally, by collaborating with active underwriters and brokers, Tony identifies and quantifies risks to design, implement and evaluate highly specific evidence-based risk management interventions for insured clients addressing: organizational policies and procedures; employee knowledge, behaviours and skills; and workplace environments. Tony develops, implements and evaluates risk management and transfer solutions and ultimately improves client’s risk profiles, safety performance, capital expenditure and productivity by aligning the science of injury prevention and safety promotion to the loss histories and needs of clients.
Along with a Doctorate in Public Health and a Masters Degree in Medical Science, Tony has extensive knowledge, skills and experience in loss mitigation, injury prevention and safety promotion.

Violetta Misiorek has over 20 years’ experience in analytical, business and project management positions at leading Australian commercial as well as scientific research organizations, including CSIRO, NAB, ANZ and currently Suncorp Group. Violetta is passionate about developing innovative solutions for customer-centricity that truly put customers at the centre of business strategies. She prefers to look at things not how they are but how they can be. Violetta holds Masters in Applied Statistics as well as Bachelor of Mathematical and Computer Sciences.

Richard is one of Australia’s leading management and sales experts. His career in digital innovation and customer centric methodology to successfully drive market share and results has seen him work across several sectors including insurance, travel and media.

In his current role as General Manager, Customer Insurance Australia with Cover-More, Australia’s most popular travel insurance provider, Richard leads the national business development, sales and support team, looking after 4,500 clients valued at $303 million.

Richard’s proven change management skills, sales force innovation, SME knowledge and ability to entrench a single vision of success while maximizing performances mean he is in high demand as a speaker.

Richard holds an MBA (University of SA), has completed Business Studies through Harvard Business School and holds a Certificate in Digital Strategy. He is also the President of SeQual Association, a boutique care provider impacting the lives of Australians living with disabilities in a positive way.

Nicki is a senior executive with a deep knowledge of digital and business intelligence technologies. She is passionate about advising Boards and Executive teams to discover the unexpected ways digitization can transform delivery and how these changes can motivate and ignite creativity. Nicki has worked across banking, insurance, property, government and not-for-profits. She brings a broad range of cross-industry insights from how NFP are using analytics to better identify and assist vulnerable members in our community though to large corporates reducing waste by adopting predictive maintenance and better embracing supply chain automation.

Nicki is a vocal advocate for encouraging more women in STEM and supports a number of gender balance initiatives.

Melissa is a highly accomplished Partner with over 20 years’ experience advising clients on Information Management. Melissa has worked with organizations in the US, Australia and New Zealand to successfully embed information management capabilities, from delivery of strategy and roadmaps through to implementation of end to end information management systems.

Melissa has worked extensively in Financial Sector to deliver business critical data transformation initiatives involving business intelligence data quality, data migration, data governance, metadata, master data management, planning / forecasting and analytics.

Craig is a Partner in Deloitte Digital & Customer Behaviour. He leads the delivery of Digital CEM, Strategy, Analytics, eCommerce, & CRM design and implementation services to key clients.

Craig has 17 years of experience in business consulting, specializing in Digital, Analytics & CRM strategy, implementation, the integration of customer solutions, and innovation into customer’s business and technical environments. He has worked extensively across a number of industries, with a focus on financial & insurance services and telecommunications.

His customer solutions experience includes Digital & Agile Strategy, Omni-channel solutions, Customer Behaviour – analytics solutions and Marketing Cloud, Cloud and on premise technologies, Customer Loyalty, Real-Time Decision, Little/Big Data, Gamification, Master Data Management, social CRM, collaboration and mobile solutions.

Glen Maisey, consultant and data scientist at Quantium, operationalizing predictive analytics to drive strategy and value from data. He brings a deep understanding of technology and analytics to assess the trade-offs being made between customer needs, analytical accuracy, cost, time and ability to implement.

He has applied his skills across a wide range of industries from retail (FMCG) and financial services to industrial gas and has implemented analytical approaches than cut across industries with a concentration pricing, predictive customer analytics and marketing and media strategy with brief forays into traditional insurance pricing and flood modelling.

Glen has vast experience in operationalizing the analytics from rolling out Pricing Central® a global standard pricing delivery system to The Linde Group through to developing Mustang™, Quantium’s big data analytics platform.

Troy has over 21 years’ experience in executive and senior project/program management roles in Analytics/BI, IT operations, business transformation and digital electronics. He has extensive experience working for both government and the private sector in a wide range of technical, analytical and engineering roles. This includes most recently as Chief Data and Information Officer from 2012 to 2016 with the private health insurance industry peak body (Private Healthcare Australia), where he had responsibility and oversight for all matters relating to healthcare data, analytics/BI, eMRs, regulation and IT systems that impact the Australian heath insurance sector. Prior to this he spent eleven years in a range of senior IT project management and analytical roles across a number of commonwealth government agencies (Health, Immigration, Environment, Industry, and Transport), five years as a project consultant in the civil construction, telecommunications and environmental management sectors, and 4 years in digital electronics and data communications. He has a degree in science (B.Sc) and a PhD in biological and environmental sciences.

Troy enjoys working with closely with clients and organizations to help them transform their businesses by developing new approaches and solutions that make better use of their information, people, systems and technology. He provides leadership and guidance to organizations that are seeking to optimize and improve their businesses, whether that be through big data analytics/BI, technology innovation, strategic planning and partnerships, business process change, IT operations, or corporate strategy.