Panelists
Panel Session in Property and Casualty Insurance
Predictive analytics is gaining increased importance in the property and casualty insurance industry, as P&C companies are looking for ways better integrate diverse sources of data into their operations. Our panelists, each practitioners in this area, will present their insights on how predictive analytics are being used in their own companies, and how future research initiatives could potentially help.
Jeffrey Baer (Economical)
Jeffrey Baer is the Manager of Advanced Analytics for Economical Insurance and Sonnet Insurance. Based in Waterloo, Jeffrey works with business stakeholders in areas such as Sales & Distribution, Marketing, Underwriting, and Claims to develop data-driven solutions to business problems. He is also responsible for leading research into innovative modelling applications and data sources. Jeffrey leads a diverse and accomplished team of analytics professionals with backgrounds in statistics, actuarial science, operations research, geospatial analytics, machine learning, and business analysis.
Jeffrey graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BMath in 2012 and earned his FCAS and FCIA in 2014. He served as President of the Ontario Conference of Casualty Actuaries (OCCA) in 2013-14. Currently, Jeffrey volunteers for the CIA as a member of the Predictive Modelling Committee and Continuing Education Committee P&C Sub-committee, and for the CAS as an exam committee member, university liaison, and Actuarial Review copy editor. In his spare time, Jeffrey enjoys playing basketball and ultimate frisbee, singing in a choir, and engaging in all forms of trivia competition.
Sebastien Bernard (Intact)
Sebastien Bernard is an Actuarial Manager for Intact Financial Corporation's Data Lab. He is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries. He started his career as an actuary back in 2009 and has always been loyal the Intact family since then. He occupied various personal lines roles as an actuarial analyst and, since 2014, as a manager. Sebastien's role as a leader in a Data Lab really brought him closer to the Artificial Intelligence world; he is now both very excited and somewhat anxious about the future of AI and its impact on the world as we know it.
Denise Cheung (Aviva Canada)
Senior Manager | Personal Insurance Pricing | Predictive Modeling
Denise leads the predictive modeling team within personal insurance pricing department in Aviva Canada. She is a qualified actuary for over 10 years and specializes in predictive modeling in the past 9 years. She has held roles in consulting firms and major insurers.
Frédérick Guillot (Cooperators)
Frederick holds a bachelor and a master degree in actuarial science from Laval University.Since 2004, he is working for the Co-operators General Insurance Company, where he is currently Senior manager - Research and Innovation. Since 2009, he is also a regular lecturer at Laval University, teaching principally predictive modeling. In 2014, he founded Actulab.ca, a not-for-profit organism with the mission to facilitate collaborations between academics and practitioners by offering case-competitions to Canadian students.
Panel Session in Life Insurance
This panel offers practitioner perspectives on applications of predictive analytics in the life insurance industry. Speakers will address such questions as: What are the key success factors for a life insurance predictive analytics team, and a data scientist? Is an actuarial data scientist different than other data scientists? What are the typical hurdles in setting up an insurance analytics function? How do you maintain the balance between organizational agility and compliance? What types of techniques are used for solving life insurance problems with analytics? How much effort is typically spent on preparing/cleaning the data? What are the key metrics used to assess the predictive power of a model?
Ian Bancroft (Sun Life)
A Senior Actuary and Data Scientist with big data and predictive modeling leadership and technical experience within a large insurance company, financial and business leadership experience within the Canadian Group Benefits and Money Products Business Units, complimented with extensive experience in leading and supporting a variety of financial and strategic projects in Asia.
Kevin Pledge (Claim Analytics)
Kevin is CEO of Claim Analytics, a company that has provided predictive analytics consulting for over 16 years. He is also CEO of Acceptiv, a company that provides online distribution and underwriting analytics.
Prior to joining Claim Analytics, he spent 15 years managing a data warehousing company that provided reporting solutions to insurance companies.
Kevin has also held senior positions at insurance companies in the UK and Canada with responsibilities covering actuarial, marketing, compliance and administration. Kevin is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (UK) and a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (US), and he has published several articles covering analytics and data management.
Jean-Yves Rioux (Deloitte)
Jean-Yves is a senior manager in our Actuarial, Rewards and Analytics Group who joined the actuarial specialist team of Deloitte in 2006. Jean-Yves’s current focus is providing specialist support for both traditional and non-traditional aspects of the work of the actuary, the latter of which includes predictive analytics and complex modeling and simulations.
Eugene Wen (Manulife)
Dr. Eugene Wen is the Vice President, Group Advanced Analytics, at Manulife. He is responsible for supporting group functions with advanced analytics, build a Center of Expertise (CoE) in advanced analytics, provide thought leadership, create governance and policy frameworks for analytics function and provide research and development capabilities to businesses across the company.
Prior to joining Manulife, Eugene served as the Vice President and Chief Statistician at the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB). He was trained in both clinical medicine and public health.