TOP 10 VISIONARIES
Stéphane Flaquet
Group chief operating officer, Hiscox
Stéphane Flaquet views his role at Hiscox as a unique opportunity to drive impactful initiatives and to help shape the future by enhancing current capabilities and seizing new opportunities.
With a strong focus on driving process maturity, continued digital transformation and service excellence, Flaquet plays an important part in ensuring that Hiscox continues to build a better business that delivers for its customers.
Initially, he joined Hiscox as chief operating officer for Hiscox Europe, became group IT director in 2012, and then chief executive officer for Hiscox Europe between 2016 and 2021. He was appointed to the newly created role of group chief operating officer in June 2022.
In his current role he oversees different critical central functions, including Group Claims, Group IT, Property Services, Procurement and Group Marketing, to ensure the continued effective and efficient delivery of core services.
Gabriel Lazaro
SVP head of digital, Chubb International
Based in Singapore, Gabriel Lazaro is responsible for the growth of Chubb’s digital international insurance business across 51 countries and territories. He is focused on growing digital offerings in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific and works with the consumer and digital teams globally to expand Chubb’s distribution through digital ecosystem partnerships.
Lazaro’s innovation around insurance products and value propositions includes the technology that allows for a seamless customer experience. His digital credentials include 12 years in mobile content firms and the post of head of digital for emerging markets at AIG.
Lazaro knows that it’s his responsibility to provide a clear vision to inspire his team and ensure everyone is aligned and moving towards the same goal. He is quoted as saying that it’s imperative to empower people to unleash their creativity.
He has described himself as passionate about innovation and delivering tangible results. He has lauded Chubb’s “very diverse group of professionals”, commenting that an entrepreneurial spirit runs throughout the organisation.
Tal Potishman
Innovation and change director, Markel
Tal Potishman is responsible for innovation at Markel UK, as well as leading the change portfolio and management information and data teams. In his role he develops and delivers innovation across the company and is leading optimisation and efficiency programmes for Markel to rethink operating model and tech use. This work is expected to improve processes and capabilities throughout the business with an eye on what will be needed in the future and how the markets might evolve.
He has more than 20 years’ experience to call on as a corporate development and strategy consultant and advisor to the C-suite. His previous experience, which focused on innovation and rapid transformation, includes work for McKinsey & Company where he supported organisational development and process improvement and optimisation for clients in industrial and financial services sectors.
Potishman also has direct engineering industry experience from his time at McLaren Automotive, where he helped develop the company’s first volume road car and set up a significant part of the systems and processes for the company.
Danilo Raponi
Group head of innovation, Generali
Danilo Raponi is the group head of innovation at Generali, a unit that drives and scales innovation. He is also the managing director of Generali’s global Innovation Fund, which finances, promotes and supports the group’s most promising innovation projects across the globe. The fund’s premise is ‘innovation everywhere, for everyone’.
Raponi joined Generali in 2021 from Munich Re, where he held a number of innovation-related roles, including lead of Munich Re’s Global Innovation Framework.
At Munich Re he co-founded and co-led innovation initiatives to develop behaviour-based personal finance apps and in his role as senior manager at the reinsurer’s global unit Capital Partners he worked with innovative parametric products. He was also involved in formulating a comprehensive response to the challenges of COVID-19.
Raponi has extensive experience in both life and non-life re/insurance and has worked at Swiss Re and Hannover Re, in addition to advisory positions at several tech startups. He has worked as a consultant in the innovation/insurtech space, as insurtech lead for Ernst & Young in Germany.
Darryl Siry
Chief technology officer, SiriusPoint
Since SiriusPoint launched in 2020, a key priority has been to develop an industry leading technology approach, according to Darryl Siry, chief technology officer at the re/insurer.
In 2022 he has expanded his team, recruiting a diverse set of expertise to transform operational efficiency and business support at the company.
Under his leadership the team are integrating the company’s platforms and improving IT functionality to deliver major transformation. This encompasses SiriusPoint’s strategic goal to be a technology enabled insurer and includes its cloud transformation, the establishment of a robust data and analytics platform, and adopting modern technology architecture and practice.
Siry said that the company’s platforms and operational capabilities are core to its ability to be nimble and data driven and that technology enhances functions across the business from underwriting and risk management to finance and operations.
He recognises the need for clear vision and the drive to deliver results. It is with this in mind that he has hired and developed people with the skills and diverse approaches to realise the company’s ambitions in its insurance business and the disruptive MGAs and insurtechs SiriusPoint partners with.
Image: Shutterstock / Baimieng
