Steering Committee of the Microinsurance Innovation Facility

Craig Churchill has nearly two decades of microfinance experience in both developed and developing countries. In his current position in the ILO's Social Finance Programme, he focuses primarily on the role of financial services that the poor can use to manage risks and reduce their vulnerability, including savings, insurance and emergency loans. He serves of the Chair of the CGAP Working Group on Microinsurance and on the Editorial Board of the MicroBanking Bulletin.

Craig has authored and edited over 40 articles, papers, monographs and training manuals on various microfinance topics including microinsurance, customer loyalty, organizational development, governance, lending methodologies, regulation and supervision, and financial services for the poorest of the poor. His most recent publication, Protecting the poor: A micro-insurance compendium (Geneva: ILO, Munich Re Foundation), which he edited, is the most authoritative book on the subject. He has a BA from Williams College and an MA from Clark University, both in Massachusetts.

Graduate of University of Manitoba in 1981, obtained FCIA and FSA in 1987. From 1981 to 2000 worked for a Canadian cooperative insurance company as Group Actuary, Director of Marketing and Vice-President of Group insurance as well as an advisor to developing cooperative insurers and an active participant in industry associations.

From 2000, Denis had been an independent consultant, focusing on the Canadian group and creditor insurance industry and international micro insurance programs.

• Canadian assignments have included strategic reviews, capital management, training, product development, pricing, mergers, insurance company start up and the development of the first Canadian disability incidence study.
• International assignments for BearingPoint, CGAP, ILO, GTZ, CCA, ICMIF and The World Bank have been in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Benin, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Egypt, Philippines, and Barbados working on all aspects of micro insurance and creditor insurance. With a principal specialty in micro health insurance.

Richard joined Opportunity International's Technical Services Division in January 2002 as insurance product development manager. Richard previously worked as a reinsurance broker for Benfield Greig Ltd, the world's largest independent reinsurance broking group. Richard was responsible for the African account and worked closely with three others in a team covering the Middle East and South East Asia.

Richard pioneered the introduction of insurance products within the Opportunity Network and this work has placed Opportunity as a market leader in the provision of insurance to the poor. At the end of June 2007 a range of insurance products were available to 3,300,000 clients and family members in Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Philippines, Mexico and Columbia.

In 2004 Richard was promoted to the position of Vice President for Planning & Operations and led a team of specialist consultants providing technical assistance to Opportunity partners in 29 countries in all areas of lending, savings, insurance, money transfer and client impact monitoring.

During 2005, Opportunity International launched the MicroEnsure to provide a larger number of clients with access to insurance products; as President Richard has established the organisation and is setting its strategic direction.

Brandon Mathews is Head of Microinsurance for Zurich Financial Services (Zurich). He joined Zurich in June 2007.

Brandon started his professional life in Germany in 1992 with General Motors Europe where he held various positions focusing on information systems, process improvement, and marketing. In 1998, he joined American International Group's foreign general insurance home office in New York to establish policy, claims, and customer service operations for a mass consumer offering in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Four years later he was appointed the Latin America regional executive for the same line of business. In this position, he started trade for the line in several markets, expanded the product offering, and served as director of related joint venture companies in Brazil and Mexico. During the same period, Brandon championed Microinsurance, presenting the subject to the CEO and Business Division CEOs and serving as a member of internal working groups on Microinsurance distribution and operations. Brandon is a frequent speaker on topics associated with Microinsurance, and has worked with numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations to bring the benefits of modern risk management to traditionally underserved populations.

Brandon is a member of the American Council on Germany. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester and his master's degree from New York University. He is based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Amolo Ng'weno is a Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor team in the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Amolo joined the foundation from Kenya, where she was most recently working for the Trust for African Rock Art. Previously she was a co-founder of Africa Online, Africa's largest internet service provider, operating in eight countries. She also is a co-founder of an online retailer of African products, Bi-ashara.biz and has served as the Chairman of the Kenyan National Environmental Trust Fund of which she remains a trustee.

Amolo has significant experience in topics related to global development and financial services. She joined the World Bank through its selective Young Professionals Program, through which she served as an economist working in Francophone Africa, Pakistan and Jamaica. Since 1998, she helped establish and was a long-term board member of the Zimele Asset Management Ltd - a pioneering provider of pooled investment vehicles (mutual funds) in the Kenyan market. She has an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and a BA in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard.

Gabriele Ramm coordinates the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) project of Munich Re and GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) on catastrophic risks in Indonesia and manages the PPP microinsurance project of Allianz Group and GTZ in India and Indonesia. As a consult-ant to GTZ she focused on social protection in the informal economy and microinsurance collaborating with ILO and other organizations. Prior to 2001 she was GTZ Program Director in India heading poverty alleviation projects of microfinance/microinsurance, livelihood programs, health, women empowerment and good governance.

During her tenure with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation she worked as the FNF Representative in Nepal and Pakistan heading projects on industrial relations, social security, decentralization policy and training of environmental journalists.

Before joining projects of poverty alleviation she worked at German TV, Cologne (WDR), for the Foundation for International Development (now InWEnt) and the International Department of the German Adult Education Association in the areas of development support communication, visual literacy, adult education and intercultural communication/management.

G. Ramm has published several studies and articles on microinsurance/social protection and was a team member of the Microinsurance Landscape Study commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She holds two MA degrees in Political Science/Mass Communication and Engineering.

Rupalee Ruchismita is the Executive Director and Founding Head of the Centre for Insurance and Risk Management at IFMR, an action research technical group, engaged in providing micro insurance and risk management expertise to the development sector. The Centre, other than health, focuses on safety net services for livelihood risks (agriculture, livestock and fishery), micro pensions, disaster management services, financial literacy and training challenges of the sector.

She has been involved in implementing more than five micro- insurance experiments in the country. Previously, she worked as part of the grant making and action research group within The Social Initiatives Group (SIG) at ICICI Bank.

Evelyn Stark is a Senior Program Officer in the Financial Services for the Poor team in the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Evelyn's work with the team is focused on product design and innovations that increase the relevance of financial services for poor people and lead to greater financial inclusion. After working for many years in US banks and non-bank financial institutions managing special asset portfolios (that is, failed commercial real estate loans), Evelyn moved to Uganda in 1996. She spent the following six years in Uganda and the region working on short and long-term assignments in microfinance: developing curriculum, delivering training and technical assistance and managing donor funded projects and providing evaluation and research services to both MFIs and international organisations. In 2003 Evelyn returned to the US where she worked with USAID in the office of Microenterprise Development, concentrating on products and services to extend outreach to underserved populations, such as youth, those affected by conflict, very poor people, etc. Her work was concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle-East and North Africa and in conflict-affected countries. She worked at CGAP on the Expanding Access agenda before joining the foundation in late 2008.

John is a qualified actuary. After studying mathematics, he worked in the U.K., firstly with a major life insurance company, and subsequently, through most of the 1980s, with an occupational pensions consultancy. In the early 1990s, while based in East Africa, he began working in the field of social security, participating in studies and projects conducted by the ILO and other agencies, concerned with the design and valuation of national social security programmes in a number of countries in Africa and Asia.

In 1998, John joined the ILO staff to take up the position of Senior Social Security Specialist with the multi-disciplinary advisory team for South Asia, based in New Delhi, India, and since 2005 has held a similar post located in the ILO's Social Security Department at its headquarters in Geneva.