Claims Club Summit speakers

Caroline Gardner is Head of Market Interventions for Fixed Firms in the Insurance Directorate at the FCA, which supervises the largest insurers and intermediaries in the UK. She has been at the FCA since 2012. Prior to the FCA Caroline led the Insurance Strategy practice at Deloitte UK, and also was a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel 2005-2012.

Graham joined Allianz as director, claims in June 2008 with responsibility for customer service delivery and technical integrity and he is a member of the AZ Commercial Senior Leadership Team. Over and above his claims responsibility Graham leads the Allianz Engineering Inspection Services business and is responsible for Complaints and Fraud at a company level.

He is a member of the Allianz Global Claims Committee which sets the Strategy for Claims at a group level.

Graham represents Allianz in a number of market initiatives and currently is the Chairman of Thatcham, the Chairman of Allianz Pensions Trustees, the Chairman of AIES Ltd and a Director of the Insurance Fraud Bureau.

He has previously been a member of the Civil Justice Council, a Director of the Claims Portal, the Chartered Insurance Institute’s claims faculty advisory board and a Director of AGF.

Graham is a regular speaker at industry seminars and contributes to trade press articles.

Shift Technology CEO and Co-founder Jeremy Jawish became acutely aware that fraud detection was one area of the insurance industry that was ripe for disruption while working with a leading global insurance company. There, the seed was planted related to how artificial intelligence and advanced data science could be used to help insurance professionals make the best decisions possible throughout the policy and claims lifecycle. Jawish, along with co-founders Eric Sibony and David Durrleman transformed the idea into reality and now insurers around the world trust Shift’s AI-native solutions to help them solve some of their biggest challenges.

Jeremy holds a Master's degree in Probability and Finance - known as "El Karoui" - awarded jointly by Ecole Polytechnique and Paris VI University.

Rachel was appointed Ombudsman Director for Insurance in January 2023. She leads a directorate responsible for all insurance complaints at the Financial Ombudsman Service as well as drawing out the themes and insight to share with the sector. She works with Ombudsman Leaders to form the Ombudsman’s approach on insurance complaints, building teams to handle these well and with pace. This includes complaints across home and motor insurance, travel, health, pet and legal expenses.

Rachel has been at the Financial Ombudsman Service for 12 years, working across insurance for the past seven and before then leading transformation at the service. Previously Rachel worked in government and across a range of policy roles at the Home Office, Department of Education and Department for Work and Pensions. 

In February 2023, James was appointed Chief Claims Officer, having end to end responsibility for the claims operation within the UK. Prior to this, James was the Head of Expert and Commercial Insurance Claims, responsible for setting and implementing Zurich’s technical claims strategy for all lines of business and fraud.

James joined Zurich on the graduate programme in 1997 and has had a variety of leadership roles within Zurich, including Head of Global Corporate Claims, Head of Property & Specialty Claims and Property Branch Manager. He is passionate about customer advocacy, inclusivity and our future workforce.

Dean Witherington has 35 years working in Insurance claims & claims project management. Chartered Insurer, ACII and have a BA(Hons) degree in Insurance Management. Previous experience includes working as part of a UK Claims leadership team, working within global frameworks and within international teams. Dean has a breadth of analytical knowledge, creation of Management Information and analysis of performance. Dean has operational management experience across sites, Personal and Commercial Lines, Motor, Property, EL & Public Liability Lines of Business. He also holds leadership experience  in strategic change programmes across claims including strategic work split, sourcing, off shoring, site closure, site creation and right sizing.  System implementation including Guidewire, use of RPA and Machine learning. Business Improvement leadership including use of Lean tools.