FERMA names new team at the top

It is hoped that the appointment of this high profile and experienced team will help President Peter Den Dekker and the executive staff at FERMA maintain the momentum built up in recent times that has seen FERMA raise its profile at the European Commission in particular.

Ms. Graham is risk manager for London law firm DLA Piper and was Chairman of AIRMIC from 2008-2009. She remains a member of the AIRMIC Council and Executive Committee and was also Chair of the British Standards Institution Committee that published the British risk management standard

BS 31100. She is also already involved with FERMA as a member of the organising committee for next year’s Forum in Stockholm, Sweden.

It is hoped that Ms. Graham’s appointment and involvement with the organising committee for next year’s forum plus the fact that FERMA’s seminar will be held in London on September 28 and 29 this year in particular will help raise the number of U.K. delegates to the Forum in Sweden.

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The U.K. has been markedly under-represented in delegate numbers compared with other leading national FERMA members in the past.

Mr. Luzzi is also current Chairman of the International Federation of Risk and Insurance Management Associations (IFRIMA) and an active member of ANRA, the Italian risk management association.

He is currently risk manager for Pirelli and before that worked for a number of companies including Ciba Geigy (now Novartis), Deutsche Bank and Marsh & McLennan. Mr. Luzzi has wide international experience and has worked in Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Bermuda and Ireland.

Mr. Luzzi is an active, highly regarded and well known individual within European and international risk and insurance management circles and would, in the eyes of many, be the natural successor to Mr. Den Dekker should he decide to step down after the Forum next year.

Mr. Saka is risk manager with leading Turkish company Sabinci Holding and FERMA’s first Turkish Director. He is President of ERMA, the Turkish risk management association that became a FERMA member in October of last year. He is a faculty member of Istanbul University’s Faculty of Business Management and was previously a risk control and process improvement consultant.

Mr. Schlicht is Executive Director and member of the board of the German risk and insurance management association, the DVS. He retired from these positions on June 30 but will retain a role at the DVS until the end of September.

His appointment to the board will provide FERMA with greater executive support at a critical time as it grapples with a number of key issues at political level, not least Solvency II, Europe’s planned new capital adequacy regime for the insurance industry and the Commission’s review of the Insurance Mediation Directive (IMD).

The federation has stepped up its lobbying efforts in recent times and the executive team of Florence Bindelle and Pierre Sonigo will no doubt welcome

Mr. Schlicht’s experience and knowledge as the workload builds.

Meanwhile, Mr. Den Dekker’s disappointment at the defeat of the Netherlands by Spain in the World Cup final will have hopefully been slightly softened by two personal wins for him last month as he was twice named Risk Manager of the Year.

The first award was given by his national association NARIM during its annual conference in Noordwijk, Nethlerlands (see report on pages 12 and 13) where he was named Risk Manager of the Year by fellow Dutch risk and insurance professionals. Mr. Den Dekker is a past President of NARIM.

Then a week later he was awarded Corporate Risk Manager of the Year by the judges of the annual ReActions magazine London Market awards in London.

The awards recognise his tireless contribution to the risk management cause in Europe as the head of FERMA and as corporate insurance risk manager for the Dutch multinational industrial conglomerate Stork.

The independent panel of judges for the ReActions awards, leading executives within London insurance and broking firms and professional advisers, described the FERMA President as an outstanding individual who has worked incredibly hard on behalf of the whole risk management community to ensure that its voice is heard at this critical time for the profession.

Mr. Den Dekker was keen to stress the role played by the team at FERMA as he said: “These awards acknowledge the growing role and visibility of FERMA in representing the value of risk management and of risk managers at European level. This is the result of team work, especially by the board of FERMA and its staff.”

–– The risk manager-only FERMA seminar will be held at the London Hilton Metropole hotel on Edgware Road on Sept. 28-29 and risk managers can register at www.ferma.eu