My contribution to a board
Boards of insurers and other member-based financial businesses now approve decisions that rest on data they rarely see: reserve estimates built from claims transactions, prices built from models, and automated routing of customers' requests. I can help a board ask the questions that sit between the actuarial report and the operational dashboard. Who owns this definition? What changed in the source system this quarter? How does this model perform for groups the tariff never meant to treat differently? Which manual adjustments sit between the ledger and the return? I have answered those questions as an executive for seven years in front of an audit and risk committee, and I know which answers are rehearsed. I would bring that experience to an audit or risk committee rather than to a chair. I am not an actuary and would not second-guess a reserving method. My contribution would be to check that the data and models beneath the method can bear the weight the board places on them, and that the people accountable for them are in the room when the board discusses them.
Judgement in practice
01Asking whose dataset the actuarial function's independence rests on
When our reserving team kept its own extract, the motor triangles were defensible inside the actuarial team and very hard to defend to anyone tracing them back to claims. On another board I would ask management to show where each material input to technical provisions comes from, how many manual adjustments sit between source and result, and who can change a definition without the actuarial function knowing. I would not ask directors to choose a data architecture. I would ask whether the actuarial function's independence rests on its judgement or on a separate dataset, because only the first is worth protecting. The €7.2 million restatement we accepted was the price of seeing the reserve clearly. A board should expect that kind of correction occasionally and read it as evidence that controls work, not as a reason to look for someone to blame.
02Testing a model by the members it routes
Our triage model passed its accuracy tests and still sent Dutch- and German-language claims down the slower route nearly twice as often as French ones. Aggregate performance hid a difference that members would have felt as delay. On another board I would ask for model monitoring broken down by the groups the business serves, including language, age and region, and for evidence of what happens to a customer when the model is wrong. I would also ask what management decided when a gap appeared, and who disagreed. Launching with a manual workaround, as we did, or delaying can each be right. What a board should not accept is a launch that serves one group first because the data for the others was inconvenient to prepare.
My first year on a board
Before the appointment took effect, I would expect the supervisor's fit-and-proper assessment and the company's induction. In the first three months I would read the last two actuarial function reports, recent supervisory correspondence and the minutes of the committee I was joining, then ask to spend a day with claims operations and a day with the reserving team during a quarter-end. I learn more from watching a close than from a presentation about one. By the second committee cycle I would want to understand the company's model inventory, its material manual adjustments and the conditions the board attached to recent technology investments. I would share early observations with the chair privately before raising them in committee, because a new director's question can sound like an accusation when it reflects only unfamiliarity. After the annual board evaluation I would ask the chair directly whether my questions had helped the committee or merely lengthened its agenda.
Conflicts and their management
Competition comes first. A seat with another Belgian non-life insurer would compete with my employer and is out of the question while I hold this post. Beyond that, four kinds of relationship need review. Our technology and data suppliers, including the platform and document-extraction providers, sell to other insurers and could appear on another board's agenda. Our reinsurers and the broker groups that place business with us have commercial interests in many companies. Ellekrone, where I worked until 2014, is unlikely to matter, but I would disclose it, and my small cooperative share in Arduvelle would be listed. I would set all of this out for the prospective chair before any formal process, step out of discussions that touched these interests, and decline the seat if stepping out would become routine. I would also ask Arduvelle's chair for written consent and agree how any approach between the two companies would be handled. Time is the last conflict to name: I would not accept a seat that needed more than my estimate during a quarter-end.
My independence statement
I am employed by Arduvelle, hold a member's cooperative share in it and manage supplier, reinsurer and broker relationships through that role. I would set these out for any prospective board and leave its chair and advisers to judge my independence against the code that applies.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | Audit · Risk · Technology and data, where a board has one |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 25 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Mutual and cooperative insurance · Health funds and occupational pension institutions · Member-owned financial services using models in pricing, claims or credit
- Company type
- Member-owned or mid-size European financial institution whose pricing, claims or credit decisions rely on customer data and models
- Company stage
- Bringing AI Act, DORA or reporting-data obligations under board oversight for the first time
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking a first non-executive seat on the audit or risk committee of a mutual or cooperative insurer outside Belgian non-life, a health fund, an occupational pension institution or a member-owned financial business that is placing more weight on models in pricing, claims or credit. I would be most useful where a board knows it must oversee data and AI obligations but has no director who has run them. I would not expect to chair a committee in my first term. I would bring working knowledge of Solvency II reporting data, claims and reserving processes, the GDPR treatment of health data, DORA's third-party requirements and the AI Act's high-risk regime as it applies to insurance. The board would need to supply the rest: actuarial, investment and legal expertise, and the experience of directors who have served before.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The Indian Independent Directors' Databank does not apply to my European board interests, and I am not registered with it.
- Working through the fit-and-proper expectations Belgian supervisors apply to insurance directors with our company secretary, including the questions they ask about time commitment.
- Discussing committee practice with two of Arduvelle's non-executive directors and observing, as a presenting executive, how our board follows up its own evaluation.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Arduvelle Assurances
Board audit and risk committee
March 2019–present
Presents twice a year on data quality in technical provisions and on the model register, and attended the January 2025 meeting that approved the renewal-pricing cap; no director appointment.
Member of a committee
Arduvelle Assurances
Executive committee and management model-risk committee
March 2019–present
Member of both management committees as chief data officer; these are executive bodies, not board committees.
Reported to a committee
Ellekrone Forsikring
Solvency II preparation steering committee
2011–2014
Reported quarterly on the readiness of reserving data for best-estimate calculations.