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• iWIN/iNED Workshop - How Respectable is Your Culture?

Our panel of specialists will cover the following five areas:

Culture in the Insurance Sector : Regulatory Context - We will recap why regulators speak about culture – both FCA and PRA – and what are they trying to achieve,  including the impact on colleagues and directors

How do YOU think about "Culture"? - We will provide an approach to think about Culture in a pragmatic way, allowing you to act on it.

Consider how to highlight ways of building more inclusive workplace cultures - with practical and easy to implement take-aways.

What does good look like? - Some examples of best practices identified at Board and Executive level.

Assessment of Culture

Learning Objectives for iNED and iWIN attendees

• Develop a deeper understanding of how the UK’s regulator approaches Culture in the financial services industry, including insurance.
• Develop an appreciation of the concept of Culture and learn about a practical approach to think about, and act upon workplace culture.
• Consider how to highlight ways of building more inclusive workplace cultures with practical and implementable suggestions.
• Ask what does good workplace culture look and feel like? Learn about some good examples of board and executive practices.

Panellists:

Jill Armstrong is a Bye-Fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.

She leads the ‘Collaborating with Men’ research programme which has combined workshops with a large scale, cross-sector, gender-balanced survey into the impact of gender bias on equality of opportunity in career advancement. Her reports on engaging men and highlighting ways of building more inclusive workplace cultures are available on the Murray Edwards College website.

Jill writes, speaks, lectures and consults on gender inclusion.

Jill’s book - Like Mother, Like Daughter?: How career women influence their daughters’ ambition - was published in 2017. Academic research is the latest act in Jill’s career. Previously she was a founding Director of two successful commercial market research and insight companies.

See the following links:

• Collaborating with Men
• Inclusive Networking & Sponsorship
• Everyday Workplace Inclusion

Michael Sicsic, Managing Director

Michael is a senior executive in the field of risk and regulation in the financial services sector, with a strong focus on insurance. He has a deep understanding of business models in the insurance sector and the related risks.

He has founded Sicsic Advisory, the London based boutique consultancy focusing on financial services risk and regulation, in 2019. His team has a unique combination of expertise gained through direct industry experience, consulting roles and regulatory supervision leadership role in the UK insurance market.

Before setting up his own company, Michael spent 4 years at FCA as head of supervision for the general insurance retail sector. Formerly, Michael spent five years at Aviva Plc. as Global Operational Risk Director covering Life Insurance, Asset Management and Non-Life insurance. Previously, he worked over 10 years at GE Capital in various senior risk and finance positions across commercial and corporate finance activities.

He has extensive international experience covering credit risk modelling and capital allocation, financial risk and ALM, operational risk management and quantification, conduct of business, financial crime compliance and M&A activity across multiple jurisdictions.

Michael is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Insurers.

Rhiannon Harfoot, Associate Director

Rhiannon is a senior consultant focusing on organisational culture. She works with leadership teams of organisations up to and including FTSE100s to bring about real and lasting transformation.

She draws on 15 years’ experience as a Director at Barclays, spanning a range of commercial and operational roles. Her interest in cultural change was sparked whilst implementing a Conduct Risk framework across their UK operations. She subsequently spear-headed an in-house Culture Programme to embed customer-centric behaviour across the organisation.

As a consultant she has worked with and coached Boards and Leadership teams to better understand and proactively manage the culture of the Board Room and beyond. This has varied from assessment of current culture and the effectiveness of values in driving behaviour to cultural transformation through the redesign of the organisation’s cultural ‘infrastructure’ (such as purpose, vision and values), people process and business controls.

Alongside assessment and Board coaching assignments, scale projects include a deep cultural assessment and change programme for an organisation with an insurance arm, behavioural change programme for a UK subsidiary of a FTSE 100 equivalent and cultural transformation for UK Building Society.