About insurtech australia
Our Mission
To make Australia a world leader in Insurtech and insurance innovation by fostering a diverse ecosystem of insurtechs, insurance professionals, entrepreneurs, and technologists who are striving to improve the insurance industry.
Who we are
Insurtech Australia is a national, not-for-profit organisation, run for the benefit of our members and partners across all corners of Australia. We are all about supporting and growing the Australian Insurtech community including Insurtech startups, Insurers, Hubs, Accelerators, and Investors, and advocating on behalf of our members and partners.
Insurtech Australia exists to support its Insurtech members and partners. We do that by providing networking opportunities, education and access to services and experts. We seek to facilitate connections with underwriters, distributors, customers and investors and advocate on your behalf with regulators, industry stakeholders and the government.
The Team
Insurtech Australia is led by a highly focused and enthusiastic team who strive to foster and grow the Insurtech Australia ecosystems
Board of Directors
James Orchard
Co-Chairperson and Director, Insurtech Australia
Chief Executive Officer, QBE Ventures
Bio
James Orchard is the CEO of QBE Ventures, the venture investment and development arm of QBE.
James is passionate about reinventing business models and improving customer experiences. He has over ten years of experience in the insurance industry, specialising in corporate venturing, strategy and M&A. Prior to his current role at QBE, James was the Executive General Manager, Innovation at IAG and has worked for Wesfarmers, Leighton Holdings and SISU Capital. He holds a Bachelor of Economics (BEc) from the University of Western Australia and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment (GDipAppFinInv) from the Securities Institute of Australia.
Outside of work, he enjoys a good coffee and spending time together with his wife, Jen, and their two small children.
Tetiana George
Co-Chairperson and Director, Insurtech Australia
CEO & Founder, Curium
Bio
Tetiana has been working in insurance for over 15 years. As part of Boston Consulting Group and Oliver Wyman she has consulted large global insurers, and headed up Claims & Operations for Australian insurtech Blue Zebra. She has worked on designing operating models, new products to distribution and technology in more than 20 countries across Europe, Asia and the Pacific. She currently runs an insurtech specialising in compliance and claims technology (Software as a Service) for insurers, underwriting agencies and brokers.
Tetiana speaks six languages, loves to travel and in her free time paints abstracts and portraits. She runs an online art gallery and dreams of winning the Archibald prize one day.
Amar Roomi
Director, Insurtech Australia
Chief Technology Officer, Blue Zebra Insurance
Bio
Amar is the Chief Technology Officer at Blue Zebra Insurance (BZI), one of Australia’s largest underwriting agencies, and overseas BZI’s technology and IT teams locally and abroad. With close to 15 years of experience in the insurance industry, Amar has held roles spanning across strategy, distribution, product, marketing, and technology.
Amar is passionate about digital disruption in the insurance industry, and the ways in which technology can help improve outcomes for all involved in the sector. At BZI this has translated into building a high performing technology team that has developed a cloud-native intelligent insurance system.
Beyond work, Amar enjoys cooking and spending time with his young family.
Simon Schwarz
Director, Insurtech Australia
Co-Founder & MD, FreightInsure
Bio
Simon is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of FreightInsure, Australia’s leading platform for embedded freight insurance.
As a senior financial services executive who has launched, scaled and invested in Insurtech and Fintech businesses for over a decade, Simon was previously the Chief Financial Officer of BizCover and non-executive director of its international operations. He started his career at Investec Bank in Australia, where he became Head of Investments, Head of Credit and Head of Board Risk and Capital, and has held non-executive director and chairman roles at several investee companies. Additionally, Simon has been a member of the advisory boards of ASX-listed Zip Co and of Middle, and is a member of Insurtech Australia’s Regulatory and Compliance Working Group.
Simon is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, holds an MBA (Exec) from UNSW and a Masters of Applied Finance from Macquarie University, received the University Medal for pure mathematics from the University of Sydney, and was previously an Honorary Fellow at Macquarie University’s Applied Finance Centre and a member of the Development Committee of the Menzies School of Health Research.
After learning the nuts and bolts of machine learning and neural networks through Stanford University on Coursera, he has implemented multiple commercially successful artificial intelligence projects at the companies he has been involved with.
In his spare time Simon loves to be in the great outdoors, especially offroad trail running, mountain trekking, ocean swimming and windsurfing.
