IFoA GIRO Conference

The former CEO of Lloyd’s of London, Dame Inga Beale is a British businesswoman with over four decades of experience in the financial services sector. Inga led the global insurance market through a dramatic period of modernisation, opening the Lloyd’s Innovation Lab, expanding the company’s global access, and challenging the ‘old boys’ club’ image of the 330-year-old institution.

Prior to joining Lloyd’s, Inga held a variety of international leadership positions for GE Insurance Solutions, before becoming Group CEO of Swiss reinsurer Converium. She was then on the Global Management Board of Zurich Insurance Group, until she became Group CEO of Canopius, one of the top insurers in Lloyd’s market.

During her time at Lloyd’s, Inga developed a culture of innovation, modernisation, and inclusion. She expanded the company’s reach to new, high-growth markets, including Asia and the Middle East and delivered some of Lloyd’s strongest financial results. As the first female CEO of Lloyd’s, she played a key role in changing cultural perceptions and highlighting the importance of diversity and inclusion. Under her leadership, Lloyd’s launched a number of diversity initiatives, including the Dive In Festival, which grew to become the only world-wide insurance industry diversity and inclusion event.

Drawing on her experience at Lloyd’s, Inga discusses what it means to lead cultural change and steer a company through a technological transition without losing its core character. Her talks uncover how successful transformation means establishing a balance between tradition and history, and modernity and innovation. Moreover, she tackles breaking glass ceilings, and building inclusive environments within the workplace. Inga also analyses the reasons behind a lack of trust in both governments and the corporate sector, as well as the rise in public emphasis on corporate responsibility, purpose, ethics, and sustainable business models.

She serves as an Ambassador for the UK LGBT Charity Stonewall and was awarded a Damehood in 2017 for her influential work in driving the inclusion agenda for women and the LGBT community as well as her services to the broader UK economy.

She has served as a member of the London Mayor’s Business Advisory Board, President of the UK Chartered Insurance Institute, and a member of the UK Government’s Financial Services Trade and Investment Board.

She currently serves as Chair of the climate solutions company South Pole, and also sits on boards of the claims handler Crawford & Company, the global insurance broker and advisor Willis Towers Watson, and the Dutch insurer NN Group. In addition,  her pro bono roles include President of the British Swiss Chamber of Commerce.

Eliza Manningham-Buller headed Britain’s Security Service (MI5) from 2002 to 2007, before serving as Chair of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable funders of medical research and other activity to improve human health, from 2015 to 2021.

From counter terrorism to pandemics, Eliza has led organisations through remarkable and pressurised times.
Eliza reflects on twenty years as a leader of two very different organisations, but which share many traits and goals in managing the unpredictable and trying to keep millions safe. She outlines how leaders’ priorities must change in order to keep pace with shifting demands from all stakeholders and the constant emergence of new, often unimagined challenges. From existential threats such as climate change and pandemics to diversity and fairness, leaders have to seriously consider an ever-changing, complex landscape of
priorities that influence both their organisation’s success and society’s future.

At MI5, Eliza led the Service through significant change, expansion, and scrutiny as it dealt with the growth of Al-Qaida terrorism after 9/11, and in response to the 7/7 attacks in London. Prior to serving as Director General her various roles took her to Washington during the first Gulf war, as well as seeing her responsible, at separate times, for work on Irish terrorism, surveillance, technical collection, finance, and IT, before she became Deputy Director General in charge of intelligence operations.

During her time as Chair of the Wellcome Trust, Eliza helped lead the UK’s biggest charity, overseeing funding for scientific research into all aspects of health and wellbeing, from infection to mental health, as well as responding to Covid-19. Having foreseen the threat of a pandemic on the scale of Covid-19, the Trust also helped to establish the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

In presentations Eliza covers lessons in leadership from throughout her career, drawing on her experience in the most demanding of environments to stress the need for leaders in any walk of life to engage in frank dialogue and invite criticism: “Do not try to be something you’re not; take responsibility for your team and remember that praising people takes seconds and can make an enormous difference. And don’t forget that humour can be found even in the most awful situations.”

Eliza is a crossbench peer, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a former president of the respected foreign policy think-tank Chatham House. She was Chair of Council at Imperial College for four years, and has delivered the prestigious BBC Reith Lectures. Her analysis in those lectures of the theme 'Securing Freedom' also formed the basis of her book of the same title.

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