IFoA India Conference

As India advances towards becoming a larger and more developed economy, the strength of its financial resilience will depend not only on economic growth, but also on how effectively individuals, businesses and governments prepare for long-term risks and opportunities.  

Insurance, pensions, healthcare financing, catastrophe financing and long-term savings will play an increasingly important role in supporting financial security, mobilising capital, managing emerging risks and reducing vulnerability to economic shocks.  

This keynote session explores how these interconnected pillars can contribute to a more resilient and sustainable future for India over the next two decades, while supporting inclusive growth, financial stability and national development objectives.  

Discussions will consider the evolving role of public policy, regulation, private sector participation and innovation in strengthening the country's long-term economic resilience. 

Speaker: TBC 

The global risk equation is changing rapidly, driven by climate volatility, technology, economic uncertainty and evolving customer needs. This plenary brings together reinsurance leaders to discuss how insurance and reinsurance models are adapting, where capacity and innovation will come from, and how stronger partnerships can help the industry manage uncertainty while creating new opportunities for sustainable growth. 

Panellists: TBC 

The next wave of innovation is being shaped by the powerful combination of technology and actuarial insight. This plenary brings together technology leaders to discuss how digital solutions, AI and advanced analytics are transforming actuarial functions. The session will explore new possibilities for innovation, evolving skillsets and how actuaries can move beyond traditional boundaries to become influential partners in technology-led transformation. 

Panellists: Sumit Ramani, Founder- ProtectMeWell 

AI is no longer a future technology. ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users. Current projections indicate that the top four tech giants alone are on track to pour around $600 billion into AI infrastructure in 2026. Across benchmarks in medicine, law, and coding, AI models are already outperforming humans. For insurance, the 2025 BCG-India InsurTech Association report identifies a $4 billion annual profit opportunity in India at full-scale AI adoption, a 60% uplift on the current profit base. 

But the real question is not about productivity gains. It is about how the fundamental risks we insure are changing – and whether our actuarial models can keep up. This session will explore questions such as: 

• How will AI-driven shifts in jobs, income, and savings reshape life and health insurance risk pools? 
• What does it mean for actuarial models when biological breakthroughs push human lifespan towards 150 years? 
• As economic wealth concentrates into fewer countries, companies, and individuals, how should investment and pension strategies adapt? 
• What cultural and mindset shifts do insurance leaders need to accelerate AI adoption, and what does it mean to become ‘AI first’? 
• How can India position itself as the AI for insurance hub for the world, and what is the role of actuaries?  

This panel discussion will have 3 to 4 speakers including a life and pensions actuary, a non-life actuary, and an AI (non-insurance) expert. It should be of interest to actuaries at all levels – from those working in pricing, underwriting, and product design to senior leaders navigating organisational transformation in an AI world.  

Speakers: Parakh Sethi, India InsurTech Association 

Specialty reinsurance pricing is different from traditional actuarial approaches due to sparse data, extreme severity risk, and rapidly evolving exposures. This is particularly evident in an uncertain political, economic and geographic environment where trade disruptions, accumulation risk, climate volatility, and geopolitical tensions intersect-especially across fast-growing economies. 

This session will explore a technical and strategic framework for pricing specialty classes across both quota share and excess of loss treaties. It will include numerical examples demonstrating how actuaries combine experience-based and exposure-based approaches to estimate expected losses, quantify uncertainty, and derive technical premiums. We will also highlight how external data sources, such as market benchmarks and vendor models, can be blended with internal views to enhance pricing robustness in data-constrained environments. 

We will examine how pricing outputs vary with assumptions around loss distributions, accumulation, and reinsurance structure (attachment points, limits, aggregate deductibles), highlighting the sensitivity of pricing decisions in low-credibility environments. We will discuss how market dynamics and broker-led negotiations influence the translation of technical price into final deal terms. 

The session will finally explore the evolving role of the actuary in specialty reinsurance pricing: moving beyond technical modelling to influencing underwriting strategy, structuring deals, and effectively communicating uncertainty to underwriters and brokers. This is achieved by shifting from point estimates to range estimates, and thereby more broadly influence decision making, incorporate uncertainty ranges, capital considerations, and strategic trade-offs. 

Speaker: Ankush Aggarwal, Westfield Specialty 

This presentation presents the results from the research work of the Actuaries Adding Value Working Party chaired by Mukami Njeru, with Jyotsna Kaushik, Akshay Dhand, Cathy Lyn, Oliver Betts, Andrew Smith and Paul Klumpes constituting the membership. The results will be first shared at the 33rd International Congress of Actuaries in November 2026 in Tokyo.  

The presentation includes the output and case studies from the research undertaken by the working party, using results from a survey with inputs from more than 300 actuaries and non-actuaries based worldwide.  

The research uses various themes which include to: 

• Identify the common threads in the work that actuaries do to add value across a range of practice areas 
• Identify and quantify the direct economic contributions of actuaries in insurance, healthcare, pension, investments and banking 
• Assess the indirect societal benefits derived from actuarial services, such as improved financial resilience products, improved financial literacy and risk management 
• Develop a framework for evaluating the broader impact of actuaries on economic stability and societal wellbeing 
• Identify areas where actuaries could add value in the future. 

This will be delivered as a combination of high-level and technical aspects. It should be of interest to actuaries at all levels with an interest in understanding the benefits and value actuaries bring to the society. 

Speaker: Jyotsna Kaushik, IFoA Council  

Geopolitical risk is increasingly affecting insurance, reinsurance, banking, investment, and enterprise risk decisions. Events such as war escalation, sanctions, regional instability, trade disruption, sovereign stress, and supply-chain disruption can rapidly influence claims experience, inflation, asset values, liquidity, capital requirements, and reinsurance capacity. However, many organisations still assess geopolitical risk mainly through qualitative commentary rather than structured, model-governed decision support. 

This presentation presents an actuarial and risk-management framework for modelling geopolitical risk using an AI-driven and data-supported approach. The framework translates geopolitical events and macro-financial stress indicators into practical risk signals that can support scenario analysis, stress testing, exposure mapping, capital modelling, ORSA, solvency assessment, pricing, reserving, underwriting appetite, and investment risk monitoring. 

The paper also discusses model validation, governance, explainability, and the practical limitations of geopolitical risk modelling. Rather than attempting to predict future conflicts with certainty, the objective is to provide early-warning indicators and structured stress scenarios that help actuaries and risk professionals understand vulnerability, accumulation, and financial impact across countries, sectors, routes, counterparties, and asset classes. 

The proposed framework is particularly relevant for insurers, reinsurers, pension funds, banks, asset managers, regulators, and actuarial professionals operating in increasingly uncertain global markets, including India and the wider emerging-market context. 

Speaker: Yonas Oman, GARP/Quantica risk  

Every actuarial team discusses generative and agentic AI, yet very few have taken the step to make it work on real actuarial problems in a regulated context. This session addresses that gap. 

We built a functioning prototype: an end-to-end actuarial pricing and reserving platform with an embedded AI agent that actuaries interact with through natural language. Rather than navigating fragmented spreadsheets, the actuary instructs the agent to execute tasks, selecting development patterns, running reserving analyses, finding anomalies in triangles, or creating and comparing loss ratio analyses with optimistic, prudent or regulatory assumptions. Crucially, every action is documented, auditable, governed by the actuary. 

This session will deliver: 

1. Context: how actuarial workflows transition from no AI to generative AI to agentic AI – and how the insurance industry and adjacent sectors are deploying these approaches, grounding what is possible today versus what remains aspirational.  
2. Live demonstration: attendees will see the agent perform actuarial tasks in real time, not on slides. We will invite audience members to suggest parameters/scenarios during the demo.  
3. Practical architecture lessons: lessons on designing for auditability and governance when regulators scrutinise every assumption: what worked, what failed and what we would do differently. 
4. A transferable transformation framework: how any actuarial team can begin shifting from manual execution to AI-enabled workflows, regardless of current tools or data maturity.  

We will address the profession's core hesitation: can you trust an AI agent with actuarial work without losing control? Our answer is yes, if the architecture is right.  

Speakers: Nikhil Bhatia and Madhav Samariya, Oliver Wyman 

Banking, pensions, investments and finance are often viewed as separate sectors. In reality, they form an interconnected ecosystem through which capital continuously flows between households, pension funds, insurance, asset managers, banks, governments and central banks. As financial markets become increasingly interconnected, understanding these relationships is becoming more important for actuaries across all practice areas. 

This session will explore the modern financial ecosystem by following the flow of capital and examining how risks and opportunities propagate across sectors. Using the 2022 UK LDI crisis as a case study, the presentation will illustrate how pension funds, investment markets, banking liquidity and central bank actions became closely intertwined during a period of market stress. 

Building on these themes, the session will examine how the actuarial profession has evolved from traditional responsibilities towards broader involvement in risk and capital management and strategic decision-making. Finally, it will consider the implications of AI and discuss the skills likely to remain critical in an increasingly automated and interconnected financial landscape. 

Target audience 

Actuarial students, newly qualified actuaries and experienced professionals working across pensions, investments, banking, insurance, risk management and related fields. 

Key learning outcomes 

By the end of the session, attendees will: 

• Understand how banking, pensions and investment sectors interact through capital flows 
• Appreciate the systemic interconnections highlighted by the UK LDI crisis 
• Recognise how actuarial roles are evolving beyond traditional technical specialisms 
• Develop a broader, systems-level perspective of financial risk and decision-making 
• Reflect on the opportunities and challenges that AI presents for the actuarial profession. 

Speakers: Isha Aggarwal, Natwest and Aarjav Jain

As climate change escalates the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, traditional indemnity-based crop insurance faces systemic challenges, including basis risk, high operational overheads, and delayed claims. In direct alignment with the 2026 theme, 'One World. Many Risks. One Profession,’ this session demonstrates how actuarial practice is leveraging global spacetech and advanced data science to build robust, tech-driven infrastructure for managing interconnected climate risks. 

The core of this presentation deconstructs the mechanics of an end-to-end operational and actuarial framework built from the ground up to solve legacy agricultural insurance bottlenecks. We will explore how combining ‘land use land cover’ (LULC) mapping with individual farm-level geotagging via official land registry survey numbers completely eliminates risk ambiguity at inception.  

Attendees will gain technical insights into the active deployment of satellite telemetry for automated sowing detection, crop classification, real-time health monitoring, and objective claims assessment. Crucially, the session examines the actuarial methodologies required to construct proprietary, in-house catastrophe models capable of accurately pricing these highly complex, spatio-temporally correlated risks within a fully digital ecosystem. 

To conclude, the session looks toward broader horizons. We will showcase how this identical underlying data infrastructure and catastrophe modelling engine can be extended to power innovative parametric coverages. This includes a forward-looking perspective on pivoting these models to insure climate risks to physical assets and structuring public sector financial mechanisms to model government costs for human displacement and emergency relief support. 

Speaker: Piyush Jain, Kshema General Insurance Limited 

When capital is abundant and competition intensifies, is the industry pricing risk or simply competing for it? 

Following a period of exceptional profitability and sustained hard market conditions, the global reinsurance sector is going through a softening phase characterised by intensifying competition for risk. Increased traditional and alternative capital, strong reinsurer balance sheets, no market turning catastrophic events and heightened market participation are driving greater capacity and downward pressure on pricing. 

While improved terms and broader coverage availability benefit insurers, heightened competition introduces familiar challenges. As reinsurers compete for market share, underwriting discipline can erode, risk appetites may expand, and pricing adequacy can come under pressure. Against a backdrop of persistent catastrophe losses, social inflation, cyber risk, and emerging systemic threats such as geopolitical tensions, the central question shifts from capacity availability to whether risk is being priced and selected appropriately. 

This session, by members of IFoA GI Asia International Working Party, will explore how reinsurers balance growth ambitions with disciplined underwriting in a competitive environment. We examine the drivers of increased capacity, the influence of alternative capital, and whether current pricing reflects underlying risk and uncertainty appropriately. The discussion will also consider how insurers can adapt reinsurance purchasing and programme design to remain resilient through the cycle and into the future. 

Drawing on broking and advisory perspectives, this session provides practical insights to help insurers, reinsurers, and actuaries navigate a more competitive market while maintaining long-term discipline and resilience. The session would be in a form of interactive live presentation. 

Speakers: Darren Murch, Gallagher Re, Charchit Agrawal, BDO and Rochak Garg, Bajaj General Insurance

Actuaries are trained to model uncertainty. GLMs, credibility frameworks and stress-tests are powerful but are built on one assumption: history guides the future. In a market reshaped by climate volatility, geopolitical instability, and shifting competitive dynamics, that assumption is cracking. 

This session asks: what if, instead of modelling a distribution, we simulated the market itself? 

Digital twin technology – ecosystems of autonomous AI agents representing customers, carriers, regulators, and courts – makes this possible today. LLM reasoning, cloud compute, and public insurance data have converged to a point where a virtual insurance market is no longer theoretical. Unlike Monte Carlo simulation, which explores the range of outcomes within a pre-defined model, this generates emergent behaviour: adverse selection builds organically, competitor responses evolve, and regulatory constraints impose real friction. 

The session will present what we learned building and testing this approach: how it works, where it works and what it asks of actuaries to use it responsibly. 

The more interesting question is not whether we can build it, but what it takes for the profession to treat its outputs as credible actuarial evidence. This demands new thinking on validation, back-testing, standards needed and how do actuaries adapt ways of working to evaluate, challenge, and ultimately own a new class of evidence? 

Target audience: P&C actuaries in pricing, reserving, and actuarial leaders and CROs responsible for market entry decisions. 

Key outcomes: A framework for where this methodology could extend actuarial practice, and a sharper view of the profession's role as AI reshapes what is analytically possible. 

Speaker: Neha Dewan, EXL Services  

The actuarial profession is entering a period of profound transformation. AI, automation, and global delivery models are rapidly changing how actuarial work is performed, how teams collaborate, and which skills will define future success. 

As routine technical activities become increasingly automated, the competitive advantage of actuarial teams will shift toward areas that machines cannot easily replicate: judgment, communication, collaboration, inclusion, adaptability, and ethical decision-making. 

Drawing on over two decades of experience leading large global actuarial teams, AI transformation initiatives, mentoring programmes, and academia-industry partnerships, this session explores what the actuary of 2030 may look like in practice. 

The session will examine: 

• How AI is reshaping traditional actuarial workflows 
• Which actuarial activities are most likely to evolve through automation 
• Why human judgment and critical thinking will become even more valuable 
• The growing importance of inclusion and psychological safety in innovation-led teams 
• How organisations can prepare actuarial talent for an AI-enabled future. 

Using practical examples from global actuarial delivery environments, the discussion will explore how the profession can balance efficiency with governance, innovation with trust, and technology with human insight. 

Rather than focusing solely on technology, the session presents a broader perspective on workforce evolution – including leadership, mentoring, collaboration, and continuous learning. 

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for thinking about future actuarial capabilities and actionable ideas to help individuals and organisations prepare for the next decade of the profession. 

Speakers: Bani Dhir and Rajiv Sharma, Mercer 

Drawing on our experience supporting financial institutions across the UK, this session explores how Indian banks and insurers can move from climate-risk awareness to quantified financial impact. It is designed to cover:   
 
1. Leading regulatory standards within climate risk: 
Examine key developments in climate risk assessment and reporting across advanced markets such as the UK, with relevant reflections on India’s evolving landscape and the implications for financial institutions.  
 
2. Beyond compliance: Strategic risks and opportunities:  
Understand how robust climate risk operating models can help organisations manage emerging risks and identify strategic opportunities, and how actuarial professionals contribute through their specialised risk expertise.  
 
3. From climate signals to financial impacts:  
Explore how physical and transition risks may translate into financial impacts for banks and insurers with consideration of potential impacts across key financial statement items and risk metrices.   
 
4. Practical implementation:  
Explore banking-led techniques to emissions measurement and baselining, climate stress testing, portfolio monitoring and target tracking, with clear parallels for insurance portfolios.  

Speakers: Riju Tandon, Pradyumn Bharani and Vanshika Jain, PwC 

When IFRS 17 took effect across major insurance markets in 2023, equity investors in Europe and Asia-Pacific faced a fundamental question: how to value an insurer with new financial statements? The answer, worked out over subsequent reporting cycles, represented a genuine reorientation in how markets price insurance franchises, and India is next. 

The presentation will demonstrate how:  

• Global investors navigated the IFRS 17 transition 
• P/E multiples lost their anchor as earnings decomposed into insurance service results and CSM releases 
• Analysts covering AIA, Prudential plc, and Aegon rebuilt models around equity plus net CSM 
• VNB margins were recalibrated 
• The CSM emerged as the most informative disclosure. 

The key outcome is a transition-ready toolkit: rebasing P/EV multiples, restating VNB margin, and developing fluency in new metrics including the onerous contract ratio, RA release rates, and new business CSM margin, equipping investors to compare and evaluate life insurers with frameworks unavailable under the old standard. 

India stands at the precise inflection point that global insurers navigated two years ago. Benchmarks for HDFC Life, ICICI Prudential, SBI Life, and LIC will be mapped against global peers. Ind AS 117 is not merely an accounting change, it is the adoption of a shared analytical language that brings Indian valuations into direct conversation with global multiple re-rating dynamics, creating both the risk of sharper scrutiny and the opportunity of a broader, better-informed investor base. The session aims to explore the new lens to navigate what comes next in India. 

Speakers: Jinal Pandit and Vinit Borundiya, K.A. Pandit 

GenAI has already moved from novelty to utility, and it is now moving from individual tools to coordinated systems of agents capable of operating across workflows. For insurers and actuaries, this is not a distant development to monitor from the sidelines. It is arriving in the functions, vendors, and platforms that underpin how the industry operates today. The professionals who understand this shift early not just in concept, but in practice will be better positioned to shape how it is adopted, governed, and applied within their organisations. 

The individual applications of GenAI in insurance are already demonstrable like underwriting support, claims management, actuarial model development, model documentation, data enrichment, scenario analysis, and automation. GenAI agent ecosystem is a coordinated system of specialised agents that moves across functions, shares outputs, and operates end-to-end, turning a collection of capable tools into a coherent, intelligent workflow. 

In this presentation, we will explain the evolution from traditional automation to GenAI agent ecosystems. We will examine current market applications and assess where and how these agent systems can be deployed along with their limitations. The presentation will include live demonstration of a GenAI agent ecosystem that will show how multiple agents can work together across a defined workflow, combine information and produce outputs. 

Speakers: Santosh Kumar Yadav and Aadil Chheda, K.A. Pandit  

Extreme heat is becoming one of the most important but underdeveloped actuarial risks facing India and South Asia. It is not only a climate issue. It affects labour productivity, business interruption, agriculture, infrastructure, energy demand, credit risk, health systems and household financial resilience. 

Asia is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Extreme weather is already placing pressure on economies, ecosystems and societies across the region. WMO has highlighted that India and Pakistan regularly experience pre-monsoon temperatures above 50°C, with extreme heat creating significant impacts on health, productivity and income. 

This session will explore what a 50°C economy means for actuaries. It will ask how traditional actuarial assumptions may need to change when extreme heat becomes a recurring economic stress rather than an occasional event. The presentation will consider implications for non life insurance, business interruption, parametric products and climate stress testing.  

The session will focus on practical actuarial questions: what is the right exposure measure for heat risk? How should actuaries allow for adaptation and behavioural change? Can heat risk be insured affordably? How should we think about basis risk in parametric heat products? What data sources are credible? How should actuaries communicate uncertainty when climate, health and economic risks interact? 

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for understanding extreme heat as an actuarial risk and identifying where actuaries can support better pricing, product design, risk management and resilience. 

Speakers: Harsh Jaitak, Howden IAL and Vinayak Rawat, Sri Ram General Insurance 

Climate change is undermining development and socio-economic stability by driving more frequent and severe disasters. Adaptation builds resilience by helping insurance shift from crisis response to proactive risk management. 

Insurance and risk financing are only part of the solution and must be embedded in a broader climate adaptation strategy.  
 
In this session, we will see how we can maximise the benefits of insurance for climate adaptation. Climate adaptation reduces losses, protects lives, lowers recovery costs, and creates wider economic and environmental benefits. By 2100, adaptation measures could reduce coastal flood losses in the EU and UK by around 90%. Re/insurers can support policymakers with risk insights, residual risk management, and coverage conditions. 
 
Insurance supports financial resilience through response and recovery. But if it only replaces losses without strengthening climate resilience, underlying vulnerabilities persist. Insurance is most effective when integrated into a long-term climate adaptation strategy, rather than used only for post-disaster recovery. 

Some of the key adaptation measures include (not restricted to): 

• Risk identification: the development of insurance products supports more consistent risk identification, especially in developing countries with insufficient scale to diversify risk effectively. For example, Ghana partners with the African Risk Capacity
• Risk reduction: The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association promotes mitigation in low-rise buildings by requiring weatherproofing standards
• Resilient reconstruction: Building Back Better embeds risk reduction into post-disaster reconstruction
• Fostering insurance innovations: Women’s Climate Shock Insurance is a parametric microinsurance product that supplements lost wages from extreme heat for women in northwest India. 

Speaker: Dhrubajyoti Banerjee, Swiss Re 

Organisations today face increasingly interconnected emerging risks that challenge traditional approaches to risk transfer and financing. Against this backdrop, captive insurance has emerged as an attractive solution, offering greater control, flexibility, and resilience in managing risk. As captives grow globally, actuaries are well positioned to contribute to design, operation, and governance, extending the profession’s reach into new risk domains. This aligns closely with the IFoA India Conference 2026 theme, 'One World. Many Risks. One Profession.’ 

In this session, we will discuss questions around captive insurance, including: 

• What are the fundamentals of captive insurance, including common structures, domicile considerations, and feasibility assessment? 
• How captives are used to address unconventional risks such as reputational damage, product warranty, and intellectual property. 
• How can captives provide improved capital efficiency, pricing stability, and direct access to the reinsurance market? 
• How can actuaries design effective insurance solutions through captives while promoting governance, compliance, and confidence among stakeholders? 
• How are emerging trends, data analytics, and AI transforming the captive insurance landscape? 

The session will include practical case studies on cybersecurity and pollution liability/ESG risks, demonstrating how captive insurance solutions can be tailored to organisational needs. Presented in person by actuarial professionals from Lewis & Ellis working in general insurance. 

Key takeaways: Attendees will gain insights into captive insurance, emerging risks, and evolving role of actuaries in risk financing solutions. 

Speakers: Akshay Bhutani, Priyanshu Khandelwal, and Govind Goyal, Lewis & Ellis 

As AI and advanced analytics become integral to financial decision-making, the role of actuaries is evolving beyond traditional modelling and moving towards strategic advisory, governance, and enterprise leadership. The profession has a unique opportunity to combine data-driven insights with human judgment, ethical decision-making, and effective communication to address increasingly complex risks. Rather than framing AI as a threat to the profession, this session positions it as an opportunity: a chance for actuaries to elevate their role from technical modellers to strategic advisors and enterprise leaders, uniquely equipped to navigate uncertainty across insurance, pensions, investments, and emerging risk domains. 

Speaker: TBC 

In today’s volatile global landscape, geopolitical risks have become key drivers of uncertainty for the insurance industry. These risks, spanning armed conflict, trade tensions, sanctions, political instability, cyber threats, and climate-related events, are interconnected and often create cascading impacts on financial markets, economic conditions, and insurance outcomes. This directly affects asset values, claims experience, reserving assumptions, and regulatory responses. 

This session will explore the implications of such risks on the insurance industry, focusing on actuarial reserving and regulatory reporting. In particular, we will cover: 

• Impact on inflation, interest rates, and bond yields, and the knock-on effects on reserve estimations 
• Impact on pricing, including emerging trends like war risk premiums 
• Supply chain disruptions and impacts on actuarial work 
• Litigation trends observed recently linked to geopolitical events 
• Additional uncertainty allowances to protect balance sheet strength, for example events not in data (ENIDs) 
• Changes in policy terms and conditions, including evolving exclusions, for example recent cyber exclusions in the Lloyd’s Market 
• Emergence of new insurance products like political risk insurance. 

The session will examine how insurers communicate these risks in public and regulatory disclosures (for example SFCRs), with comparisons across the UK market, alongside relevant developments in India such as government-backed marine insurance pools. 

Through examples and case studies, it will highlight the limitations of traditional actuarial models in capturing systemic geopolitical risks and emphasise the growing importance of actuarial judgement and scenario-based approaches, positioning actuaries as strategic advisors in navigating uncertainty. 

The speakers are reserving actuaries and will engage the audience using interactive live polls. 

Speakers: Tvisha Gupta and Danish Mahajan, Intact 

India's risk landscape is evolving faster than the capacity of traditional insurance solutions. Ranked sixth globally among countries most affected by extreme weather events in the 2025 Climate Risk Index, India has suffered over USD 180 billion in economic losses from extreme events since 1993, while more than 90% of natural catastrophe exposures remain uninsured. As climate volatility, infrastructure concentration and geopolitical uncertainty continue to increase, the protection gap presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the insurance industry.  

Traditional insurance alone cannot close this gap. The question is: what solutions can?  

Attention is increasingly turning towards Alternative Risk Transfer mechanisms as complementary risk financing solutions in India. While IRDAI developments have enabled solutions such as parametric insurance and exchange-traded weather derivatives, adoption remains at an early stage, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges in building a more resilient risk management framework for the future.

Through real Indian examples alongside global case studies, this session will explore how insurance and capital markets are converging to build resilience at scale. Attendees will gain insights into the catastrophe models available for Indian perils and how advanced risk analytics is enabling the next generation of risk-transfer solutions.   

Designed for actuaries, risk professionals, insurers, reinsurers, consultants, students and regulators, this session will provide a practical introduction to ART and its growing relevance in India. As the boundaries between insurance, capital markets and technology continue to evolve, attendees will gain valuable insights into the tools and approaches that are shaping the future of risk management. 

Speakers: Suruchi Bhargava, Ishani Doshi and Niyati Modi, K.A. Pandit

Managing regulatory capital under Solvency II demands a massive operational effort to process complex balance sheets and evaluate intricate 1-in-200-year risk scenarios. Traditionally, analysing these capital calculations is a slow, segmented process. Actuaries must manually extract quantitative data, cross-reference it with historical model runs, and check it against dense regulatory and methodology documents to explain a single capital movement. This paper outlines a practical framework to compress this cycle, enabling insurance companies to explain and act on capital results almost instantly. 

The proposed solution connects three critical assets – structured balance sheet data, historical model outputs, and unstructured internal and regulatory documents – into a unified cloud architecture leveraging Databricks, Power BI, and GPT models. By deploying retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), the system simultaneously scans current results, recognises anomalies based on historical baselines, and references internal policy documentation to generate plain English explanations for capital changes, possible triggers for future actions. 

Speaker: Avnish Nainawatee, M&G 

India is among the world's most climate-exposed economies, yet over 90% of its catastrophe exposure is uninsured. As regulators, insurers and state governments explore new approaches to catastrophe-risk financing, 2026 is shaping up to be an inflection point for how disaster risk is financed in India. 

Despite widespread interest in parametric and hybrid covers, the same questions come up time and again when actuaries try to design and price these products: 

• Why use a parametric trigger at all, rather than indemnity cover? 
• How do you design a trigger from rainfall, temperature, wind or satellite indices, and where do you find reliable data (IMD networks, remote sensing)? 
• How do you measure, price and communicate basis risk – the gap between payout and loss? 
• How do you price low-frequency, high-severity, correlated risk, and what does it mean for reserving? 
• Do hybrid structures – a fast parametric payout, then an indemnity adjustment – offer the best of both, or the complexity of both? 
• How do reinsurance, catastrophe bonds and pools fit in? 

This will be an interactive presentation by product and pricing actuaries, showing how a parametric or hybrid cover is designed, priced and structured, connecting local triggers to global reinsurance – a take on 'One World, Many Risks.' A high-level rather than technical session for actuaries at all levels. 

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for designing and pricing parametric and hybrid products, a structured approach to assessing and communicating basis risk, and a clearer view of where India's catastrophe insurance market may be heading. 

Speakers: Dhananjay Bhatia and Kashish Taneja, EXL 

Global merger and acquisition (M&A) activity continues to evolve amid economic uncertainty, geopolitical shifts, technological disruption, changing capital market dynamics, and increasing regulatory scrutiny. While deal volumes and valuations fluctuate across regions and sectors, organisations remain focused on acquisitions as a strategic lever for growth, transformation, capability enhancement, and market expansion. At the same time, stakeholders are demanding greater certainty around value creation, resilience, and risk management throughout the transaction lifecycle. 

Against this backdrop, the role of actuaries is expanding significantly beyond traditional due diligence. Today, actuaries are uniquely positioned to provide data-driven insights that support transaction decision-making from deal origination through post-merger integration. Leveraging expertise in risk quantification, predictive analytics, financial modelling, capital assessment, and scenario analysis, actuaries can help identify hidden risks, evaluate synergies, assess liabilities, optimise transaction structures, and strengthen integration planning. 

This session will explore emerging global M&A trends and examine how actuarial capabilities are increasingly being applied in a transaction lifecycle. Drawing on practical examples and evolving market practices, the discussion will highlight how actuaries can contribute to enhanced deal outcomes by bridging finance, strategy, and risk management perspectives. 

Participants will gain insights into the future of M&A, the growing expectations placed on risk professionals, and the opportunities for actuaries to become strategic advisors who help organizations navigate uncertainty, unlock value, and improve transaction success in an increasingly complex business environment. 

Speakers: Ritika Rustagi and Prakhar Goel, Oliver Wyman and Prajal Goyal, Victor Insurance 

Asset liability management (ALM) has long been at the heart of the insurance industry, where actuaries have played a critical role in managing long-term liabilities, interest rate risk, liquidity needs and capital resilience. However, the banking industry is increasingly facing many of the same challenges, albeit through a different lens.

As interest rates become more volatile, customer behaviour grows less predictable, and regulatory expectations continue to evolve, banks are placing greater emphasis on interest rate risk in the banking book (IRRBB), liquidity risk, behavioural modelling, stress testing, and integrated balance sheet management. These are areas where actuarial skillsets are highly relevant and increasingly valuable. 

This session explores the parallels and differences between ALM in banking and insurance, highlighting how both industries are converging towards a more holistic view of balance sheet risk. The discussion will cover behavioural modelling of deposits, prepayments and surrender behaviour, interactions between liquidity and interest rate risk, economic value and earnings perspectives, and the growing role of scenario analysis and AI-driven analytics.

The presentation will also examine how the role of ALM is evolving from a regulatory and reporting function to a strategic decision-making tool that influences pricing, product design, funding strategies, capital allocation and enterprise-wide risk management. 

Key takeaways: 

• Understand the similarities and differences between banking and insurance ALM frameworks
• Explore how behavioural assumptions drive both interest rate and liquidity risk outcomes
• Learn how ALM is evolving from risk measurement to strategic balance sheet optimisation
• Identify emerging opportunities for actuaries within banking, treasury, risk and finance functions
• Appreciate the future role of actuaries in an increasingly integrated risk management landscape

Speaker: Yash Ratanpal, Acies 

India aspires to be a fully developed country by 2047. In terms of estimates: USD ~30 trillion GDP. Ninety percent of India’s infrastructure will be built from now to then. One of the biggest impediments is climate breakdown.  

The power of actuarial ‘intervention’ has come to fore at Hormuz. Vessels cannot move without P&I cover. Actuaries can muster such influence in the climate space and provide pathways toward mitigation, adaptation and resilience.  

If India must arrive where it envisions to be in the chosen timeline, who is best suited to lend a healing hand? Can it afford to miss leveraging the IFoA way forward? 

Target audience and assumed knowledge level: Actuaries, CAs, CS, CROs, academics, regulators, sustainability and ESG professionals, lawyers, board members. 

Key outcomes and knowledge that attendees will take away: Sensitisation, actionables and timelines. Physical, transition and liability risks. Global case studies on regulations, case laws. 

Speaker: Praveen Gupta, Sanctuary Asia 

IFRS 17 is a global, principles-based accounting standard designed to improve comparability across insurance markets. However, its application to with-profits (WP) business is particularly challenging due to policyholder participation and estate management. This creates a key challenge for practitioners: clearly distinguishing non-negotiable principles from areas requiring professional judgement, while avoiding inconsistency, unintended outcomes, and governance risk. 

Aligned with the conference theme ‘One World, Many Risks, One Profession,’ this session explores how a single global standard is applied across different markets, each shaped by local interpretation, modelling choices, and governance practices. It highlights the central role actuaries play in delivering disciplined, consistent, and well-governed outcomes by bridging global principles with local product and market realities. 

Using a representative 90/10 WP construct, the session presents a practical framework to clarify what is non-negotiable within the VFA measurement model, mutualisation, estate treatment, and risk mitigation. It explains where judgement is required and how it should be applied within the clear boundaries set by the IFRS 17 standard. 

This session is most relevant for actuaries, finance, and risk professionals involved in IFRS 17 reporting, modelling, and oversight. Designed for participants with a working knowledge of IFRS 17, it remains accessible through clear explanations and simplified examples. Attendees will leave with a structured approach to measuring typical WP contracts in accordance with IFRS 17 reporting requirements. 

Speakers: Sangay Sampartak, Alok Gupta, EY and Shubham Aggarwal, GDS 

A 2022 Capgemini report found that Airbnb hosts using dynamic pricing achieved profit uplifts of up to 40%. This highlights the potential value of demand and competition-aware pricing principles increasingly applied through price optimisation framework. 

Advances in AI, machine learning and enhanced data have improved how insurers calculate technically ‘correct’ prices, but the real challenge starts when those prices meet the market. Insurers must balance actuarial indications with competition, broker expectations, customer willingness to pay, and financial targets. When these don’t align, pricing becomes a practical trade-off between profitability, growth, and staying competitive.   

This is where optimisation comes into play – the ability to write the right business at the right price can be the difference between profitable growth and lost opportunity.   

This session explores both the business and practical sides of pricing optimisation. It will cover:  

• Pricing optimisation: what it is and why it matters 
• What ‘best‑in‑class’ optimisation looks like 
• How optimisation is implemented: from data to decisions 
• Turning insight into action: using optimisation to support growth and profitability goals 
• Responsible optimisation: governance and regulation. 

Drawing on real-world experience across commercial lines portfolios, speakers will share not just how optimisation works, but how it is actually implemented, the challenges encountered, and the lessons learned.  

Speakers: Tushar Ojha, Riya Garg and Manan Thakkar, Intact 

India is emerging as a global hub for actuarial talent, innovation and entrepreneurship. From GCCs evolving into strategic centres of excellence, to homegrown ventures creating technology-led risk solutions, new opportunities are reshaping the profession.

This plenary explores how global capability, entrepreneurial ambition and actuarial expertise can converge to redefine roles, unlock borderless opportunities and amplify India’s impact on the global actuarial landscape. 

Panellists: TBC

As India advances towards Viksit Bharat 2047, the future of work will be shaped by evolving employment models, technology and labour reforms.  

This plenary explores how India can balance economic competitiveness with worker protection, social security and inclusion. Leaders will discuss workforce formalisation, the gig economy, skills and AI, charting pathways to build a productive, resilient and future-ready workforce. 

Panellists: Preeti Chandrashekhar and rest TBC

This engaging plenary session at the IFoA India Conference 2026 explores the evolving landscape of professional ethics and accountability. Moderated by IFoA President Paul Sweeting, the panel uses real-world scenarios and practical examples to examine complex ethical dilemmas. Attendees will explore how to navigate emerging professional challenges while upholding the highest standards of integrity, public interest, and governance within an increasingly dynamic financial ecosystem. 

Panellist: Paul Sweeting, IFoA President, and rest TBC