Keynote Speakers

Professor Yacine Aït-Sahalia

Princeton University

Yacine Aït-Sahalia is the Otto A. Hack 1903 Professor of Finance and Economics at Princeton University. He is a renowned economist and a leading figure in the field of financial econometrics. He is a pioneer in the analysis of high-frequency financial data, such as tick-by-tick stock prices. His research has revolutionized our understanding of market microstructure and volatility. Aït-Sahalia has developed innovative nonparametric and semiparametric methods for estimating and testing economic models, particularly in the context of financial markets. He has also made significant contributions to the development of statistical inference methods for complex models, including those with jumps and stochastic volatility.

Aït-Sahalia has received numerous awards and honors for his groundbreaking research, including the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the NSF CAREER Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences, and the Great Arab Minds Awards in Economics. He held editorial roles in prestigious journals, including the Journal of Econometrics, Review of Financial Studies, Annals of Statistics, Econometrica, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Econometrics, and Finance and Stochastics.

Professor Jan Dhaene

KU Leuven

Professor Jan Dhaene is the head of the Insurance Research Groupe at KU Leuven. His research spans dependence modelling, financial risk management, integrated actuarial and financial models and decentralized risk sharing. He contributed to actuarial science with more than 150 publications in leading international journals, and co-authored two influential books, including Modern Actuarial Risk Theory, which has been translated to Chinese, Russian and Persian. Jan holds editorial roles in Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, ASTIN Bulletin, North American Actuarial Journal, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics and Istatistik Journal of the Turkish Statistical Association. He also held visiting appointments at major universities across Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Australia.

Associate Professor Munir Hiabu

University of Copenhagen

Munir Hiabu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. His research lies at the intersection of statistical methodology, interpretable machine learning, and actuarial science. He develops stable and transparent methods for high-dimensional data by exploiting meaningful low-dimensional structure. Before joining the University of Copenhagen, he was a Lecturer at the University of Sydney and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London, where he earned his PhD in Actuarial Science. He has also taught and supervised students at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Rwanda.

Yvonne Palm, FCAS, FIA, Chief Risk Officer

African Reinsurance Corporation

Yvonne Palm is a seasoned actuarial and risk management leader with more than 20 years of experience across the insurance and reinsurance sectors in Africa, Europe and the Americas. As Group Chief Risk Officer at African Reinsurance Corporation, she oversees enterprise risk management, compliance, governance and actuarial contributions across Africa and the Middle East. She has helped transform risk and compliance cultures, integrate sustainability considerations into risk strategy, strengthen governance frameworks and position risk as a strategic enabler of organisational resilience.

In 2026, Yvonne was elected as the next President-Elect of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), becoming the first Black woman and the first person based outside North America to serve in the Society’s highest elected leadership. She previously served on the CAS Board of Directors as the first Africa-based actuary elected by her global peers, contributing to the Society’s international strategy and expanding African participation in actuarial programmes.

Yvonne is Co-Founder of the African Actuarial Development Academy (AADA), an initiative dedicated to advancing actuarial education and professional development across the continent. Through AADA, she works with universities, professional bodies and international partners to bridge skills gaps, mentor actuarial professionals and build sustainable capacity for Africa’s insurance and financial services sectors.

Before joining Africa Re, Yvonne held senior actuarial roles at Travelers Syndicate Management, Markel International, ACE European Group (now Chubb) and Ernst & Young. She is a Fellow of both the Casualty Actuarial Society in the United States and the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the United Kingdom. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Grinnell College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honours in Mathematics and Economics.

A recognised thought leader in enterprise risk, governance and actuarial science, Yvonne is a frequent speaker at global industry events and a committed mentor to emerging professionals. Her recognitions include the Business Insurance Women to Watch – EMEA Award (2024), the Global Chief Risk Officer of the Year Award from the Women in Governance, Risk and Compliance Series (2021), and Grinnell College’s Joseph Wall Alumni Service Award (2025) for her leadership in advancing actuarial education across Africa.

Workshop Facilitators

Dr. Joana Amorim

ACTEX Learning

Dr. Amorim leads Content Development and Operations at ACTEX Learning, a US-based benefit corporation recognized as a global leader in actuarial education. With a PhD in Mathematics, she has taught mathematics in Portugal, France, the UK, and the US. She also taught Actuarial Science at Kansas State University (2019-2021) before joining ACTEX full-time. In her current role, she manages global collaborations with educators and fosters a network of passionate professionals dedicated to advancing actuarial science worldwide.

Professor Łukasz Delong

University of Warsaw

Łukasz Delong is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. He holds a PhD in Mathematics, a habilitation degree in Economics, and the title of Professor in Economics and Finance. He is a qualified actuary, holding a professional license issued by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF). He serves as Chair of the Examination Committee for Actuaries at the KNF and is a Board Member of the Polish Society of Actuaries.

Łukasz is an Editor of the ASTIN Bulletin – The Journal of the International Actuarial Association and an Associate Editor of the European Actuarial Journal. His research covers various areas of actuarial mathematics, with a particular focus on the stochastic modelling of financial risks and statistical learning methods.

For his research contributions, Łukasz has received numerous awards, including awards from the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, the President of the Republic of Poland, the Editorial Board of Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, the AFIR-ERM Section of the International Actuarial Association, and the Gauss Prize awarded by the Editorial Board of the European Actuarial Journal. He also has many years of practical experience in actuarial roles.