Asia Technology Awards - Judging Panel

Sharon serves as Head of the Group Transformation Office at AIA, the Asia Pacific region’s largest life and health insurer, leading enterprise-wide transformation programmes across the Group’s markets. Her work bridges technology and people to deliver large-scale change across one of the region’s most complex financial services organisations.

With more than 20 years of experience across IBM, AXA, AIG, and Accenture, supporting multiple Fortune 500 financial institutions, Sharon brings deep expertise in transformation delivery and technology strategy across Asia Pacific, with a focus on the banking and insurance sectors.

Ronnie moved into digital in 1999 as he was fascinated with new technology and its effects on human behaviour, particularly in marketing. That fascination has not dimmed in the intervening years. Finding value for businesses in this intersection of technology and behaviour is where he is most happy and productive.

Previously spending time in agencies (Saatchi & Saatchi and Mirum) and client side (EMI Records and Reed Exhibitions) has given him a rounded view of the digital, marketing and sales functions across many vertical industries. 

He has spent the last 13 years working in insurance after transferring from Hiscox in London (where he spent three years in a global role from 2013) to DirectAsia where he held positions in Marketing, Sales, Distribution and Technology across Singapore and Thailand. 

Following the merger of DirectAsia and Budget Direct in July 2025 he is now Chief Growth Officer across both brands in Singapore. 

Global Insurance Evangelist, Chief Risk Officer, InsureTech Pioneer and Risk Management Specialist who in a 45 year career has combined insurance practices with information technology. One of the first computer programmers in the London market whilst in an underwriting and broking capacity , he has kept the IT and insurance connection for his entire career spanning the market development from the punch card era to the present quantum computing era. He is on the Research Board of the International Insurance Society in New York and the organizing committee of their Asia insurance conferences. He was Global Head of Insurance for SUN Microsystems and Asia banking lead,  in Hong Kong,  and United Nations risk management consultant for 9 years out of New York, Bangkok and Geneva. He was an early pioneer in life and pension innovation in the UK under actuarial tutelage at a UK life company. He derived a good knowledge of the oil and gas industry working out of Alberta Canada and mineral geology/forestry from British Columbia.  He holds qualifications from the British Computer Society and Chartered Insurance Institute.  

Currently he is CEO of a family office advisory in Hong Kong, Global Insurance Lead for a causal AI company based in Singapore, board advisor to an embedded insurance digital insurance agency in Hong Kong and specialty advisor to a commercial insurance brokerage, He is involved in task forces in captive insurance management , Insurance Linked Securities (ILS), technology driven Managing General Agencies (MGA) and a protagonist in parametric insurance especially around intangible assets such as cyber, IP and climate change.  

He has extensive first-hand experience in stochastic modelling of regulatory capital solvency models and integration of catastrophe models. Worked extensively on the introduction of Risk Based Capital (RBC) regimes in China, Indonesia, Thailand, India and Australia. This includes dynamic financial analysis of balance sheet projections tied to risk appetite, bringing capital and risk closer together, simulation of insurance claims impact on solvency especially with natural and man-made disasters, claim reserve modelling and asset / liability matching using economic scenario generators based on  macroeconomics.  He was Asia CEO of an independent actuarial modelling company for several years, whose modelling solutions are used on a global basis across the financial services industry.  

Advisor to an Asia family office on fin-tec, deep-tech. insure-tech investments and innovative venture early stage and growth funds. Assisting seed, Series A/B venture fund deal flow raise funding with family offices and strategic investors. Similarly on Series C/D with institutional investors, co-investment as a LP, fund of funds, SPAC and pre IPO structuring in the Hong Kong and NASDAQ markets and interface to the Hong Kong government anchor LP funding schemes. Currently working on advanced manufacturing and robotics.  

A global citizen who has worked in over 100 countries in his various assignments and lived in U.K, Canada, Hong Kong, Morocco, India, Philippines and Mainland China he has been in the Asia Pacific region for 25 years as a permanent resident. He is a prolific writer of professional articles and international speaker on technology and financial services and futurist subjects. He was one of the early pioneers in blockchain technology in 2010 in Estonia and is now investing and working on causality and the changes in actuarial science brought about by third wave AI. He helped launch the first online insurance operation in the dot.com era raising money from the capital markets and recently the first insurance blockchain platform for marine insurance. With SUN Microsystems as insurance lead in 2008 he pioneered the early metaverse with second life and worked on avatar training and insurance protypes for insurance in the virtual world. He helped launch with first SAAS insurance platform in 2012 with a spin off from UNISYS as Asia Chairman and helped set up a microinsurance round table with RMS and Nan Yang University and established an affinity group section around Islamic Banking and Insurance for technology driven mutual insurance.  

A protagonist in intangible assets he is currently looking at specialty risk in cyber, IP. IOT, carbon assets and data itself. He was one of the early data scientists (database administrators) over 20 years ago and views data integrity as one of the most important topics on the planet. In 1980 he immersed himself in remote sensing course at the University of Waterloo to better understand the future of satellite technology.    He has an  educational background at the British Computer Society and the Chartered Insurance Institute. He is a frequent attendee at the major insurance conferences Monte Carlo Rendezvous, Singapore SIRC, ARTEMIS and the DWIC in Dubai. He is a frequent Chairman and panellist for Asia insurance conferences.  He is an accomplished bridge player and after dinner speaker.  In Canada he founded an opera company in 1980’s which is still going today. 

Jack Grocott is the Asia Managing Director for Infopro Digital’s Risk Global division which includes market-leading insight and information businesses such as Risk.net, FXMarkets, Chartis Research, Insurance Post, and 1LoD. 

Jack is an experienced and strategic leader with repeated success establishing and growing international B2B financial information businesses.

A journalist by training, for nearly 15 years Jack has embedded himself within the global insurance, reinsurance and risk management professions and has developed an expert knowledge on the topics that matter most to these communities.

Jonathan has written and commented about the insurance industry since 1998 as a reporter, news editor, editor and content director at Insurance Post.

He has appeared on television speaking about topics as diverse as the insurance implications of Michael Jackson’s death to the consequences of consolidation on motor premiums; and is a past winner of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association journalist of the year and Association of British Insurers general insurance trade journalist prizes.

Simone is the CEO of Insurtech Australia, a national not-for-profit organisation with a vision to create a world leading insurtech ecosystem which aims to foster a diverse community of insurance innovation and collaboration across the Australian insurance industry. An experienced leader in the insurance industry, Simone has held senior executive roles in both Australia and the UK and also has management consulting experience. Her previous role was that of Chief Operating Officer for Munich Re in Australasia. Additionally, she was a Non-Executive Director of ANZIIF between 2018 and 2024.

Franz Josef Hahn is the experienced and visionary founder and former CEO of Hong Kong based reinsurance specialist, Peak Re. With Hahn at the helm, Peak Re has grown from a startup in 2012 to a global company with a footprint that extends beyond Asia to Europe and the Americas. He has four decades of reinsurance experience as well as extensive strategic business advisory experience across the globe. He was the managing director of Swiss Re’s Greater China region from 1997 to 2008, and before that, has been with Munich Re for nearly nine years, six years of which as head of casualty in Hong Kong. Prior to founding Peak Re, Hahn was the managing partner at a boutique consulting firm that offers strategic business advisory services to financial institutions across the globe. Before launching his reinsurance career, he practiced law. Hahn is a member of the Geneva Association, a member of the Hong Kong Academy of Finance, and an honorary secretary of the Insurance Complaints Bureau.