Our Council

Our Council

Elected by voting members, the 7-person Council is the NZSA’s governing body.

As outlined in the NZSA Rules, the Council is primarily responsible for:

Leadership – Setting and implementing the NZSA’s vision, policy direction and strategic objectives.

Governance – Ensuring good governance of the NZSA so that it is well managed, has effective risk management, complies with legislation and meets high standards of probity and transparency.

Stewardship – Protecting the reputation of the NZSA and the actuarial profession by maintaining and enforcing strict professional and ethical standards.

Our governance and organisational structure

See how our governance and organisation is structured and NZSA Council areas of responsibilities.

Meet our current Council members:

President
Lee-Ann du Toit

Lee-Ann is the Chief Actuary and Appointed Actuary at Chubb Life New Zealand. She is a Harvard Business School Alumni with almost 30 years of diversified experience in the financial services industry.

Lee-Ann became President of NZSA in November 2024. Lee-Ann actively participates in the key Insurance Industry issues in New Zealand, including solvency review, fair conduct to customers, increasing insurance coverage for all and inclusion and diversity in the insurance sector. She has been in executive roles including Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Direct Sales, and Chief Customer Officer for a large composite insurer in South Africa. Her previous role was at Deloitte New Zealand where she was Insurance Sector and Lead Partner for Actuarial Services.

View LinkedIn profile here 

Vice President
Greg Bird

Greg is currently a Partner with EY and leads EY’s Insurance and Actuarial practice in New Zealand. He has deep experience in the insurance industry having worked in corporate and consulting roles for over 20 years in New Zealand, Australia, India and the UK.

Greg has held Appointed Actuary, Chief Actuary, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer roles, and has held a wide range of executive insurance positions including senior roles in strategy, risk management, product and pricing areas.

View LinkedIn profile here

Secretary
Craig Lough

Craig is an actuary specialising in the field of general insurance. He began his career at Melville Jessup Weaver before working in Australia and then the UK. During his time away he worked for a large London consulting office as well as multinational insurance companies both in Australia and the UK.

Craig’s broad array of experience includes valuation, basis setting, auditing, process improvement, and exposure to IFRS and USGAAP.

Treasurer
Peter Davies

Peter runs an actuarial consulting practice based in Auckland, and is the Appointed Actuary to a number of small- and medium-sized New Zealand life, health, and general insurance companies.  He also provides support to insurers in the Pacific Islands.

Peter has a Business Science (Hons) degree from the University of Cape Town, and worked as a pension valuation actuary, and a life reinsurance actuary in South Africa, before moving to New Zealand where he has been practicing for the past 30 years.

Member
Catherine Henshall

Catherine has over 25 years of insurance industry experience, spread across New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Whilst primarily focussing on Life Insurance, Catherine has also worked for two global reinsurers.

Catherine has held global and Australasian project lead roles for Solvency II and IFRS17, and is therefore familiar with regularity change and related finance and actuarial system requirements. Catherine is also the appointed actuary for a New Zealand Life Insurer. Catherine was elected onto the NZSA council in 2024, and is passionate about leadership and corporate governance.

Member
Nathan Thomas

Nathan has over 20 years’ global experience in the financial services industry and is a qualified fellow of the UK and NZ actuarial professional bodies. Nathan holds a number of different actuarial consulting and governance roles through his company Actuary & Governance Ltd and he has completed an Executive MBA, BSc (Hons) and BCA at Victoria University of Wellington.

Nathan enjoys spending time with his family, exercising and volunteering in the community.

View Linkedin profile here

Member
Catherine Robertson-Hodder

Cath Robertson-Hodder is a NZ actuary who returned to NZ in October 2024 after spending more than 20 years practicing in Australia.

Cath started her career working at life insurers in NZ and Australia across a broad range of areas from financial reporting, experience investigations, pricing, product, unit pricing and capital.  She moved to consulting 17 years ago where she has worked across life, GI and health insurance as well as non-traditional areas including climate change.