Ian has made it his life’s work to help companies understand how to improve their world by helping them better understand their customers. In 2003 he launched market and consumer benchmarking specialist, Consumer Intelligence who now operate in 9 countries globally. Ian is a Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing, a Best Business Awards judge and an I Love Claims Board member. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and regular contributor to the Post and Insurance Times.

Simon Calder is Britain's leading travel commentator and is known as “the man who pays his way” which means that he pays for his own travel. He began his career at Gatwick airport, where he cleaned out planes for Sir Freddie Laker and, later, frisked passengers (for a job, that is; not a hobby). He then started to write travel guidebooks and travel articles. Today Simon is Travel Correspondent for The Independent. Simon also writes for the Evening Standard, the i newspaper, as well many other publications. Simon is a regular guest on national TV and radio, often seen on BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain, This Morning, CNN, ITV News and Sky News. Plus BBC Radio 4 and 5. He has a new travel podcast called Escape, which can be found on SoundCloud, Spotify and Apple. He is frequently interviewed on national and local BBC radio.

Sian joined the Ombudsman Service in 2013 and leads a team of ombudsman managers and investigators. Sian is also the head of practice for our travel and medical insurance knowledge group. The majority of Sian’s professional career has been spent in domestic and international private medical insurance including responsibility for risk, medical policy and product development. She has also spent several years in the private hospital sector.

Leah is a solicitor and worked in private practice before joining the Financial Ombudsman Service in 2010. As an ombudsman manager, Leah is responsible for a team of investigators, who work on a mix of complaints – including travel and medical insurance cases. Leah leads the Ombudsman’s knowledge group on travel insurance – working to ensure consistency, identify key trends and develop the Ombudsman’s approach to these type of complaints.

Recently returned to AXA after a spell at an MGA, Nel has enjoyed a variety of insurance roles across product and distribution channels, including broking, underwriting, marketing and IT. Passionate about customer experience, leading the travel team is a dream job as this product in particular needs to adopt to changes in customer behaviour and world events. Nel’s key focus is to maintain the leading position AXA has in travel insurance, both from a market share and proposition perspective.

After 25 years in travel insurance in various guises, starting as a Lloyd’s broker and now at Collinson, I’ve enjoyed supporting ITIC over the years, and am hopefully not too stuck in my views and still open to new ideas and opportunities. Heading up the travel insurance product line, I have responsibility and oversight of all global travel insurance relationships where Collinson are delivering an insured solution to a client or direct to the consumer. I also oversee our SmartDelay product, a real-time assistance product that allows digital access to our airport lounge network in the event of a flight delay, as well as PayPal and other benefits in development.

Jason is a director of Designate Communications Ltd, a brand-focussed creative agency based in Brighton. As an agency, Designate works with clients in a numbers of sectors, but with particular experience in the travel and insurance industries, which makes Jason particularly well qualified to contribute to this event. Jason and his team are brand evangelists, whose mission in life is to develop and bring to life meaningful value propositions for their clients, rooted in differentiation and distinctiveness. This passion is driven by many years working in advertising and direct marketing, on behalf of both household names and small brands. What they all have in common is the need to stand out, usually in highly crowded and price competitive markets. That’s where brand difference comes into its own.

Tom Bishop is the Head of Travel Insurance for Direct Line Group, with responsibility for the commercial performance of the business across the Direct Line and Churchill brands and some of the market's leading packaged bank partnership schemes. Tom has spent more than 20 years in Travel Insurance, initially in medical operations roles for Europ Assistance, before joining Travelex as Operations Manager and to set up the global network for their in-house Assistance team. He joined RBS Insurance in 2004 as Operations Manager to the 24/7 Travel and Medical Assistance team. Tom moved into his current Business leadership role in 2011 and has overseen the digital transformation of DL's Travel business since 2016.

Dr Paul Beven qualified as a doctor in London in 1981. After a varied early medical career, he co-founded the first Healix company in 1992, and managed the development of the Healix Group into an international organisation providing medical and security assistance, medical claims management, medical risk assessment and insurance intermediation. Healix Risk Rating was acquired by US data and analytics company Verisk in 2017, and Paul has been involved in growing and developing the Verisk Risk Rating business since then.