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Stephen Devine

Stephen Devine

CEO, SCOR Global Reinsurance Ireland & President, Insurance Ireland

Stephen is a qualified actuary (FIA) since 1990 and also a graduate of University College Dublin – MBA (1999).
Career

Stephen is CEO and a director of SCOR Global Reinsurance Ireland dac (SGRI) and is also a director of SCOR Ireland dac (SI), a 74% subsidiary of SGRI. SCOR is one of the world’s top reinsurers operating in all continents and has built a very strong presence in Ireland, directing to SGRI & SI a substantial portion of the Group’s overall financial substance.
Whilst Stephen’s career has been predominantly in life (re)insurance, more recently SCOR Irish subsidiaries have started to write a substantial volume of non-life business widely diversified by risk-type and by geography.
After 4 years in pension consulting and assessment of damages, in 1988 Stephen joined Bank of Ireland Lifetime Assurance (New Ireland) and went on to hold management positions in product development, valuations, operations/IT and marketing there and subsequently at Eagle Star (Zurich Life), 1996 – 2002. From 1999, he ran a Zurich subsidiary writing EU cross-border life assurance business, becoming very familiar with the freedom of services and freedom of establishment models of business.

In 2002, he joined Transamerica Reinsurance (TARe), a business unit of AEGON, to help establish its Irish subsidiary and became its CEO in 2006. Stephen and his team grew the Irish balance sheet to US$22 billion and guided it through the extreme challenges of the financial crisis and its aftermath.
In 2011 SCOR, the global reinsurer with its HQ in Paris, acquired TARe and Stephen became CEO for Ireland. In 2014 Stephen moved to a global role as Chief Reserving & Valuation Actuary for the SCOR’s life business unit, which included leading its life Solvency 2 Project Team. In 2019 he returned to the role of local CEO.

Industry involvement

Stephen was on the Board of DIMA for 10 years including two as Chairman. He was a very active member of DIMA particularly when Solvency 2 was being introduced. He is a current member of Insurance Ireland’s Reinsurance & Captives Council.
For several years he was a member of the now disbanded An Taoiseach’s International Insurance Group. He was also a founder member of its Solvency 2 sub-committee for the entirety of its 7 years until the local transposition of Solvency 2 which involved extensive interactions with Dept. of Finance.
During this period he was also a member of the Executive Board of IBEC’s Financial Services Ireland and sat on the Council of IFSC Ireland when that body was founded post financial crisis as a cross-sector body to enhance and secure Ireland’s reputation as a financial centre.

Motivations

Stephen thrives on the constant flow of innovation upon which the global (re)insurance market is built. He is particularly interested in motivating high performance through giving people a sense of shared purpose and belonging, and to this end believes the promotion of team diversity and inclusion is key.
Stephen is proud of the role (re)insurance serves; without it, our modern economy and society can’t function as they do. He believes that that it needs to be given the space to be adaptive and agile so that it can continue to be relevant to global societies and economies, whilst fulfilling its primary prudential purpose.
He is also proud of Ireland as a source of top talent, of professionalism and of best practices for the global (re)insurance market and is one of its passionate champions in this regard.