The Leadership Team

Olivier is a serial entrepreneur. He bought out La Parisienne Assurances which became Wakam, and has totally transformed the firm since 2015, bringing it to the bleeding edge of the industry, with a culture that truly stands out in the world of insurance.

Olivier has also brought a lively dynamic to Wakam, having engineered its Mission-Driven status in 2021 and he continues to be heavily involved in this area within the company.

He wrote and published Patrimoine Ephémère (“Pop-up heritage”) to propound his vision of insurance as the means to safeguard economic and social stability in society.

Buoyed by new technology, especially Blockchain, Olivier oversees Wakam’s Play&Plug tech platform.

His favourite saying is “Success is 10% strategy and 90 % execution”. Olivier loves music and will readily share his mixes!

As CEO of Wakam UK of Wakam, Mark leads the insurer’s UK operations, driving risk management, internal audit, actuarial, operations, underwriting, claims and finance functions. He is based in London.

Mark has over twenty years of experience in the insurance industry, including over ten years in international markets. In 2017, he became CEO of South British Capital, an international insurer operating in surety and credit reinsurance, and of its MGA Franchiseefirst, based in the United Kingdom, specializing in the surety market in Europe. Prior to this has held various Managing director roles include the UK Managing Director for RSA Personal Lines Business with a turnover of 1.4bn where he completed a significant profit turnaround and grew the direct, broker and affinity businesses by establishing new product lines, such as pet insurance and telematics.

Mark holds an MBA from the University of Warwick (UK) and a Diploma in Business Administration from INSEAD.

Mark’s passion is to travel by bike all around Europe. He has already achieved many trips he biking on the Loire valley end to end as well as Land’s End to John o’Groats. His next bike trip will be a Munich to Pisa!

His name is Morillon, Alexandre Morillon.

Alexandre has already taken on many challenges in the insurance industry as Managing Director of 3 insurance companies within the Banque Postale group, but also for 20 years in Marketing, Digital and Transformation activities within non-life businesses. He brings to Wakam his in-depth knowledge of the insurance industry throughout the value chain.

His new mission as Deputy CEO of Wakam SA is to transform Wakam’s business model so that it is increasingly adapted to its growth and diversification.

As a fan of James Bond and his cars, Alexandre also loves 80s music and vintage artefacts: nostalgia rocks!

Karl Gray is VP Underwriting Officer at Wakam and responsible for Underwriting and Pricing.  His team focuses on pricing of new products, portfolio management and technical excellence. He is based in London, UK.

Karl was most recently the EMEA Director for Uber’s Insurance division – leading the development of new products and managing existing insurance programs – and prior to that was the Group Head of Retail Underwriting for the Zurich Insurance Group.

Karl has over twenty five years of Global Leadership within the Insurance Sector with more than 10 years based in international Markets. He has successfully developed and executed strategy and change across multiple geographies, with specific expertise in fast flow insurance, underwriting automation, digital insurance solutions and portfolio management.

Karl Gray graduated from the University of Sheffield (UK) with an MA in Political Economy and holds Diplomas in Management and Insurance. Karl was a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Mobility between 2017 to 2021.

At Wakam, Matthew’s role is to ensure the company get the most value from data. With his team, Matthew is building a culture around leveraging data to the maximum while ensuring Wakam maintain and upload strong user privacy. This means everyone within the company can understand where to find data and make data-driven decisions, data governance is a standard.

• Originally qualified and worked as an actuary at AXA/AMP in Australia
• After some time Matthew decided to broaden his data skills and moved into a data consulting firm and lead projects across a broad range of data topics (data analytics, data science, etc.) in many different industries
• He then decided to get some international experience and moved to Paris to work in the Data Innovation Lab at AXA (i.e. back in insurance) where he focused on building new capabilities, in particular, Matthew built a team focused on Fraud and Claims Data Innovation
• Then Matthew moved to Doctolib to build their Data Science team and embed data science into their products before joining Wakam and insurance again!

VP Finance & Corporate Legal at Wakam, Anouk has worked in a variety of environments that have given her a thorough understanding of financial and insurance issues.

She began her career in finance with KPMG and the investment company Groupe Chevrillon. She then joined the AXA Group, where she held a number of senior positions, culminating in her appointment as CFO and member of the Executive Committee of the Major International Risks entity, Axa Corporate Solutions Assurance. There she made a major contribution to the transformation of the finance function.

In recent years, she has put her skills at the service of growing insurance companies, helping them to structure their development, manage their financing and their external growth operations.

Her experience, coupled with her in-depth knowledge of the financial challenges facing the insurance sector, has enabled her to work on Wakam’s development, supporting the company’s ambition for growth and managing the financial side of the business in close collaboration with the business teams.

In her spare time, Anouk enjoys cultivating her Normandy orchards and mentoring start-ups, mainly in the Insurtech environment.

As VP Capital and Reinsurance, Lauren is responsible for defining and monitoring Wakam’s capital management and reinsurance strategies, including alternative risk transfer. Lauren leads Wakam’s capital management and reinsurance teams from London.

Prior to joining Wakam, Lauren was a founding member of the Corporate Advisory & Solutions team at Acrisure Re. Lauren was responsible for project execution across capital raises, Lloyd’s advisory and legacy transactions.

Lauren’s experience prior to Acrisure Re covers actuarial consulting, (re)insurance pricing and ILS.

Lauren is a qualified actuary and a graduate of the University of Cambridge. Lauren is a huge sports fan, and her dream job would be Head of Strategy for an F1 team.

Sébastien is the mountaineer hitting the peaks in technology. He boasts years of experience in IT consulting first at Wavestone then in financial services for Accenture, meaning he has forged a body of expert knowledge in IT strategy, Agile transformation, design and roll-out of digital platforms and API, for CAC 40-listed companies.

Won over by Wakam’s bright and bonny project, he signed up for an expedition with the end goal of developing a tech nugget undergoing transformation with every sprint.

As a committed leader, Sébastien is kind but firm. He loves the mountains (as you’d already guessed) and playing pop-rock on his guitar.

Aurélien always works in a team and with the people around him.

As captain of the People & Culture team, Aurélien’s mission is to support Wakam’s strong ambitions in terms of recruitment, culture and talent management in France and Europe.

Aurélien has spent the last 10 years working for tech companies such as the American group Palantir.

He knows how to find clever and original solutions to the complex challenges of talent management. Aurélien has also worked on fast growing companies in a very international context.

Aurélien is passionate about Human Resources issues. This is why he is also a lecturer at the X Polytechnique and HEC schools.