FERMA Announces Leadership Appointments
The board of the Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA) announced three high level appointments “to secure its leadership succession.” The appointments took effect from as of December 11, 2014, the date on which the FERMA Board met and approved them.
The bulletin named and described the three new appointees as follows:
Jo Willaert has been named Deputy President, a newly created position, and will become the next President of FERMA when the current President, Julia Graham, completes her two year term of office in October 2015. Currently one of three FERMA Vice Presidents, Jo is Corporate Risk Manager for Agfa-Gevaert based in Belgium. He is also a board member of the Belgian risk management association BELRIM.
Edwin V Meyer, FERMA board member and General Manager Risk and Insurance Management for ArcelorMittal based in Luxembourg, will become Secretary General. He is also a board member of the German risk management association DVS. He takes over from Pierre Sonigo who has served FERMA in this role since 2004.
Anders Esbjörnsson, FERMA board member and Group Risk Manager NCC based in Sweden, will become Treasurer. He is a member of the Swedish risk management association SWERMA. Anders takes over from Fernand De Winter who has served FERMA in this role since 2007.
Edwin and Anders will become members of the FERMA Executive Committee, together with President Julia Graham, Deputy President Jo Willaert, the two Vice Presidents, Michel Dennery and Alessandro De Felice, and FERMA Executive Director Florence Bindelle.
Graham commented: “These are important appointments for FERMA to secure the future succession of our leadership. This is vital for FERMA to maintain and develop its role as the voice of European risk management, insurance and risk financing and to continue with ground-breaking projects such as the Certification of European risk professionals, which we will launch in 2015.”
She also paid special tribute to Sonigo and DeWinter for their work on behalf of FERMA, indicating that the organization “owes an enormous thank you to Pierre and Fernand. Their passion and commitment have been at the heart of the evolution of FERMA and have helped to make FERMA the thriving federation we have today.”
“During his time with FERMA, Pierre Sonigo has been closely involved with FERMA’s work on the EU Environmental Liability Directive and Solvency II, among other projects. In 2012, he received a special award from Strategic Risk for his outstanding contribution to risk management and in 2013 he was given a life time achievement award from the Institute of Risk Management.”
Source: Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA)