Ekhosuehi Iyahen

Secretary General, Insurance Development Forum

Ekhosuehi Iyahen is the Secretary General of the Insurance Development Forum (IDF), a Public-Private Partnership led by the insurance industry and supported by the World Bank and the United Nations and other international organisations, aiming to enhance the use of insurance to build greater resilience against disasters and to help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Global 2030 Agenda.

Ekhosuehi has extensive experience working with Governments, international development agencies, private sector entities and academic institutions on public financial management and strengthening risk management and financing systems and the role of insurance.

She has been directly involved in establishing and operationalising a number of pioneering initiatives including regional risk pools in Africa, the Caribbean and the structuring of a novel tripartite agreement between the IDF, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to increase insurance protection in 20 climate-exposed countries.

At COP26 in Glasgow she steered the launch of IDF’s hallmark Risk & Resilience Analytics programme focused on building risk analytics capability where it is needed the most. This included the launch of a formal partnership between the IDF and the V20 Group of Ministers of Finance from 58 Climate Vulnerable Countries on the establishment of the Global Risk Modelling Alliance and the joint establishment of the Global Resilience Index Initiative (GRII).

Ekhosuehi is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government and the University of the West Indies. She also serves as an Expert Advisor to a number of Governments, international development agencies, private sector entities and academic institutions on catastrophe/climate risk and loss and damage and the role of insurance.

She was selected as a 2018 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Resident Practitioner Fellow and in 2020 was identified by Leader’s magazine as one of 100 global resilience thought leaders. In 2021 she was appointed as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.