Judging panel 2025

Chair of the judges: Adam Cadle, Editor, Corporate Finance News, Insurance Asset Management and MoneyAge
Adam Cadle is a business and finance journalist with over ten years’ experience, and is currently the editor of Insurance Asset Management, MoneyAge and Corporate Finance News. He previously worked as deputy editor on Pensions Age and European Pensions. Adam has chaired a number of award judging panels and conferences over the years both in the personal finance and insurance asset management spaces. He is a graduate from Sussex University with a BA honours in French and History and is NCTJ qualified.

David Devlin, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Phoenix Group  
David is a Director in the Strategic Partnerships team as has been a qualified actuary since 2010. He joined Phoenix from Scottish Widows where he was Head of Shareholder Assets. His role at Scottish Widows was focused on annuity fund investment strategy in a Solvency 2/UK Matching Adjustment context. This included portfolio optimization, portfolio trades, ALM, bulk annuity pricing/proposition and new asset/instrument implementation. David was also responsible for asset manager and investment bank relationships, including manager selection. David’s existing role focuses on asset manager performance, commercials and operating model, as well as significant SME input on M&A. David has also worked as a consultant in EY’s Insurance Investment Team – this was a wide-ranging role which covered multiple aspects of insurance investment – M&A, ALM, Solvency 2 implementation and authored and co-authored multiple papers on private asset investment. David holds an MA in Economics, an MSc in Actuarial Science and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

Rebecca Lea, Manager, Investment & Climate, The ABI
Rebecca is the ABI's Manager for Investment and Climate, and leads part of the ABI’s Investment Delivery Forum which seeks to accelerate large scale infrastructure investment from major insurance and long-term savings firms. Rebecca joined the ABI in 2020 from Capco, a financial services consultancy. Here she held multiple roles across projects for FTSE100 clients in the Financial Services sector, and specialised in financial regulation. Rebecca began her career as an Economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, having studied economics at the University of Cambridge.

Sumit Mehta, Head of Strategy, L&G
Sumit heads Investment Solutions in Legal & General’s Retirement division (AUM: ~£70bn), where he leads portfolio construction, strategic asset allocation and implementation for new tranches of AUM acquired via its market-leading Pension Risk Transfer (buyout) business. Sumit has led investment strategy on some of the UK’s biggest buyout transactions, such as the Aegon back book acquisition and derisking deals with BA, ICI PF and the Vickers scheme. Sumit also leads the Quantitative Analytics group, currently focusing on building LGR’s quantitative infrastructure for the long term. Prior to L&G, Sumit worked for 8 years at Royal Bank of Scotland in its fixed income division, where he held responsibility for inflation structuring. In 2016 he was nominated by the Trade Magazine as one of the "Forty under Forty" Rising stars in the finance industry. Sumit holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Deepak Seeburrun, Head of Global Insurance & Key Partnerships, HSBC Asset Management
Deepak Seeburrun, Head of Insurance leading the insurance business development initiatives within HSBC Global Asset Management in the UK & EMEA. He has over 23 years of insurance industry experience including insurance company board, insurance advisory roles within Investment Banking & Markets, Asset Management and Insurance Companies. Deepak started his career pricing insurance products, such as variable annuities, CPPI and then moved into insurance solutions client facing roles.Within asset management, his team focuses on providing bespoke investment solutions, ALM, Risk and Climate Solutions. He has successfully been working with a number of insurers by helping in their transition to net zero carbon intensity. He holds an MSc in Mathematical Finance from Christ Church College, Oxford University, Fellow and Chartered Mathematician, member of the Institute of Actuaries and the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments.