Who’s on the move? August

3 min read
3 min read

AMP CEO resigns

AMP has announced today that Alex Wade, CEO of AMP Australia, will step down from his role, effective immediately.

Blair Vernon, CEO of New Zealand Wealth Management (NZWM), has been appointed acting CEO while a permanent replacement is sought.

Vernon, who has led major change as CEO of NZWM, will commence in the role immediately, and Jeff Ruscoe will replace him as acting CEO, NZWM.

AMP chief executive Francesco De Ferrari said: “We have a strong team in AMP Australia, who have been transforming the business, managing the successful separation of AMP Life, reshaping advice and increasing our focus on clients.

“I’m pleased we are able to call on an experienced executive in Blair Vernon to lead this team and continue to drive our strategy forward.”

AFCA appoints head of membership services

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has announced the appointment of Campbell Daff to the newly created position of head of membership services.

Mr. Daff will lead AFCA’s membership team to manage and deliver the ombudsman’s new vision for membership services within the Operational Excellence portfolio.

AFCA CEO and chief ombudsman David Locke welcomed the appointment, commending Daff’s significant experience in the design and delivery of membership value and service propositions.

“We know that now, more than ever, our members want additional support and guidance on how they can effectively resolve complaints and minimise the issues that give rise to complaints in the first place. AFCA is passionate about using our data and intelligence to assist our members and consumers.” Locke said.

Christian Super appoints new chief investment officer

Mark Rider has been appointed as new CIO at Christian Super, succeeding the fund’s long-standing CIO Tim Macready.

Rider  is an experienced and highly credentialed investment leader, with a career that has spanned multiple finance organisations over the past 30 years, including the Reserve Bank of Australia, UBS Investment Bank and UBS Global Asset Management. Over the past seven years he served with ANZ Wealth and Private Banking, where he held various roles including head of investment strategy and chief investment officer.

Christian Super CEO Ross Piper said: “Mark Rider’s appointment as Christian Super’s new CIO is a significant milestone for the fund.  Mark is a highly qualified and experienced investment leader, and his appointment will underpin Christian Super’s strong continued focus on maximizing outcomes for our members, and ensuring their money is invested in line with their values and beliefs.”

Outgoing CIO Tim Macready has provided investment leadership for Christian Super over the past 15 years. He will be moving to full-time employment with Brightlight, a specialist impact investment firm headquartered in Sydney.

Iress announces appointment of chief commercial officer

Iress has announced the appointment of Michael Blomfield to a newly-created role of chief commercial officer, to commence on 19 October.

He will be responsible for Iress’ business growth objectives, including increasing growth at scale.  Blomfield will report to the CEO and be a member of Iress’ leadership team.

Iress chief executive, Andrew Walsh, said: “I am delighted that Michael is joining us in this role. The new role reflects our focus on scale, consistency and delivery, particularly where clients have increasingly similar needs. We also continue to focus on improving the client experience and a focused strategic approach to this is important to Iress and our clients.

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Derek Thompson

Best Selling Author, Podcast Host of 'Plain English'

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Few speakers can match Derek Thompson‘s ability to synthesize mega-trends in society, labor, economics, technology, and politics. Put another way: Derek trawls the data sets and does the forecasting and deep reporting necessary to help us better understand how we live, how we vote, how we spend, and how we work.

In his paradigm-shifting #1 New York Times bestseller, Abundance (co-written with Ezra Klein), this award-winning journalist reveals how our policies and culture have pushed us into a world of scarcity (not enough housing, workers, or progress)—and offers a radical new path towards a world where housing is affordable, energy is plentiful, and innovation flourishes across industries.

He shares a compelling vision of a future where we have more than enough for everybody, and a practical, actionable roadmap for how to get there. It starts with taking more risks, building more expansively, and recognizing that we all have the power to create a world of abundance. “Everything’s utopian until it’s reality,” he says.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

 

Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.