Kai-Uwe Schanz | Director Financial Inclusion
Kai-Uwe Schanz is Senior Advisor to the Geneva Association and Managing Director of Purpose for Insurance AG, a Switzerland-based advisory firm. Until the end of 2024, he served as Deputy Managing Director and Head of Research & Foresight at the Geneva Association, the premier think tank and only global association of insurance and reinsurance CEOs. In that role, he also acted as Executive Director of the Global Reinsurance Forum, an advocacy body representing CEOs of leading reinsurance companies that collectively account for two-thirds of the global reinsurance market. Kai continues to support the Geneva Association on financial inclusion and geo-economics, and serves as Network Coordinator of its Chief Investment Officer Forum.
Before joining the Geneva Association in 2019, he co-founded and chaired a reinsurance-focused business development advisory firm and was a non-executive member of the Board of Directors at Trust International Insurance and Reinsurance Company in Bahrain.
He began his reinsurance career as Senior Economist at Swiss Re, later becoming the company’s first Chief Economist for the Asia-Pacific region in Hong Kong. He then returned to Zurich as Managing Director of Global Communications Content & Channels before joining Converium (a global top-10 reinsurer, later acquired by SCOR) as Head of Corporate Development and Communications/Investor Relations.
Kai holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Konstanz (Germany) and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). He is also a lifetime Research Fellow at Peking University.
