Bajan is new CFO of trillion-dollar firm

A Barbadian, Dave Dowrich, has taken up a top position with TIAA, a leading North American investment firm.

Headquartered in New York, TIAA has over US$1.3 trillion in assets under management and last year had more than 16 000 employees, the company announced recently that Dowrich would be appointed its Chief Financial Officer.

Dowrich, the former chief financial officer (CFO) at Prudential Financial and interim chief executive officer of International Life and Retirement, was also CFO of AIG Japan and Asia Pacific, and CFO and Chief Financial Actuary of Institutional Markets. He will take up the new position in the New York head office from November 1.

Dowrich, who most recently was Barbados’ honorary counsel in Tokyo, Japan, was born in Canada but raised in Barbados. He attended primary and secondary school in Barbados and the University of Toronto. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Science degree with majors in Actuarial Science and Applied Statistics, as well as an MBA (Finance), from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

The financial expert began his career in employee benefits consulting in Toronto, before relocating to Barbados to become a member of the management team of the Barbados reinsurance operations of a Canadian insurance company.

He went on to work as the Head of Corporate Planning & Analysis for Swiss Re’s life reinsurance business for North America, where he was responsible for performance measurement, performance enhancement, capital management and management reporting for the North American operations.

In a statement from the investment firm, TIAA said Dowrich will be reporting directly to TIAA’s president and CEO, Thasunda Brown Duckett, and will be part of the company’s Executive Committee.

The long-time banking and insurance executive will succeed Glenn Richter in the post and oversee all financial planning, general account, management and reporting as well as actuarial, tax and accounting operations and strategies.

Dowrich has also worked at Credit Suisse before joining Goldman Sachs as Vice President of Risk and Capital Markets in the Financial Institutions Group with specific focus on capital markets reinsurance.

He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries and sits on the boards of The Entrepreneurial Network (TEN) Habitat and the Industry Advisory Council of the Business School at Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, NY.

In 2011, as the main speaker at the inaugural Invest Caribbean conference, he urged the Caribbean region to compete for its global “wallet share” and step up the promotion of “its investment story.”

Comparing the Caribbean to private companies going public and the need to ensure that their story continues being told to their existing and future investor base, Dowrich said the Caribbean and its leaders must see investment in a similar vein. (IMC1)

Source: NewsAmericasNow.com