Casparus Kromhout

Managing Director and CEO of Shriram Life Insurance, a position which he has held since December 2015. Having begun his career in South Africa in 1991, he worked as an Industrial Engineer with Iscor Mining (Kumba) where he focused on mining and logistics optimization projects and business cases for new mine development. He joined the Life Insurance industry with the opportunity to be part of the large strategic programme to reengineer some of Sanlam’s business processes and policy administration system. He worked as a Business Consultant and Project Manager with both Sanlam and Old Mutual, delivering multiple strategic projects. He later focused on project portfolio value management which includes value tree work, concept development, business case governance and benefit realisation. In March 2010, Mr. Kromhout joined Shriram Life Insurance Company in Hyderabad, India as COO where he has been supporting and building the organisational capabilities of this young company. It is very successful in profitably reaching out to a very tough market segment where the loss of a breadwinner can have disastrous financial impacts on the family. Casparus has been instrumental in developing and executing strategy and is leading the drive towards further innovation, the use of digital technologies and strategic ecosystem partnerships to expand the reach and business growth of SLIC.

He was responsible for developing the operations capabilities of this young company in India within a very dynamic internal and external environment. Also for developing strategy and cross-selling business from Shriram group companies. It requires a capacity for ambiguity, influence and change. Apart from stabilising and running the current operations it includes developing and positioning the capabilities that will ensure that the business is ready for future challenges and volumes. His scope included business development, new business processing, policy servicing, customer service call centre, grievance management, claims, persistency, operations training, business change and IT. Over and above that compliance and regulatory initiatives impacting operations needed to be managed, new distribution initiatives need to be operationalised, building blocks and good practices need to be implemented and support to channels and customers improved.

Managed the governance of business cases as projects go through their change life cycles. This included guiding teams who develop business cases, reviewing business cases and assisting with fund requests to the investment committee. I was also responsible for benefit realisation tracking of implemented projects. I kept track of the project portfolio's contribution to the business' value tree, identified and assisted in developing concepts in areas of the value tree where potential exists.

Various business and IT projects

Business process improvement and project management of business and systems projects

Investment business cases for new mines or mine expansions. Mining process and systems optimisation projects. New information systems. Coal supply chain optimisation through large scale linear programming models.