Barry Maher is a qualified actuary with experience in the Lloyds of London insurance market, the carbon and renewable energy markets, financial inclusion as well as disaster risk financing. He qualified working for Liberty Syndicates, a Lloyds of London reinsurance syndicate, where he specialized in key actuarial functions including reserving, pricing, underwriting and capital management. Following this he was appointed Chief Actuary at Parhelion Underwriting Limited, an insurance agency focused on climate change and the carbon and renewable energy markets, where he developed innovative insurance products to de-risk investments and so encourage capital flows into renewable energy. Working more on the development agenda, he then undertook a role as a Microinsurance Fellow at the UN, working on financial inclusion agenda in the Pacific region, one of the poorest banked regions globally. Since joining the bank he has worked globally on disaster risk financing. Key activities include leading policy dialog and developing customized financial solutions with Ministries of Finance to improve their financial resilience to disaster shocks; leading the development of analytical tools which support Ministries of Finance in their selection of financial instruments, including insurance, to protect their fiscal position against disaster risk, and; leading the work the team is conducting on disaster risk financing for scalable safety net programs, which looks to develop mechanisms that enable social protection programs to rapidly increase assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable under disaster conditions. Barry holds a Bachelors Degree in Actuarial and Financial Studies from the University College of Dublin and a Masters in Statistics from the University of Oxford.