RSVP to infoshopevents@worldbank.org

CO-CHAIRS

Shidan Derakhshani
Director, Global Capital Markets Development Department, Financial & Private Sector Development, World Bank-IFC

Mr. Derakhshani is Director of the Global Capital Markets Development Department. This is a joint department of the World Bank and International Finance Corporation. Prior to this, he was Director of Corporate Governance and Capital Markets Advisory. He has also been Associate Director, Global Financial Markets, IFC, where he headed its global Financial Engineering activities, and was also Senior Manager, for Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Derakshani’s other positions in IFC include Manager, East Asia Financial Markets Division, and Chief Investment Officer for Latin America. He has also been Chief Investment Officer on the World Bank’s liquid investment portfolio, where he traded all major fixed income markets and the range of cash and derivative instruments and on the funding side was Senior Financial Officer in the Bank’s Swaps and Liability Management Group.  He started his career at the World Bank Group as Economist for Europe and the Middle East at the IFC.

Arup Banerji
Director, Social Protection and Labor, Human Development, World Bank

Mr. Banerji is the Director for Social Protection and Labor at the World Bank, overseeing work on labor markets, social safety nets, pensions and disability issues.  He was previously Senior Advisor at the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation group, and Manager and Lead Economist for Human Development for the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Region. In his career at the World Bank, he has worked on both research and operations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East – on a variety of issues relating to employment and labor markets, social sector reforms, poverty reduction, institutions, public sector reform and governance and economic growth strategies. He is a principal author of books including From Red to Gray on Aging Populations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Enhancing Job Opportunities in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, World Development Report 2002 on the role of institutions in global economic development, Better Governance for Development in the Middle East and North Africa, World Development Report 1995 on labor markets, and numerous other refereed journal articles and discussion papers.

PRESENTERS

Richard Hinz 
Adviser, Social Protection, Human Development, World Bank

Mr. Hinz is a Pension Policy Adviser and the Team Leader of the Pensions Group in the Social Protection Team of the Human Development Network at the World Bank. His work is focused on the reform of Social Security systems and the development, regulation and supervision of funded pension arrangements in a broad range of settings throughout the world. Prior to joining the World Bank in January 2003, he was the Director of the Office of Policy and Research at what is now Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) of the US Department of Labor. In this capacity he was responsible for managing the research, economic and legislative analysis for the agency responsible for the regulation and supervision of private employer sponsored health insurance and pension programs.  From 1999 to 2003 he was the Chair of the OECD’s Working Party on Private Pensions. He is the co-author of  the World Bank publication “Old Age Income Support in the 21st Century: An International Perspective on Pension Systems and Reform” and an editor of “ Risk Based Supervision of Pensions Funds: Emerging Practices and Challenges”.

Heinz P. Rudolph
Senior Financial Sector Specialist, Non-Bank Financial Institutions Group, Global Capital Markets Development Department, Financial & Private Sector Development, World Bank

Mr. Rudolph is a Senior Financial Sector Specialist in the Financial and Private Sector Vice Presidency of the World Bank. He has been with the World Bank for the past four years.  His main areas of work include funded pension systems and development bank institutions. He has provided pension advice to various countries in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. Mr. Rudolph previously worked as Director of Financial Policy at the Ministry of Finance of Chile, where he promoted financial sector reform in the areas of pensions, insurance, securities, and banking, and also led the government debt management strategy. He was instructor of Financial Economics in various universities in Chile, and a member of the board of directors of two state-owned companies.

DISCUSSANTS

Joseph Piacentini
Chief Economist and Director of Policy and Research, Employee and Benefit Security Administration, US Department of Labor

Mr. Piacentini has been with the Department of Labor since 1996, and has been Chief Economist and Director of Research since 2003. Previously he worked for the Employment Benefit Research Institute in Washington DC.

Gonzalo Reyes
Senior Social Protection Specialist, Latin American and Caribbean Region, World Bank

Mr. Reyes is a Senior Social Protection Economist for the Latin American and Caribbean Region at the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank he worked for five years at the Pensions Supervisory Authority of Chile (Superintendencia de Pensiones) as a research economist, then as Head of the Research Department and finally as Head of the Studies Division. During that period he participated doing analytical work and developing policy proposals in the Pension Reform Process of 2008 and the legal amendments to the Unemployment Insurance system. He has also written research articles on the pension system and unemployment insurance system and participated in international seminars.

Anita M. Schwarz
Lead Economist, Social Protection, Europe and Central Asia Region, World Bank

Ms. Schwarz is Lead Economist in the Human Development Department in the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Region, specifically focused on pensions work. She is currently working on pension issues throughout the region, especially focused in Kosovo, Serbia, Poland, and Russia.  She was also recently working in Albania, Turkey, Slovak Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Georgia.  Previous to her current appointment, she was lead economist in the World Bank’s Social protection department where she was team leader for the pensions work throughout the Bank. Her work there included working on pension reforms in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Romania, Malta, Thailand, and Morocco. She was part of the research department team which produced “Averting the Old Age Crisis,” the Bank’s seminal initiation into the world of pension reform.  She has subsequently published country specific work related to reforms where she has worked as well as more analytical pieces.