People
Axiome Partners is a digital insurance start up, founded in 2020 by John Cummins and Alastair Burns.
Co-Founder
John Cummins
With a strong science and technology background and for over two decades, John Cummins has led a diverse range of innovative initiatives in collaboration with universities and companies. In recent years, he co-founded the Legal Technology Laboratory in the US to bring lawyers and computer scientists together on cutting-edge legal tech projects. Most recently, and in collaboration with UCL and a range of other organisations, John has undertaken pioneering work in the area of next-generation, digital contracting, also becoming known as ‘computable contracting’. John has a wealth of experience in computational modelling and information science, much of which was gained through his direct involvement in R&D projects, mainly in the fields of engineering science and manufacturing automation.
Co-Founder
Alastair Burns
With over thirty years’ experience in the US, European and London insurance market, holding roles across the insurance value chain, Alastair has led business and functions that have served Global brands through to individual consumers. His interest in technology and associated data issues have been ever present, from the early EPS eTrading efforts of the London market, through to the design of context aware travel insurance products for the mobile telephone companies. His most recent role drew him into the detail of the Future at Lloyd’s, and with it a new understanding of what will really be required for the insurance market place to achieve its goals of true client centricity at a sustainably acceptable cost base.
Axiome Associate
Hélène Stanway
Hélène is an award-winning and highly effective insurance leader with a proven track record in emerging technologies, innovation, operations, data and change. Hélène has led several notable initiatives such as the Global Health Risk Facility, the Digital Risk Engineer and Insurwave for AXA XL. She helps companies in the global insurance market embrace change to achieve their desired strategic goals, improve processes, increase efficiency and deploy relevant tools. Hélène’s desire for transformations is seen in her roles as a Non-Executive and Coaching Director at EDII, the President of SENSE Consortium, Strategic Advisor for r10 and as LMA’s Market Engagment Advisor to the Chair of the Data Council. She works towards advancing women in the industry through mentoring and participates in the Insurance Breakfast Club to support and accelerate female career progression.
Axiome Associate
Geert Bormans
Axiome Associate
Jacinto Dávila
Axiome Associate
Bob Kowalski
Axiome Associate
Robertas Zubrickas
Robertas is an interdisciplinary economist with research interests in social engineering. He has made scientific contributions on the topics of decentralized institutions, policy design, incentive contracts, and behavioural biases in decision-making. Robertas’s ideas on improving crowdfunding platforms have found practical applications. Based at the University of Bath, Robertas has a vast network of collaborators who come from Purdue, George Mason, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Zurich universities and the World Bank. At Axiome Partners, Robertas is involved in developing economic models for the application of computable contracts in the insurance industry.
Axiome Associate
Joshua Young
Axiome Associate
Victor Paraschiv
Victor Paraschiv is a technology leader with over 20 years of experience developing innovative platforms and leading high-performance engineering teams. Most recently, Victor served as the Chief Technology Officer of Nakhoda, Linklaters’ AI and legal technology unit. At Nakhoda, Victor built a world-class team of engineers, lawyers, and product managers to develop solutions for the legal industry. Under Victor’s technical leadership, Nakhoda released an award-winning contract management platform that significantly improved the contract negotiation between tier 1 investment banks using structured data representation for contractual clauses. Victor holds a Master’s in Computer Science from University College London.
Axiome Associate
Ed Cummins
Advisor
Oliver Goodenough
Oliver Goodenough’s research and practice at the intersection of law, science, technology, and finance make him an international authority on legal innovation. On the academic side, he is a Research Professor of Law at Vermont Law School and affiliated faculty at Stanford’s CodeX Center for Legal Informatics, where he has been a leader in their initiatives on computational law, computable contracting and insurance contract automation. For CodeX, he has been a principal author of Computable Contracts and Insurance: An Introduction and Developing a Legal Specification Protocol: Technological Considerations and Requirements. He is also a Research Fellow of the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research and an Adjunct Professor at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering.
Advisor
Dickie Whitaker
Dickie Whitaker has 40 years’ experience in the (re)insurance business and for the last 20 years has specialised in risk and innovation, linking academia, government and finance. He co-founded the Lighthill Risk Network, Oasis Palm Tree ltd, the Oasis Hub and is the Chief Executive of Oasis Loss Satellite Applications Advisory Board, Expert Group for the Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF), UNISDR, Cabot Institute Advisory Board, Natural Environment Research Council and others. Dickie supported and steered the computable contracts project funded by the Lighthill Risk Network that served as the genesis for Axiome Partners.