Cristina Mihai, Insurance Europe
The head of the international affairs and investments division at trade body Insurance Europe, Cristina Mihai leads the industry's lobbying efforts regarding the rules for asset-backed securities and the global insurance capital standard. Before that, she worked in the derivative solutions team of French investment bank Societe General and in the asset management arm of French insurer Groupama.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
My role offers me a wonderful opportunity to work with great people. They are a constant source of knowledge, inspiration and motivation.
What are the major challenges ahead?
My role covers international developments, including the global insurance capital standard (ICS), which I definitely see as a major challenge. For me it's very interesting how this project started more as an intention to have a common high-level basis for nine supposedly systemically risky companies in order to calculate comparable capital add-ons for them, and has now become an ambitious project aimed at converging capital regimes around the world.
It's a good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy – and also a very good case study for how different understandings, regulations and calculations of similar risks are argued to lead to comparable results. So the major challenge, which is an interesting exercise with regards to regulation in general, is to understand whether we can accept different answers to similar questions.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to emulate your success?
I think we were all told by our parents when we were little, at least I was, that good results can be obtained with hard work and dedication. As additional advice, I think once we put in effort and dedication, we also need to have patience. And, as someone told me once, when patience runs out, unlimited patience should replace it.
What are your other interests?
I am interested in learning about human diversity – and this often involves very simple things, like discovering new places and meeting new people. Or reading biographical books. Spending time with my family always enriches and replenishes me.