By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 3, 2021: TIAA, a leading provider of secure retirements and outcome-focused investment solutions to millions of people and thousands of institutions, this week named a Barbadian American as its new Chief Financial Officer.
Dave Dowrich, former CFO at Prudential Financial and interim CEO of International Life and Retirement; CFO of AIG Japan and Asia Pacific; and CFO and Chief Financial Actuary of Institutional Markets, will take up the position in New York from Nov. 1st.
A press statement from TIAA said he will be reporting directly to TIAA President and CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett and be part of the company’s Executive Committee.
The longtime banking and insurance executive will succeed Glenn Richter in the post and oversee all financial planning, general account, management and reporting as well as actuarial, tax and accounting operations and strategies.
“Every aspect and all stages of Dave’s career combine to make him the perfect leader for our critical financial actions,” Duckett, only the second Black female to lead a Fortune 100 company, was quoted as saying. “His insights and skills are broad, deep and globally informed and will further elevate our capabilities and care on behalf of our clients. I am proud to call him a colleague.”
“TIAA has an enviable record of delivering for its clients, backed by many decades of financial strength and stability, and it is an honor to join this mission-driven organization at such an exciting time in its history,” stated Dowrich.
Dowrich was born in Canada but raised in Barbados. He attended primary and secondary school in Barbados and then remigrated to Canada where he attended the University of Toronto. He holds an Honors Bachelor of Science degree from with majors in Actuarial Science and Applied Statistics, as well as an MBA with a major in Finance, from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Dowrich began his career in employee benefits consulting in Toronto, Canada before relocating to Barbados to become a member of the management team of the Barbados reinsurance operations of a Canadian insurance company.
He went on to work as the Head of Corporate Planning & Analysis for Swiss Re’s life reinsurance business for North America, where he was responsible for performance measurement, performance enhancement, capital management and management reporting for the North American operations.
Dowrich also worked at Credit Suisse before joining Goldman Sachs as Vice President of Risk and Capital Markets in the Financial Institutions Group with specific focus on capital markets reinsurance.
He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries and also sits on the boards of The Entrepreneurial Network (TEN) Habitat and the Industry Advisory Council of the Business School at Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, NY. Mostly recently, Dowrich was also the honorary counsel general of Barbados in Tokyo.
In 2011, as the main speaker at the inaugural Invest Caribbean conference, he urged the Caribbean region to compete for its global “wallet share” and step up the promotion of “its investment story.”
At the time, he insisted that the Caribbean’s investment “product” stacks up against most other regions of the world on several fronts, such as political stability, accessibility and ease of doing business. But “where we fall down is in selling and telling our investment story,” Dowrich added.
Comparing the Caribbean to private companies going public and the need to ensure that their story continues being told to their existing and future investor base, Dowrich said the Caribbean and its leaders must see investment in a similar vein.
“We therefore need to be sure that at every opportunity, our story is told on a consistent basis and told by credible and trustworthy folks such as our senior ministers, and then reinforced by our teams on the ground, who can ‘talk the talk’ of those that need to hear it,” he added in 2011.
