Sébastien Commain is Senior Research and Policy Officer at BETTER FINANCE. He specialises in financial services regulation and capital markets research. He represents BETTER FINANCE in several EU-level stakeholder groups, including the European Commission’s Financial Services Users Group (FSUG), the Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group (IRSG) and Cost and Past Performance (CPP) Expert Group of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority. Sébastien holds a Masters’ degree in European affairs from Sciences Po Paris and a Ph.D. in political science from the Université du Luxembourg. Before joining BETTER FINANCE, Sébastien worked as an interest representative, a role in which he initially developed a strong taste for financial regulation issues as well as advocacy and policy analysis skills. He then turned to academia, working at the College of Europe for several years, before undertaking a Ph.D. on the influence of financial interest groups in EU and international policy making and the reform of bank capital requirements.
Daniela Danková studied public economics and policy at the Faculty of Economics, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. Her research focuses on the fiscal and redistributive impacts of changes in social policy and the application of modern technologies in public policy and finance. She holds the PhD. in Public Economics and Policy. Currently, Daniela manages a team of researchers and innovative firms in the area of financial health of individuals and firms.
Laetitia Gabaut is an economist who graduated from the Toulouse School of Economics. She joined the European Savings Institute in 2010, where she is in charge of the “Overview of Savings” publication. She has been involved in European projects related to savers’ behaviour and retirement savings.
Lisbeth Grænge Hansen is an economist with more than 10 years of experience as a civil servant from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Taxation. She has been working as secretary to the Minister of Economic Affairs. Moreover Lisbeth has been working in Finance Denmark for almost 20 years and is now working for the Danish Shareholder’s Association.
Christian Gülich is the Senior EU Policy Officer of the German Association of Insured (BdV) since 2014. He was born in 1957 in Worms (near Frankfurt). He studied sociology at the University of Bielefeld and Université d’Aix-en-Provence. For research he went to Paris and finished his Ph.D on French Solidarism in 1988. After the German Re-unification he stayed in Potsdam in 1992/93 for an additional professional training as Scientific Documentalist. In 1996 he went to Hamburg starting at BdV as media documentalist, then continiously enlarging his responsibilities (mainly media resonance analysis, advice on private retirement). Having established contacts to Better Finance in 2014, he is responsible for all BdV written and oral comments on draft legal acts or regulations on the European level (mainly for EIOPA and the other ESAs). As EU Policy Officer he represents BdV at EIOPA Occupational Stakeholder Group (OPSG) since 2018, in 2019/2020 he was appointed a member of EIOPA IRSG as well. In 2021 he was elected as one of Better Finance’s Vice-Presidents.
Amadeus Malisa earned his PhD in Economics from Jönköping International Business School in Sweden in 2022. He is currently working as a consultant with the World Bank. His research interests are in public economics, specifically on topics related to pension savings and retirement.
Guillaume Prache is the President and former Managing Director of BETTER FINANCE, as well as the President of the French Fédération des Associations Indépendantes d’Epargnants pour la Retraite (FAIDER). He is a member of the EIOPA (European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group (IRSG), and member and former chair of the ESMA (European Securities & Markets Authority) Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group.
Joanna Rutecka-Góra is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Statistics and Demography at SGH Warsaw School of Economics where she conducts research on old-age pension systems, insurance markets, financial education and consumer protection on financial markets. She cooperated with the Polish Insurance Ombudsman and Polish Financial Ombudsman and was an advisor to President of the Polish Chamber of Pension Funds (IGTE). Joanna Rutecka-Góra is a Netspar fellow and an active member of the Polish Association of Social Policy (PTPS), the Polish Pension Group SGH and the European Network for Research on Supplementary Pensions (ENRSP).
Ján Šebo is an associate professor and researcher at the Faculty of Economics of the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. He serves as a chief economist at the Government Office of Slovak republic responsible for the sound public finance and pension reform under the Recovery and Resilience Plan. He holds a master’s degree in Public Economics and a PhD in Economics. He also holds the law degree with focus on economic, financial and monetary law. Since 2008 he has been working in the Financial Services User Group at the European Commission and served as a member of the Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Advisory Group at EIOPA (Frankfurt, Germany). He is the co-author and head of research of the Orange Envelope® - a fintech application oriented on personal wealth management and pension tracking system. He has been a member of many working and expert committees focusing on pensions policy and financial sector regulation at home and abroad. He is a regular speaker at national and international scientific and professional forums.
Dr. Thomas Url is economist at the WIFO since 1994, with research focus on monetary policy, insurance economics, capital based old age pension provision, and applied econometrics. Study of Economics at the Universities of Graz and Vienna. Post Graduate study of Economics at the Institute for Advanced Studies (1988-1990). Assistant Professor at the Economics Department – Institute for Advanced Studies (1990-1993).Research Fellow at Konjunkturinstitutet Stockholm (1996), University of Strathclyde (2006) and Monash University (2015). Lecturer at the Institute for European Studies (1992-1995), at the Joint Vienna Institute (1994-2000), at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (1996-2017), at the University of Graz (2017), and at the University of Vienna (since 2017). Editor of WIFO-Monatsberichte and Austrian Economic Quarterly (1999-2002). Member of the Austrian Pensions Commission (2012-2016 and since 2019) und expert member oft he Austrian Fiscal Council (since 2014). Austrian Statistical Society – Head of Working Group on National Accounts and Economic Statistics (since 2017).