Legal & General has appointed Stefana Brown to take risk oversight of its UK protection business.
Brown is taking on the newly created role of UK protection and fintech chief risk officer (CRO) and IT and data protection risk director.
She is replacing Carole Avis who has retired as CRO of the former Legal & General Insurance division after spending more than 37 years with the group.
The new position is within the Legal & General Retail division which was formed at the start of the year by merging the insurance and retail retirement divisions.
As CRO, Brown will cover oversight of the UK protection and fintech businesses within the retail division.
The IT and data protection risk director component is aimed at setting up a centre of excellence for specialist support and advice across the division and will include support as it moves towards agile working.
Brown will also be responsible for strengthening the division’s risk function to support more specialist areas such as operational resilience and IT, the insurer added.
Brown has 12 years’ experience in operational risk and having joined the company in 2017, she has held several senior operational risk roles, most recently leading the operational and conduct risk team within the insurance division.
Prior to that she held operational risk roles at Lloyds Banking Group and M&G Investments.
Legal & General Retail chief risk officer Nimol Rajkumar said: “Stefana brings valuable experience and energy to the role, and I have no doubt she will excel in helping to build a strong risk culture across our retail division.
“Our long-term goal is to have a risk function that enables Legal & General Retail to deliver strongly and safely.”
Brown said she was excited to take on the role and help the division deliver its growth strategy and ensure decisions were made in the right way.
“The two components of my job will enable me to collaborate with the wider business, supporting an effective risk culture, which is crucial to business performance while delivering fair customer outcomes,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to setting up a centre of excellence, providing specialist guidance and moving the dial from an emphasis traditionally focused on risk reporting to one of effective risk understanding and management inherently embedded in the decision-making process.”