Rob Anarfi

Rob is the Chief Risk Officer at Beazley and even though he is the only Black Executive (out of fourteen) it puts Beazley ‘ahead of the game and draws Black talent to the company.’ He originally joined the group in 2012 as Head of Internal Audit, moving to Head of Compliance shortly after. Rob has held senior audit roles at the Financial Conduct Authority, Aviva, Zurich Financial Services, and Allianz. He also qualified as a chartered accountant with PricewaterhouseCooper.

Rob is the founder and executive sponsor of BeazleyRACE, the company's employee network focused on race, culture, and ethnicity. He Chaired the Diversity & Inclusion Steering Group from 2016 to 2019, leading the group's activities to enhance the diversity of its workforce by setting race and ethnicity targets and to create a culture of inclusivity, culminating in significant increase in female representation in the senior leadership team.

In addition, Rob is the Co-Chair of a cross-industry initiative, Race Action Through Leadership (RATL). RATL brings a diverse group of senior insurance professionals together to help improve the representation of black, Asian, mixed and other minority ethnic professionals at all levels of the insurance industry. Rob was also on the Board and Vice Chair of the Quaker Social Action Charity, 2015 – 2021 and Chaired the Governance and Nominations Committee. He speaks regularly about creating an inclusive work environment and the importance of leadership accountability, including on the Risky Mix podcast and More Brown in Town.

Rob feels this moment is an emotional and important marker in which the culmination of Lloyd’s acknowledgment of our links to the transatlantic slave trade - and its legacy in present day racial inequalities – is leading towards actions to reset things. There has been a seismic shift, triggered by the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. Before this pivotal moment, Rob felt there ‘was a complete lack of acknowledgement and I had no feeling of being part of the history but now that has changed.’ Rob has played an active part of that journey, right from Lloyd’s 2020 apology, sitting on both a working party which defined the approach to the project, then on a working party for Lloyd’s first investigation into its links to slavery with a case study on John Julius Angerstein. Rob has always been there to advise on how to approach this most sensitive of subjects and has taken part in the Focus Group, which helped shape Lloyd’s response.

His Ghanaian and African background is a significant part of his identity and he is close to the challenges that can bring. ‘We know we are good enough but we also belong to a wider community; it’s about proving we are good enough to the wider White community. History and society have created boundaries based on the colour of our skin, but I refuse to be ‘put in the resulting box. There is not just one box or one type of person, we are all complex human beings. I was born a Geordie and moved to Ghana at five, so my formative years are framed by Ghanaian culture. I returned to England at 16; my wife is White and our three daughters are bi-racial. I am all about moving those boundaries.’

When Beazley introduced a ‘dress for your day’ policy Rob used his position in leadership to be the first person to dress natively at work, wearing traditional Ghanaian dress. In his portrait, Rob decided to wear a Agbada to proudly represent his community and heritage.