Gaurav Upadya

Gaurav Upadhya is the Global Chief Actuary and Chief Risk Officer at Foresters Financial, a nearly 150-year-old fraternal Canadian life insurance company serving over 2.5 million members and certificate holders in Canada, US and UK. He is a member of the company’s Executive Committee and leads the actuarial, capital and risk functions at Foresters globally. He is also the Co-Chair of Foresters’ Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Council. 

He has broad experience in the financial services sector, previously working as Managing Director, Actuarial Services with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He also held a succession of leadership positions with Manulife John Hancock, including Senior Vice President, Product and Insurance Risk Management, and Vice President, U.S. Risk and Capital Management.

Gaurav was born in India and immigrated to Canada as a pre-teen with his family, living in Winnipeg for a number of years before moving to Ontario for post-secondary education. Having contracted polio at a young age, he grew up walking with crutches and leg braces. He is married to an artist, has two adult children, and lives in Toronto.

He is a Fellow in the Society of Actuaries (FSA), Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (FCIA), Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA), Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst (CERA) and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder. Gaurav has a Master of Mathematics (Actuarial Science) from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University. He is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board of Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, and a former member of the Board of Ascend Canada, a non-profit that supports Pan-Asian business leadership.