Mission Statement
Founded in 2020, Maximum Information is committed to increasing societal resilience to disasters through evolving risk modelling of natural hazards.
Key to our vision is proving the value that catastrophe models have in forming real-world views of risk and empowering end-users to make confident decisions.
Maximum Information equips the re/insurance sector with unique catastrophe modelling analytics solutions which maximise the information risk modelling can, and should, provide.
Our People
Dr Tom Philp
Chief Executive Officer
Tom is Chief Executive Officer of Maximum Information. He has a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Reading, and was the Insurance Sector Champion for the Sector Engagement of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service between 2015-2017.
He sits on a number of insurance industry advisory/steering groups, and is an editor of the Journal of Catastrophe Risk and Resilience.
He previously worked in AXA XL’s Science & Natural Perils function, and spent time on secondment with Blue Marble Microinsurance.
He is currently a Research Associate of the Philosophy Department at the London School of Economics, and an Honorary Research Associate of the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London. In the past, he has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Miami/NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division.
Dr John Wardman
Chief Commercial Officer
John is Chief Commercial Officer of Maximum Information and oversees the Consultancy arm of the venture. He previously worked as a Senior Science Specialist at AXA XL, where he helped to develop views of seismic and wildfire risk for both insurance and reinsurance business. He has assisted with catastrophe model evaluation and validation projects spanning multiple peril-regions, and engaged with a wide network of academic collaborators on bespoke thought leadership studies.
A Fellow of the Geological Society, John obtained a PhD in Hazard & Disaster Management from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and has first-hand experience of the 2010-2013 Canterbury earthquake sequence from both personal and academic perspectives. He is also a life member of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI).
Dr Valentina Noacco
Chief Uncertainty Officer
Valentina is Chief Uncertainty Officer at Maximum Information, and oversees the innovation arm of the venture. She brings deep knowledge in uncertainty and sensitivity analysis and is an experienced researcher specialized in transferring research to industry.
She was previously a Senior Research Associate and a Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the University of Bristol, where she is still Honorary Research Fellow. She has transferred state-of-the-art methods, software tools and expertise on uncertainty and sensitivity analaysis to the re/insurance and catastrophe modelling industry, and has developed an open-source modelling platform for the transparent quantification of uncertainty in a Tropical Cyclone Hazard Generator. Valentina holds a PhD in Water Quality Modelling.
James McIlwaine FIA
Chief Product Officer
James is Chief Product Officer at Maximum Information and oversees the Private Analytics & Products arm of the business. He previously worked as the Actuarial Development Lead for the Insurance Development Forum. In this role he built and designed the IDF’s Risk Explorer tool, an entry-level, open-source catastrophe modelling application aimed at fostering a better understanding of risk modelling in developing nations.
Prior to this, he spent seven years at AXA XL where he held the position of Senior Actuary managing a team focused primarily on property and short-tail reinsurance pricing across a worldwide book of business.
James is a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and holds a Master’s Degree in Economics with Distinction from the University of Warwick.
Giacomo Favaron
Chief Technology Officer
Giacomo is Chief Technology Officer of Maximum Information. He is in charge of defining our technology solutions and overseeing application development. He previously held the position of GIS Data Officer and Senior GIS Developer at AXA XL where he built underwriter-focused catastrophe risk evaluation applications and managed a 1,000-user strong GIS platform.
He has an MSc in Geographical Information Science from Birkbeck, University of London, and an MSc in Spatial Planning from Oxford Brookes University. Before joining the insurance industry, he worked for several years as a GIS consultant for different Italian municipalities and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
Recognising his achievements in integrating novel GIS-related catastrophe risk analytics within the traditional underwriting chain, he was awarded the “Rising Star of the Year” in 2016 by Insurance Day’s London Market Awards.
Rozalie Ryclova
Head of Strategy
Rozalie is an experienced operator and founder in the climate technology startup space. Prior to joining MaxInfo, Rozalie served as the Co-founder and COO of Thermulon: a technology company developing novel insulation materials for hard-to-abate sectors (construction, mobility). With her team, Rozalie built and scaled the company from concept to product commercialisation and raised two rounds of equity funding.
Before her startup career, Rozalie trained in Energy Underwriting with XL Catlin / AXA XL. Outside work, Rozalie serves as Trustee of Agora Think Tank and has mentored early-stage startups with Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Digital Catapult.
James Hill
Head of Software Development
James is Head of Software Development at Maximum Information. He is responsible for putting applications into production and building out a robust code base for the company. He previously held the position of Experiments Lead at Convex Insurance where he was responsible for a team developing novel applications and analysis, and prior to that was Data Scientist at AXA XL.
James holds an MSc Computer Science, and an MSc Intelligent Technologies, both from Birkbeck, University of London. Before joining the insurance industry he worked in data analytics in the third sector.
Emma Radcliffe
Head of Operations
Emma is Head of Operations at Maximum Information. She is responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the business. She previously held the position of Head of Compliance at FloodFlash Limited, where she created and oversaw processes to ensure FloodFlash's compliance with international regulations and standards. As part of the leadership team, she assisted with growing the company from seed stage to pre-Series B. Prior to this, she was part of the Emerging Markets team at XL Catlin, and the Compliance team at Catlin.
Peter Kille
Software Developer
Peter Kille is a Software Developer at Maximum Information, contributing to the Hazard Impact Tracker (HIT), a platform delivering real-time cyclone analytics for disaster response. He has over five years of experience in full-stack development, deployment, and machine learning spanning financial services, technology, and government.
He previously worked at 4most Analytics, where he developed financial tools implementing machine-learning methods for financial reporting and at the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, where he used data science methods to deliver insights into social, economic, and geospatial data. Peter holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Southampton, where he focused on advanced mathematical and computational methods.
Rafi Gillard
Software Developer
Rafi is a software developer at Maximum Information, where she contributes to the development of MagniPhi, enhancing the company’s suite of data-driven applications. With her expertise in programming languages like R and SQL, and her skills in data visualization, Rafi focuses on creating robust, user-centric tools that drive impactful decision-making.
Her experience spans working with clinical data and conducting custom audits. During her master's studies, she pursued her passion for energy efficiency and climate change, working on projects that analyzed spatial and temporal variations and developed predictive models for maximum daily temperatures.
Rafi holds an MSc in Applied Data Science and Statistics from the University of Exeter, specializing in time series analysis, Bayesian techniques, and machine learning. She also earned a BSc in Energy and Environmental Technologies from the University of Applied Sciences & Arts, Western Switzerland, where she focused on optimizing buildings to be energy-efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.
Dr Tom Philp
Chief Executive Officer
Tom is Chief Executive Officer of Maximum Information. He has a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Reading, and was the Insurance Sector Champion for the Sector Engagement of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service between 2015-2017.
He sits on a number of insurance industry advisory/steering groups, and is an editor of the Journal of Catastrophe Risk and Resilience.
He previously worked in AXA XL’s Science & Natural Perils function, and spent time on secondment with Blue Marble Microinsurance.
He is currently a Research Associate of the Philosophy Department at the London School of Economics, and an Honorary Research Associate of the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London. In the past, he has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Miami/NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division.