Nathan Bonarius, Director, PwC

Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers with 10 years experience specialising in superannuation and group life insurance

Nathan is actively involved in assisting superannuation industry clients with strategic advice, mergers, administration and outsourcing arrangements, financial advice  and policy work.

Nathan is a qualified Actuary (FIAA) and holds an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management.

Nathan is actively involved in public policy work and sits on the Actuaries Institute’s Public Policy Council Committee.  Nathan also undertook a six-month secondment to Department of Treasury, Canberra in 2018.

Bernadette D’Alessandro, Partner, PwC

Bernadette is a partner in our Financial Services Assurance practice. Bernadette joined PwC US in November 2016 and spent two years in New York City working on sales practices remediation for a global bank, before joining our Australian practice in February 2019. 

Bernadette’s focus is on how we can use regulatory change, including DDO, to drive positive customer and organisation outcomes.  Bernadette is leading the firm’s approach to DDO and has worked with many of our clients as they approach design and implementation of these obligations.

Bernadette has more than 20 years experience across industry and professional practice. Bernadette has considerable global experience, across Europe, the US, South America and Asia. Bernadette’s focus is on product and customer management, conduct and risk and regulatory matters. More recently, Bernadette was the GM Audit Australia (including Wealth) for a major Australian bank where she gained significant insight into end to end value chain for retail customers. 

Sarah Hofman, Partner, PwC

Sarah Co-Leads the Regulatory Assurance team at PwC which brings the best of PwC's skills to financial services clients to deliver effective and efficient solutions for regulatory requirements. Sarah’s recent roles have included: liaison meetings with regulators especially APRA and ASIC, industry bodies and Treasury; implementation of the Banking Executive Accountability Regime and most recently extension of the Accountability Regime into Superannuation and Insurance ( FAR ) bringing lessons learnt from the UK and other jurisdictions on accountability regimes; governance and risk framework reviews (CPS220) across financial services; APRA bank licensing; and regulatory due diligence for inbound financial services firms setting up operations in Australia and for M&A transactions. Sarah is PwC’s national leader for BEAR/FAR and for Bank Licensing.

Sarah is also the Chair of the peak industry body for Debt Capital Markets Securitisation in Australia, the Australian Securitisation Forum.  She is a Chartered Accountant and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Sarah joined PwC in early 2016 after 20 years in banking, most recently the Royal Bank of Scotland where she was part of the Australian Senior Leadership team and Governance & Risk Committee. During her time as a banker Sarah was responsible for the origination, monitoring and performance of large portfolios of structured debt and began her banking career as a credit analyst.

Carlos Lopez, Policy & Regulatory Analyst, AIST

Carlos joined AIST’s Advocacy team in March 2021 as a Policy and Regulatory Analyst. With a background in economics and over 8 years of experience in the profit-to-member super industry, Carlos has a deep understanding of the challenges facing industry funds operating in a highly regulated environment.

In his role, Carlos conducts research on policy proposals relating to regulatory and legislative change and engages with stakeholders to determine key issues and formulate policy positions. Prior to joining AIST, Carlos held various leadership roles in the profit-to-member sector, including most recently the Insurance & Claims Lead at CareSuper, where he focused on the implementation of key insurance projects.

Adding to his Bachelor of Economics, Carlos will complete his Master of Public Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne in early 2022. Fluent in Spanish, he has a keen interest in international policy and retirement income systems across different regions.