Dr. Michel Léonard, CBE, is Chief Economist and Data Scientist at the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), where he leads the organization’s Economics and Analytics Department. He is responsible for providing analysis and insight on industry economics and business performance, as well as other forward-looking, data-driven insurance insights.

Michel brings more than twenty years of insurance experience to Triple-I, including senior and leadership roles as Chief Economist for Trade Credit and Political Risk at Aon; Chief Economist at Jardine Lloyd Thompson; Chief Economist and Data Scientist at Alliant; and Chief Data Scientist at MaKro LLC. In these roles, he worked closely with underwriters, brokers, and risk managers to model risk exposures across property-casualty and specialty lines, including credit, political risk, business interruption, and cyber. Michel also currently serves as adjunct faculty in New York University’s Economics Department and previously held academic appointments at NYU’s Center for Data Science and Columbia University’s Data Science Institute and Statistics Department. He was the recipient of a Spencer Educational Foundation grant to develop a course in data analytics for insurance, helping strengthen the link between Triple-I, its Non-Resident Scholars, and academia.

Michel holds a BA from McGill University, an MTS from Harvard University, and both an MA and PhD in Political Economy from the University of Virginia, with a focus on qualitative and quantitative risk modeling. He is a member of the Insurance Research Council Advisory Board.