Ian was born in Dublin and moved to South Africa in 1981. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant (CA) in 1980 and CA (SA) in 1985.
He was appointed to the PriceWaterhouse partnership in 1986 and in 1988 formed the Insurance Specialist Services group in the firm. Early in 1996 Ian was approached to join AGA Holdings as Managing Director, a relatively small JSE listed life insurance player with Investec as its significant shareholder. AGA Holdings later restructured as Capital Alliance Holdings Limited, one of the first broad-based black empowerment financial services companies in South Africa. In December 2004, Capital Alliance Holdings was sold to Liberty Group and Ian was appointed Deputy CEO of Liberty Group in March 2005.
In May 2006 Ian joined the Sanlam Group as Chief Executive: Strategy and Projects, where his responsibilities included undertaking a strategic review of the group, formalising capital management arrangements and starting several numbers of new businesses across Sanlam’s business clusters.
In June 2007, he was appointed Chief Executive of Santam whose market capitalisation more than trebled in the duration of his appointment. He was appointed as Group CEO of the Sanlam Group on 1 July 2015. Ian retired from Sanlam on 1 July 2020 and completed his contract at the end of December 2020. He serves on the Boards of the JSE, Pepkor, Transaction Capital, Netcare, SCOR (UK) and Shriram (India).
In June 2020 Ian was appointed by the State President to the Presidential State-owned Enterprise Council, mandated to reposition South Africa’s state-owned enterprises.
Ian is a keen sportsman who played provincial cricket and rugby in Ireland. In South Africa, he played cricket and rugby for the Wanderers Club up until 1991. Golf is currently his game and he is also a keen cyclist. He is married to Brita and has four children.