Martin Stevens, IIA Norway (Treasurer)

Corporate auditor, Gjensidige Insurance, Norway

Martin Stevens is Corporate Auditor in Gjensidige Insurance, Norway. The Gjensidige Group is a leading Norwegian-based general insurance corporation servicing the Nordic and Baltic countries. The Group also offers online retail banking, pension and savings products and health care services in Norway.

After an eight year period as financial auditor, Martin Stevens took up in 1985 his first position as internal auditor. This was in a Norwegian Bank with responsibility for the audit of the international operations. He became a key professional advisor in Norway in the accounting and risk management aspects of currency risk and financial derivatives. He wrote articles for professional publications and was a sought after speaker at professional gatherings in Norway on this subject. Up to 1993 he held various positions in banking as internal auditor as well as line manager in settlements and risk management and financial controller before becoming a consultant in these fields employed by Grant Thornton and then Ernst & Young in Norway.

For 9 years from 2000 he took a change of career direction to work as a Financial Controller and later CFO for a group of companies based out of Norway and operating in the area of software development and content services to the mobile industry. In this period he also spent three and a half years based out of Hong Kong as CFO for the Asian operations. In 2009, Martin returned to Norway to take up the position of Corporate Auditor in Gjensidige Insurance.

Martin qualified as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 1981 and as a Certified Internal Auditor, CIA, in 1994 and Certified Financial Services Auditor (CFSA) in 2004. He joined the Norwegian chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors in 1985 and has been an active participant in the development of the internal auditing profession in Norway. He has been a board member, member of the conference committee, and was founding chairman of the editing committee which produced the first internal magazine for the national institute of the IIA in Norway. Since returning to Norway in 2009 he has again taken over the position of chairman of the editing committee before being voted to take over the position of Vice President in 2010.

As a representative of the Norwegian Institute of Internal Auditors, he was elected to the position of member of the ECIIA Management Board in October 2010.