Dick Harthoorn (1959) has more than 35 years of experience in the financial and automotive sector. Starting as a trainee at Centraal Beheer, he climbed the career ladder quickly. After working as a business insurance advisor, he was the manager of special insurance concepts for the leasing automotive market and, with Centraal Beheer, he conquered more than 60% of the market share in this growth market.
While he was working in that position, Dick was asked to become Commercial Director of Auto Lease Holland (ABN-AMRO, later incorporated into Lease Plan), where the portfolio was more than doubled in 4 years. It became apparent here as well that an overall concept worked better and generated more profit than simply offering low lease prices for standard products.
Then followed the switch to various management positions at Achmea. Dick was the “face“of the “Just call Apeldoorn“-concept ("Even Apeldoorn bellen“) of Centraal Beheer, with the whole approach being clearly different from the rest of the insurance market.
Processes were kept as simple as possible, which made communication much better and cost-effective and, what´s more, this made the customers feel good and well-protected - a principle Dick believed in (and still does). By acting this way, Achmea has developed into the largest insurance company in the Netherlands.
For 14 years, Dick was - among other things - Director of Centraal Beheer Commercial Lines, Centraal Beheer Private Lines, Achmea Pensions (including the PVF Synergy Pension Fund, now Syntrus) and Executive Chairman Achmea Corporate Accounts for the most important international relations across all Achmea brands.
In addition, he was a member of the Supervisory Board of CB Belgium, co-founder of Wagenplan (joint venture leasing company with the Athlon Group) and member of the Eurapco Employee Benefits Board in Zurich (part of Eureko) and of Achmea in the Supervisory Board of CarGarantie (a joint venture with the German car insurance insurer).
Eventually, his own entrepreneurship was raised: after one year as interim CCO of Mercer Benelux, Dick invested time and money in a number of companies and supervisory functions. In addition to his own Storm Company, Dick has been acting as an Advisory Board Member/Partner at Qien (Financial and ICT Detector), an Advisory Board Member at Today's Group (Low Cost Internet Asset Manager/Broker) and as Independent Chairman of the Volkswagen/ Audi Dealer Council The Netherlands.
His enthusiasm for innovative, clear concepts made him one of the founders and the CEO of as well as one of the partners in Arrow. Arrow is a premium European specialist in customer loyalty concepts, warranty programs, mobility services and service- and maintenance products for new and used cars, ships, motorcycles, scooters, bikes etc.
Dick is Independent Chairman of the Franchise Board of ANWB Driving Schools, the largest association of driving schools in the Netherlands. Dick Harthoorn is also Member of the Advisory Board of the Verheij Group, owned by Michel Verheij.
Jan van Harten 1972) started his career in 1995 at Nationale-Nederlanden as a relationshipmanager for pensions. He served a number of large companies. From 1997 to 2007 he worked as a pension advisor for Schouten Zekerheid and later Akkermans & Partners. Since 2007 he has been working as an independent pension consultant.
As a pension advisor he is the consultant for employers for the pension scheme of the employees. He is also frequently hired as a consultant for works councils. In addition to advisor, Van Harten is also affiliated as a teacher at various pension programs. The fields he teaches are tax and civil legislation, actuarial calculations and insurance technology.
Van Harten has also been a board member of two pension funds and has also been on the visitation committee of five pension funds for a number of years.
In 2008 Van Harten started with the website Pensioenweblog. An independent platform with pension information and news. In a short time, he managed to reach a large audience with this website. Pensioenweblog was sold to Akkerman & Partners in 2014.
Based on his expertise, he has also been involved in the development of pension products, advisory software, training modules and in setting up advisory processes. He has carried out these assignments for insurance companies, consultancy organizations and software companies. Jan van Harten is also Member of the Advisory Board of the Verheij Group, owned by Michel Verheij.
