CTPO and CFO Simplifai Expands Executive Leadership Team with Appointments to Power 2026 Growth Strategy

Simplifai ExpandsExecutive Leadership Team with CTPO and CFO Appointments to Power 2026 GrowthStrategy

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Fernando Cristóvão and Arild Rønnestad-Venaas Join C-Suiteas Simplifai Scales Its Agentic AI Platform for Insurance Claims

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Press Release

Insurance

Written by

Published on

March 24, 2026

Miami, FL & Oslo, Norway (March 24, 2026) Simplifai, the leading provider of Agentic AI for P&C insurance claims, announces the appointments of Fernando Cristóvão as Chief Technology & Product Officer(CTPO) and Arild Rønnestad-Venaas as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The additions round out a strengthened senior leadership team as Simplifai accelerates growth.

"Fernando and Arild are exactly the caliber of leaders we need at this stage of Simplifai's journey," said Artem Gonchakov, CEO of Simplifai. "Fernando brings deep technical architecture expertise and aproven ability to build AI-fluent engineering organizations. Arild has already demonstrated his value to our business, having embedded with our team before stepping into the CFO role full-time. Together, they give us the product velocity, financial discipline, and operational infrastructure to make 2026 a breakthrough year."

The appointments follow recent board-level enhancements,including the addition of Ronald Kasteel as Board Chair and the appointments of Noel Hamill and Nils Thomas Lien as board directors. This positions Simplifai with senior leadership capable of taking the company to the next step of international expansion and category leadership in AI-powered claims automation.

Fernando Cristóvão:Unifying Technology and Product Under One Vision

Fernando Cristóvão joins Simplifai as Chief Technology & Product Officer, bringing more than 20 years of experience across fintech, SaaS, and enterprise modernization. His career includes serving as CTO at Pego, Product Lead at Imburse where he built a payments platform for global insurers and CIO & Operations Director at Sodexo Portugal. He also brings a founder's perspective, having built ventures from the ground up.

Cristóvão specializes in scalable distributed systems,cloud and DevOps architecture, and agentic AI disciplines directly central to Simplifai's platform evolution. He is a recognized advocate for Microservices,Data Mesh, and decentralized agentic architectures, and is known for building AI-fluent engineering teams that bridge strategic vision and product execution.

"Simplifai has built something technically distinct in a market that's ready for genuine AI transformation," said Cristóvão. "The architecture we're scaling agentic, decentralized, built for the fullclaims lifecycle is something the market needs and is ready for.”

Arild Rønnestad-Venaas:Financial Strategy Built on Deep Business Context

Arild Rønnestad-Venaas assumes the full-time CFO role having already developed a strong command of Simplifai's business, having joined the company as a financial consultant in Q2 2025 before transitioning to full-time leadership January 2026. This experience allows him to continue on the financial infrastructure, reporting systems, and capital strategy needed to support the company's next phase of growth.

Rønnestad-Venaas brings a strong background in SaaS andhigh-growth technology companies, with previous roles at Findable and Ardoq,where he focused on financial transformation, system implementation, andvalue-driven decision-making. He holds an Executive Master of Management in Finance from BI Norwegian Business School.

"Having been embedded in the business through apivotal period of development, I've seen firsthand the depth of the technology Simplifai has built and the size of the market opportunity ahead," said Rønnestad-Venaas. "My focus is on building the financial foundation, the systems, the discipline, and the strategic framework that supports sustainable growth at scale."

About Simplifai

Simplifai is transforming insurance claims through Agentic AI with AI Agents that execute the complete claims lifecycle under human supervision. Simplifai's Agentic AI allows insurers, TPAs, and MGAs to automatethe full claims lifecycle, from intake and processing to payment and closure,with human oversight built in by design. The company currently serves leading insurance organizations across Europe and North America and is expanding rapidly through its 2026 growth strategy.

Media Contact: StaciaKirby 206-478-5841 stacia@kirbycomm.com