Ameen FtouniEconomic insight.Financial strategy.Lasting impact.
Two decades inside Lebanon's financial sector. Three institutions built. One continuing argument about how a country recovers.
- 20+Years of experience
- Multi-disciplinaryFinancial expertise
- Institutional trustProven relationships
- Economic perspectiveResearch & analysis
- Lebanon focusedCommitted to recovery
The making ofan economic mind
Four years of study, four disciplines. Between 1997 and 2000 he took degrees in accounting and marketing and in business administration, then a master's in finance — a deliberately wide base rather than a narrow one.
Each answers a different question. Accounting explains how a business reports itself; marketing, how it reaches anyone at all; administration, how it is actually run; finance, how it is funded and what it risks. Read together they describe an institution from the inside out.
The breadth, not any one specialism, is what shaped every decision that came after.
- Accounting1997–2000
- Marketing1997–2000
- Business Administration1997–2000
- FinanceMaster's Degree
- Underwriting
- Financial consulting
- Risk assessment
- Market behavior
2000 — 2020
- Executive Consultant in Sales
- MetLife
- Lifetime Member
- Million Dollar Round Table
In 2000 he joined MetLife, then among the largest financial institutions in the world, and stayed two decades. Underwriting and financial consulting were the daily work; the education was in how risk is priced, how markets behave when conditions turn, and what it means to hold a commitment that outlasts the person who signed it.
He rose to Executive Consultant in Sales and earned lifetime membership of the Million Dollar Round Table. The more durable outcome was a way of reading an economy — one he would later turn on Lebanon itself.
An economic voice,built on institutional trust
The client list outgrew insurance early. It came to hold major private companies and, at the far end of it, the Lebanese Parliament.
Institutions of that weight do not hand their finances to a specialist in one product. They look for judgement that holds across the whole picture.
- 20 years
- MetLife — one of the world's largest financial institutions
- Lifetime
- Million Dollar Round Table membership
- 01
Lebanese Parliament
Institution
- 02
Arab Finance House
Finance
- 03
Bank of Lebanon & the Gulf
Banking
- 04
Goodies
Private company
- 05
Taghzia
Private company
- 06
Fomaco
Private company
Economic perspective& contribution
Since 2019 his published analysis has stayed with two questions Lebanon cannot avoid: how an economy recovers after its financial system fails, and how a country rebuilds after war.
- 01
Post-2019 Economic Recovery
What a route back looks like once the financial system has already broken.
- 02
Reconstruction After War
Rebuilding as an economic problem, not only a physical one.
- 03
Social & Economic Security
Moving emergency assistance out of relief and into something that lasts.
- 04
Diaspora Investment Models
Money sent home treated as capital: lent, repaid, then lent again.
- Speaker and trainer
- A long run of seminars and training programmes.
- Author and researcher
- Articles on economics and finance, carried by leading magazines and news platforms.
- L'Économiste Liban
- L'Espoir Liban
- Wakala News
Building institutions.Creating value.
By 2012 the question had changed from how to work inside an institution to whether he could build one. Three followed, each answering a gap he had watched go unfilled.
- 01
Co-Founder
United Financial Investment
Lebanese banks were passing over founders who had a business but no balance sheet. UFI was built to lend to exactly those people.
First venture — startup capital and small lending.
- 02
Co-Founder
MJ Investment
Risk consulting, and the point at which two decades of pricing risk became advice other institutions could buy.
Risk consulting and institutional financial consultancy.
- 03
Co-Founder & CEO
UMB Insurance & Reinsurance
Founded in the year Lebanon's financial crisis broke — an insurance and reinsurance company started precisely when confidence was scarcest. He still runs it.
Continuing as Chief Executive Officer.
In 2020 he closed the MetLife chapter for good and went independent, working across insurance and startup investment at once.
A journeyof leadership
Study, then a corporation, then companies of his own — and now a country's argument with itself.
- Academic foundation
Academic foundation
Accounting and marketing, business administration, then a master's in finance.
- Professional development
Joined MetLife
The start of twenty years in risk, markets and financial systems.
- Entrepreneurship
United Financial Investment
First company — capital for founders the banks would not take.
- Entrepreneurship
MJ Investment
Second company — risk management, sold as counsel.
- Leadership
UMB Insurance & Reinsurance
Third company, founded into the crisis. He leads it still.
- Leadership
Departed MetLife
Twenty years ended by choice. Independent from here.
- Current work
Economic analyst
Publishing on Lebanon's recovery, and recognised as an economist and institutional-development specialist.
Publishedwork
Analysis, recorded commentary and the professional engagements behind them — kept as one continuing record.
Enter the recordThe workcontinues.
The work now runs on two tracks: an institutional client portfolio that reaches as far as the Lebanese Parliament, and published analysis on how the country recovers.
Insurance taught him how risk behaves. The companies proved he could build around it. The writing put him inside the argument over what Lebanon does next.
- 01Economic analysis
- 02Financial strategy
- 03Risk management
- 04Insurance & reinsurance
- 05Investment advisory
- 06Public speaking & training
Ameen FtouniEconomist & Financial StrategistLet'sconnect.
Economic analysis, institutional advisory, insurance and reinsurance, investment, seminars and training.
- info@ameenftouni.com
- Telephone
- +961 3 677 558
- Based in
- Beirut, Lebanon
Co-Founder & CEO, UMB Insurance & Reinsurance