Ivan was born in Gradec and spent his childhood in the small Croatian town Križevci where he completed his secondary education He moved to Zagreb in the early 1960s to study economics and started working for Croatia Osiguranje, the largest insurer in the former Yugoslavia, as a salesman. He quickly showed his talent and passion for the business which enabled him to improve his career rapidly. In 1978 he won the Alois Alzheimer scholarship awarded by the German government, which brought him to Munich where he became a student of Munich Re, one of the largest reinsurance company in the world.

After two years in Germany, Ivan returned to Croatia Osiguranje as head of the property and casualty division, and he held a position on the management board. In the early nineties he became CEO of Adriatic Osiguranje where he successfully negotiated the Allianz takeover of the company. He subsequently became the first CEO of Allianz in Croatia, a position he held until he retired in 2003. During this period, he was also chairman of CROMA, the Croatian managers association.

Following his official retirement, Ivan remained very active in DPS International, our company that he founded in 2003, and he led us through our most important period of development and market positioning. He was our spiritus movens, an inexhaustible source of knowledge, always ready to educate and help us develop as professionals.

Ivan was also a loving husband and father; his family was always his number one priority.

He is dearly missed.