Emerging risks high on agenda at AIRMIC

There will be a significant amount of discussion and debate about emerging risk and in particular how to manage emerging risk at this year’s AIRMIC conference in Birmingham, which starts this afternoon (Monday June 16).

That is the view of Owen Thomas, sales director, global specialty lines, RSA, who will be attending the event.

“There have been a lot of incidents which have hit the press recently such as cyber-attack, data residency and supply chain resilience,” he said. “We have also seen people much higher up the agenda – both in terms of attracting new talent but also training and development, both areas that RSA is working closely with AIRMIC on.”

Other anticipated discussion topics include basis clauses and compliance for multinational programs and availability and efficiency of capital.

“This will always be a hot topic as every business wants to maximise the capital it can invest in its business rather than having it tied up in insurance arrangements,” said Thomas.

He said that RSA is focusing on delivery at the conference, particularly around risk engineering and multinational programmes.

“First and foremost our primary role is to meet the expectations of the corporate insurance buyer, risk manager and/or their board,” he said. “That doesn't always mean delivering everything at the price that is requested but it does mean we need to deliver to what has been committed and promised - no surprises.

“The buyer needs to be absolutely comfortable with the organisation and most importantly the people they are dealing with and we need to make their job as straightforward as possible.”

Thomas said the insurance industry as a whole tends to deliver well on existing products and solutions but struggles to tackle the products and solutions of tomorrow for the risks of tomorrow.

“At RSA we have been investing in risk engineering technology, with the launch of the RSAred system at the conference to better position us to deliver to those needs,” he said. “We have a new solution for businesses as they start to trade internationally called OneGlobal (designed on feedback from insurance buyers and the broker community) and we have run an internal competition called the Innovation Cup to promote more innovation and customer insight through our business.”

He said RSA has seen an increase in the amount of risk managers that want to understand how our policies would respond in different major loss scenarios and how to release capital tied up in their existing or previous insurance arrangements.

Risk managers have wanted to know how RSA may be able to help them deliver more insight and value to their business.

“This has led to more contact with claims and risk engineering teams and more detailed discussions about release of prior security requirements (such as LOCs) and what those requirements look like going forward,” he said.

He added that there has been a shift in the approach of risk managers as their role becomes more demanding.

“There is more procurement involvement and even more focus on cost and value to the business. As a result, insurers, brokers, third parties must support the risk manager/insurance buyer in front of their board – after all it is everyone's interest that risk management is high on the business agenda.”