Swiss Re focuses on innovation and technology ‘to keep the difficult-to-insure insurable’

“One aim is to keep things that are difficult to insure insurable—that is the challenge for today,” according to Thierry Léger (pictured), group chief underwriting officer at Swiss Re, as he spoke at the reinsurer’s Monte Carlo event on various topics including climate change.

“We need new products for new needs that are emerging in this world, so we think that we can support this with new models and new data on the innovation side of things.

“It’s a world that requires us to be on our toes and a world for underwriters. It’s full of challenges and also opportunities,” he said.

Moses Ojeisekhoba, chief executive officer reinsurance at Swiss Re, said that everyone at the conference event had been impacted by weather-related events, be they high temperatures in the UK or extreme droughts in different parts of the globe. “It’s not that these things are happening, it’s that they are no longer one-off events,” he said.

“We have a world that is far more uncertain from a risk standpoint and on top of that the inflationary pressures.

“This translates into what we are seeing today, which is greater demand. Greater demand for reinsurance and insurance, and from my perspective this is a role that a company such as Swiss Re must continue to fulfil. In that sense we partner with our clients around the world.

“Often these partnerships go beyond capital or capacity provision and frequently they go beyond risk transfer and focus on innovation and technology,” he concluded.