A tale of two conferences

The title might suggest to those jet-lagged by conference season that I’m referring to RVS Monte Carlo and CIAB, and they’d be half-right.

I was at RVS, my first, and the talk was of a “hardening” market, perhaps because few wanted to tempt fate and call it a “hard” market. Hurricane Ian struck and, as one executive you’ll find on these pages said, “that was the nail in the coffin”. Cue high blood pressure at CIAB.

The second conference my title refers to though is COP27. If Hurricane Ian was an “event”, then the UN’s climate talks are the “context”.

This issue has a whole section dedicated to Ian. If I’d become a music journalist, it would have been a section dedicated to another Ian (Curtis*), but that career was never meant to be.

According to tradition, Bermuda:Re+ILS has a feature about expectations from 1/1 renewals, but finding a sufficient number of carriers willing to share at this stage was, thanks to Ian, impossible. However, two brokers did what brokers do best and heroically stuck their heads above the parapet.

Another section, ‘climate and environment’, pays homage to the talks next month in Sharm el-Sheikh. That section begins with a leader in the climate space, who is, quite possibly, the most gracious interviewee of my career: Ekhosuehi Iyahen, secretary general of the Insurance Development Forum.

Last but not least, ILS Bermuda flung open its doors to Convergence, where a certain ILS veteran cheekily asked whether the world needs reinsurers any more.

To misquote the hurricane’s eponymous singer: don’t let climate tear us apart.

I hope you enjoy our October issue.

*Joy Division

Louise Isted, editor, Bermuda:Re+ILS