EDITOR’S LETTER
Seeking guiding lights on complex issues
“A blank piece of paper can be a great way to encourage the creative process.”
Here’s a prediction: the three biggest driving forces that will reshape and define the risk transfer industry over the next three years. They will be environment, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors, further developments in technology (insurtech), and cyber risk.
In an ever-more interconnected world, where the availability of data is so vast and its use so increasingly sophisticated and intuitive, the latter two are perhaps the most obvious.
Nevertheless, they will continue to reshape the very nature of insurance from the inside out, and with that comes greater risk and opportunities—and headaches—for insurers.
That is why we continue to cover such issues in Intelligent Insurer. In this issue, we report on a panel discussion examining what the exponential growth of technology-based solutions means for insurers themselves.
Senior executives from Mapfre, Hannover Re and CAC Specialty, discussed frankly how they, as representatives of incumbent carriers, managed this transformation. They also debated how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process, bringing further challenges along the way.
To offer a different perspective, we decided to seek the views of some insurtech companies. Executives from CyberCube, e2Value and Send offer first-hand accounts of how demand for their products and expertise has skyrocketed in recent months, and what that could mean for the industry.
Coming back to the prediction, ESG came first and in this issue we speak to Julian Richardson, the founder and CEO of Parhelion, a new launch of sorts, which is calling itself “the world’s first fully sustainable insurer”. It will have ESG and sustainability at the heart of the business—and throughout it—and could well act as a beacon for how other insurers think about their own futures.
The ESG thing is interesting. The phrase has been around for some time but it is only now that corporates the world over are making changes to embrace these values. As Richardson says: “After 20 or 30 years, ESG is now becoming an overnight success.”
This is interesting for several reasons but at its heart the way Parhelion is approaching insurance has the potential to usher in a very different and new approach to risk transfer—in a way that could make a real difference to the wider world.
Consider that when you read some of the other interviews we have, covering emerging markets such as Latin Americas and Asia. ‘Emerging’ can suggest their being a little behind more developed markets—but such markets can be ripe for innovation and doing things differently.
A blank piece of paper can be a great way to encourage the creative process. Could these new concepts and ideals—ESG and insurtech—find fertile ground in such markets to move towards their logical conclusion, redefining insurance in the process?
Wyn Jenkins is managing editor of the Newton Media insurance group
Image: shutterstock.com / P Meybruck
