Baden-Baden Today conducts a survey of senior industry executives

In association with Swiss Re, Baden-Baden Today conducted a survey of senior industry executives ahead of and during the conference. Here are some responses to various key questions.

People will need insurance in the future, but will they need insurers?

You can’t have one without the other. As intermediaries we add value by finding the most suitable organisation to assume our clients’ risks. They might be traditional reinsurers, capital markets investors operating through innovative structures, or even groups of individuals each taking a tiny slice of a big risk.

The capital landscape will continue to evolve with new entrants and new tools but as long as one party’s risk is transferred to another there will be insurers and we will always place our clients’ risks with whatever type of insurer suits them best.
Steve Hearn, CEO, Ed

I remember when a fax machine was introduced in an office I worked in 32 years ago. We stood around it transfixed. Who knew? Guessing the future is still a guess. What will be needed is an understanding of how to price risk and how to obtain risk. You need data and expertise for the former and relationships for the latter. This much, I guess, will be part of how coverage is provided in the future.”
Frank Fortunato, CEO, CATEX

You could buy your insurance from confused.com yet the company you choose is, let’s say, M&S which is, in turn, offering a policy underwritten by Aviva. So who is your insurer?
If you take the definition of an insurer as the company that takes the risk, then yes, absolutely. However, we have seen their distribution model change significantly over the last 10 to 15 years.

Admiral would be a good example of a direct insurer that takes the risk, but then it gets more complicated because even direct insurers share the risk using reinsurers.
Debra Williams, entrepreneur, former MD of confused.com

Technology startups have a huge disruption potential in the insurance industry. Do you agree?

The disruption is already well underway from the ground up. Startups are changing insurers’ customer landscape like never before: Uber, Airbnb, Turo, driverless cars, IOT, etc, don’t require traditional coverages and the percentage of today’s business risks addressed by classic insurance is in sharp decline.

The industry is therefore facing the perfect storm: anachronistic products served up from sluggish ecosystems built on convoluted application architectures. Radical innovation is inevitable.
Richard Clark, business development director, Xuber

Agree. Technology has been the driving force of major insurance coverage options over the past 10 years. It is important that the insurance industry works with the technology sector as a partner to respond to the changing economic landscape rather than being the annoyed older sibling. It will allow the insurance industry to be the innovator not the consumer of innovation.
Ashley Hunter, director of Touriga Risk

We are working with Oxbotica to support the adoption of mobile robotic solutions and to explore their impact on risk management and insurance. Last year we created XL Innovate, an XL Group-sponsored venture capital initiative, which has invested in New York-based startup Lemonade, a peer-to-peer insurance company that offers insurance to renters and home owners. The idea is to bring funding and mentorship to these tech startups and learn from the way they innovate, think and do business.
Bertrand Romagne, underwriting director EMEA, reinsurance, XL Catlin