Insurance Risk & Capital EMEA 2024

PANEL DISCUSSION: FUTURE PROOFING THE RISK STRUCTURE. CREATING AN APPROACH THAT ENABLES US TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS GOING FORWARD

• How is the new risk landscape challenging and testing our risk framework and where are we coming up short/gaps being exposed/what inadequacies
• What are the demands of the future and what foundations and building blocks do we need to be putting in place now to meet these challenges?
• How are companies navigating the increasingly broadening, interconnected and systemic nature of risks
• Adapting stress scenarios
• Identifying correlations
• Remaining adept and agile in a world where extreme risks crystallise at speed
• Is the 3LOD model still valid and relevant? Where are the pros and cons?
• Is multi-disciplinary teams the answer?
• Building the perfect blend of skill sets for the risk team of the future
• Where are the skill gaps?
• Given tech and AI advancements, how does the profile of the risk team need to change?
• To what extent will we be able to us new automation or tech to enhance 2nd line oversight?
• Role of AI in managing the risks of the future – vital tool or exacerbator of risks

Moderator: 
Justin Elks, Partner and Head of Consulting, Crowe UK

Panellists:
Kian Lun Wong, Chief Risk Officer and Chief Actuary, British Gas Insurance
Rob Anarfi, Chief Risk Officer, Beazley
Ross McGee, Group Head of Enterprise Risk Management, Apollo
Zoe Shapiro, Open Division Chief Risk Officer, Phoenix Group

BUILDING ON AND ITERATING THE OPERATIONAL RESLIENCE PROCESS

• How are firms progressing with meeting the 2025 deadline?
• What actions are still outstanding in order to meet the tolerances and which aspects (of compliance) have posed the greatest challenge?
• Evidencing what resilience means to the organisation and why resilience controls are proportionate to the company
• How do you ensure that operational resilience is part of the culture of the organisation and woven into the fabric of the organisation
• Implementing a business-as-usual cycle of operational resilience
• How do firms intend to refine and iterate the operational resilience process and build on it in the future?
• Increasing and improving our preparedness for disaster
• Responses and observations from the PRA's guidance paper on resilience testing.
• How rigorous is our BCP testing?
• Are they sufficiently realistic?
• Are we increasing the sophistication of the practices and the timeframe over which we are playing them?
• What are the roles of the bronze, silver and gold team structures?
• Managing crises from a strategic perspective at the top
• What does gold standard look like?

Moderator:
Ronan McCaughey, Commercial Editor and Deputy Editor, InsuranceERM

Panellists:
Daniel Winter, Group Head of Operational Risk, Sompo International
Kirsty Leece, Group Chief Risk Officer, Vitality
Socrates Coudounaris, Head of Risk Management (Executive Director - Enterprise/Operational Risk), EMEA, Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated

PANEL DISCUSSION: OUTLOOK FOR THE BULK PURCHASE ANNUITY MARKET AND USE OF FUNDED AND OFFSHORE REINSURANCE

• How is the Bulk purchase annuity market set to evolve throughout 2025 and beyond?
• How sustainable is the rate of growth we are currently experiencing and what are the drivers and determining factors that will shape its future path?
• Dynamics of the market development
• As the market scales what challenges and opportunities are emerging?
• Following SII reforms and the relaxation of the risk margin and MA requirements, what has the impact been for the BPA market?
• Use of funded and offshore reinsurance to support bulk purchase annuities
• How do global regulatory approaches to managing the risks of funded reinsurance compare and contrast?
• Industry response
• Key risks posed by the acceleration in funded reinsurance
• Regulatory arbitrage – a valid argument?
• Future of BPA market in light of heightened regulatory scrutiny surrounding use of funded reinsurance
• What can participants expect from the PRA's planned stress tests on the use of funded reinsurance?

Moderator:
Ronan McCaughey, Commercial Editor and Deputy Editor, InsuranceERM

Panellist:
Alex Duncan, Group Chief Risk Officer, Just Group
Giles Fairhead, Chief Risk Officer, Pension Insurance Corporation
Kunal Sood, Managing Director, DB Solutions & Reinsurance, Standard Life UK

EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT 3RD PARTY RISK MANAGEMENT – TIGHTENING UP PROCESSES AND CONTROLS TO KEEP PACE WITH AI AND CYBER DEVELOPMENTS

• How is the escalation of AI changing the nature, dynamics and focus of 3rd (and 4th) party risk management?
• Do you know where AI is in use within the insurance value chain and what additional processes/controls have you put in place to account for this?
• How are you approaching AI risk considerations in context of 3rd party risk management?
• How can risk teams best play an effective role in 3rd party risk management?
• What ownership and involvement do you take in the process?
• Oversight of model risk practices in use by 3rd parties given the increasing dependency.
• Evaluating and mitigating for Third party concentration risk
• Do you have a view into 4th party risk and what contractual protections are in place?
• Supervisory interest – how is increased supervisory interest influencing and driving engagement in 3rd party risk practices
• Lessons learned from previous incidents
• What key areas have firms identified for improvement and what steps are they taking?
• Onboarding
• Renewal stage
• Incident response
• Internal processes

Moderator:
Dan Spreckley, Crowe UK

Panellists:
Keith Davies, Group Chief Risk & Compliance Officer, Admiral PLC
Kevin Borrett, Executive Director and Chief Risk Officer, Advantage Insurance Company Limited
Kimon de Ridder, Chief Risk Officer, Insurance, Bupa

PRESENTATION: PRACTICAL PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION EXAMPLES FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES

QRM will walk through a series of practical optimization examples:

• How Strategic Asset Allocations vary by capital levels/constraints
• Understand the optimization decision making process to maximize distributable earnings
• Leverage optimization across the balance sheet and multiple economic scenarios to create value in the Corporate Plan

Speaker:
Vinaya Sharma, Actuary and Managing Director, Quantitative Risk Management

PRESENTATION: DERIVATIVES USAGE IN INSURANCE

• Global Regulatory and Market Overview: dive into the latest on Solvency II, volatility regimes, market dynamics, and key regulatory shifts.
• AMER and EMEA Derivatives Market Insights: a deep dive into market analysis and usage trends.
• Solvency Capital Requirements & Economic Scenario Generators: a clear intro to modeling capital requirements, covering both standard formulas and internal models, in the derivatives space.
• Practical Derivatives Use Cases:
• Handling calibration of parameters on the largest dataset possible: swaption volatilities and their impact on SCR.
• Managing risks of extrapolation error in long-term maturities.
• Resolving issues with fitting accuracy.
• Addressing gaps in pricing and data capabilities for derivatives under standard formulas and stress testing.

Speaker:
Enrico Piccin, Director, EMEA Business Development, Derivatives Services, S&P Global Market Intelligence

KEYNOTE PANEL: LIFE BEYOND THE CRO ROLE – HOW DO CROs TRANSITION INTO OTHER C-SUITE ROLES OR NON-EXEC ROLES?

• What career paths are viable and accessible to CROs?
• How did you make the transition away from a CRO role? Which factors do you attribute to your progression?
• How did your CRO role prepare you for the next stage of your career?
• Transferrable skill sets: what skillsets did you take with you and which new skills have you needed to learn
• How can CROs be working towards bridging that gap in skillset requirement?
• How do you shine a light on the value of the CRO and ensure that it is not overlooked when it comes to senior leadership career progression?
• What advice would you give to a CRO who is looking for career progression?

Moderator:
Martin Assmann, Reporter, InsuranceERM

Panellists:
Philippa Herz, Chief Financial Officer, OneFamily
Simon Gadd, Executive Advisor, Legal & General
Michael Hosking, International P&C Chief Operating Officer, Gen Re, Chief Risk Officer, Faraday Underwriting

STRATEGIC KEYNOTE ADDRESS: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF AI - EMBRACING THE TECHNOLOGICAL AND INDUSTRIAL TRANSITION

• How is AI development set to change the world we operate in?
• Good scenario vs bad scenario perspectives on how the world will look 5 years from now
• As our clients' business models face an accelerating pace of change, how do we keep pace?
• AI will be incorporated by insurance clients at a quicker rate than in insurance companies themselves, which means we need to understand how our insurance products will respond to a changing business model and potentially a change of where the liability lies.
• With cyber continuing to be such a relevant threat, operating models dependent on AI will be at even greater risk
• Information bias
• Practical use case examples – where have insurers already started incorporating AI and where are they seeing most traction?
• How are companies looking to scale it?
• AI use in the Risk function - how risk functions are using/or should be preparing to use AI to enhance their effectiveness

Speaker:
Dr. Evangelos Avramakis, Lead Foresight, Intelligence & Development, Swiss Re 

PANEL DISCUSSION: STRESSING AND MANAGING FOR MULTIPLE INTERCONNECTED EXTERNAL RISKS

• How are companies adapting stress scenarios to manage an increasingly interconnected and broadening range of risks?
• Navigating the interconnected and systemic nature of risks
• What is driving this increased interconnectivity, scope and velocity of risks that we see today?

• Identifying correlations – where do risks diversify or compound each other?
• How adept are companies at managing external risks?
• What ongoing oversight and monitoring tools do you use to track changes to external risks?
• Adapting to a world where extreme external risks crystallise at speed – how do you get prepared for that
• How do you remain adept and agile?

Moderator:
Simon Grout, Senior Managing Director, Global Insurance Services, FTI Consulting

Panellists:
Ashley McMillan, Group Head of Risk Strategy, Vitality
Charlotte Davey, Group Enterprise Risk Director, Aviva
Dr. Martha Phillips, Risk Director & Executive Committee Member, AXA Health

PANEL DISCUSSION: HOW IS TECH SET TO CHANGE THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY OVER THE NEXT 5 YEARS AND HOW CAN CROS AND CTOS BEST WORK TOGETHER TO GAIN COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

• What do you perceive to be the greatest challenges/risks and opportunities from a tech perspective to face the insurance industry over the next 5 years?
• Where are the key areas/key scenarios where that Risk,IT and CISO should be working together?
• Integrating digital factors into insurance risk frameworks
• Digital transformation
• Legacy IT systems
• Optimal operating structure to ensure risk/IT work and engage efficiently
• Role of risk
• Key risks from Legacy systems
• Gaining the competitive advantage - To what extent is tech capability going to be a differentiator?

Moderator:
Martin Cairns, Senior Director, Global Insurance Services, FTI Consulting

Panellists:
David Smith, Enterprise Risk Director, Risk & Compliance, AXA UK&I
Helen Cooper, Chief Risk and Legal Officer, esure
Matthias Schneider, Chief Risk Officer and Board Member, Markel Insurance SE

PANEL DISCUSSION: RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF NAVIGATING THE CLIMATE RISK TRANSITION

• What risks and opportunities are insurers identifying from the transition in the real economy? Eg investment and new underwriting opportunities
• Risks and opportunities from underwriting existing risks (general insurance, health insurance, life insurance)
• Risks of greenwashing or greenhushing
• Operational risk from pace and nature of change
• Regulatory risk
• Financial, strategic and reputational risks as a result of policies
• What is the true cost to the organisation of these policies? Expensive internal projects, changes to investment policies, turning down opportunities and walking away from business that does not fit etc
• What actions are companies taking to reduce/manage transition risk?
• Competitive advantage for companies that are able to transition efficiently, for example through leveraging technology?
• Uniting to forge a pathway forward in the climate transition journey – how can the key stakeholders pool together to take this journey forward?

Moderator:
Alex Hindson, Partner and Head of Sustainability, Crowe UK

Panellists:
Helen McKee, Climate Change Lead, NFU Mutual
Rachel Delhaise, Head of Sustainability, Convex Insurance
Tony Rooke, Executive Director, Head of Transition Advisory, Howden Group Holdings

PANEL DISCUSSION: INDUSTRY AND SUPERVISORY BODIES IN CONVERSATION

• The global regulatory environment within the geo political nature of protectionist policies and nationalist tendencies in local political spectrums
• How can the regulators manage global institutions on a local basis
• The IAIS ComFrame was supposed to provide a global regulatory framework but has it really worked?
• Is there a level playing field globally or even within Europe?
• Are regulators really working to a similar hymn sheet or is there opportunity for significant regulatory arbitrage? How best to manage the differing requirements and will we see more alignment going forward?
• Managing the heightened exposure to regulatory and compliance risks. How have insurers dealt with the increased burden of regulation for the industry over recent years and how do we ensure it is a force for good?
• Can we expect more regulation to come?
• Lessons learned for the future in terms of resourcing, additional costs, prioritising and managing alongside other business priorities
• Transitioning to business as usual - Following a journey of enhancement in recent years in response to regulatory concerns, how do we transition to a state of ongoing continuous improvement?
• International competitiveness post Brexit: how does the UK remain competitive against a backdrop of seemingly more stringent regulatory demands vs our European counterparts?
• Consumer centric decision making - have life insurers done enough to meet the challenge?
• What intervention or action can we expect from the FCA going forward?
• How do differing jurisdictions' approaches to conduct risk compare and contrast?
• Solvency UK – to what extent does it achieve the aim of expanding the investment universe?
• Regulation of funded reinsurance

Moderator:
Chris Cundy, Managing Editor, InsuranceERM and Insurance Asset Risk

Panellists:
David Otudeko, Assistant Director, Head of Prudential Regulation, Association of British Insurers
Michiel Evers, Central Bank of the Netherlands (DNB)
Ramón Carrasco Bahamonde, Chief Risk Officer, MAPFRE S.A.
Tim O'Hanrahan, Head of Insurance Supervision Division Central, Bank of Ireland