In this A.M.BestTV episode recorded at the ICMIF Meeting of Reinsurance Officials (MORO) conference in Montreal earlier this week, insurers and industry leaders said nations that restrict cross-border insurance, manipulate interest rates and react to disasters with short-sighted solutions are limiting insurers’ ability to provide a full range of risk solutions. Click here to view the entire programme.
Bill Marcoux, Partner at one of the event sponsors DLA Piper (USA), spoke about why protectionism is such a concern for the industry.
“Protectionism is design to protect the domestic market of a country by excluding or curtailing the ability of insurers from outside the country to operate in it,” said Marcoux. “This promotes a major problem for the reinsurance industry, since it is one that operates on a global basis.”
Chuck Chamness, President and Chief Executive Officer, NAMIC (USA), discussed how governments are taking a bigger share of the recovery work post-catastrophe.
“As a private insurance market, we think this is a bad trend. Also, governments usually establish this type of recovery after the fact in a very political fashion, and it is very wasteful and inefficient. It does not help people prepare for the next disaster. … They are building in the same place, and in the same ways. When the next disaster comes, they will often be wiped out in the same way as they were yesterday.”
Guillermo Plate, Deputy Superintendent of Insurance, Argentina, highlighted how protectionism has impacted his country.
“Argentina has experienced the negative consequences of protectionism,” Plate said. “We have a population that is 33% in poverty, with high inflation and international isolationism. However, we are now starting to work our way out of these negative consequences by re-opening our economy to the reinsurance sector and the international community.”
Also appearing in this episode is Luc Boghe, General Manager at ICMIF member QBE Re Brussels and Head of Life, QBE Re (Belgium).
Other recent episodes of A.M.BestTV from the MORO include:
Mutuals on reinsurance rates: What can’t be sustained, won’t be, says expert panel: At the MORO conference, a panel of insurers, reinsurers and brokers from ICMIF member organisations said 2017’s catastrophes brought temporary uncertainty to the market, but there’s been little slowdown in reinsurers’ pricing wars. The panel includes: Andreas Beckmann, Chief Underwriting Officer, R+V Re (Germany); Apundeep Lamba, Vice-President, Corporate Actuarial & Reinsurance Services, The Co-operators (Canada); Greg Lockard, Chair, ICMIF Reinsurance Committee and Director of Reinsurance Operations, Shelter Mutual Insurance Company (USA); and Tony Phillips, Chairman, Willis Re Latin America & Caribbean (USA). Watch this panel discussion here.
For full video coverage from the MORO, including exclusive executive interviews, please visit http://www.ambest.tv/moro18.
This article has been adapted from an original post from A.M. Best, one of ICMIF’s Supporting Members. This is reproduced with the permission of the original author. Our thanks to A.M. Best.
