Today sees the opening of the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) Meeting of Reinsurance Officials (MORO) in Montreal, Canada. The MORO Conference takes place 23-25 April and this year’s theme is Reinsuring the mutual way.

This year’s MORO has attracted elite leaders from the global reinsurance industry and is the cooperative and mutual insurance sector’s only global reinsurance conference. The conference is an opportunity for mutuals and cooperatives to share reinsurance knowledge and discuss issues of common interest in a collaborative and supportive environment. This year’s event has a total of 30 speakers from 22 organisations, many of which are ICMIF member companies.

The event will feature speakers from global organisations including Willis Re, A.M. Best, Berkley Re, Swiss Re, DLA Piper and CyberScout. A number of prominent Canadian companies will also be included in the agenda with speakers participating from ICMIF members The Co-operators, CURIE, Farm Mutual Re and Desjardins General Insurance Group. Also appearing will the Argentinian Deputy National Insurance Superintendent, Guillermo Plate, who joins a panel today discussing the political, economic and regulatory issues affecting the global reinsurance market.

This year’s keynote presentation, “Global change and catastrophic loss”, will be given by Glenn McGillivray, Managing Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (Canada). In his presentation on Tuesday 24 April, McGillivray, will speak about the increasing challenges in managing risks associated with severe weather and seismic events. He will discuss how severe weather losses are rising across Canada and around the world and what can be expected through the next decade in terms of disaster loss claims and prevention. He will end with a discussion on ICLR’s work and its efforts to help insurers and others mitigate the impact of severe weather and earthquake events.

The 2018 MORO will bring together 90 reinsurance delegates from 49 companies in 18 countries in Montreal to learn from and to do business with each other. The biennial MORO conference combines world-class speaker presentations, panel sessions, networking and the opportunity to write reinsurance business.

ICMIF Vice Present, Reinsurance, Mike Ashurst, commented: “We are thrilled to bring our global MORO Conference to Montreal and we look forward to meeting mutuals and cooperatives from the Canadian insurance sector.”