Irina Zodrow:

Welcome everybody. Welcome to this webinar, “Prevention as a strategic advantage for mutuals”, the launch of the ICMIF DRR Hub. I would sincerely like to welcome all of you. It’s very exciting to be here and speak to you about this from our side very important topic. So my name is Irina Zodrow. I’m the Head of Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement at UNDRR, and this webinar links to a long-standing partnership with the ICMIF community. Let me also just quickly introduce the other panelists here.

So today we’ll hear from Marc Scheers, Manager Research and Innovation at Achmea in the Netherlands. We’ll also hear from Chad Park VP for Sustainability and Citizenship at the Co-operators in Canada. And we’ll hear from our dear friendly Liam Carter, Sustainability, Advisor to the CEO of ICMIF.

Now, let me give you just a couple of words on the background of this webinar. UNDRR and ICMIF, as said have a quite long standing partnership, which was formalized in Auckland at your Biennial Conference in 2019, with a multi-year collaboration which looks at the shift from a protection focus to a prevention focus for the industry.

Now this new collaboration builds on the business model that the mutual and co-operative insurance is leading and which we feel is uniquely positioned for you to really lead this change. And I dare say that the topic of prevention and resilience has become a key topic for many of us, not only because of the COVID-19 emergency, but also right now with the ongoing and accelerating climate emergency. And obviously we are just coming out of COP26 and adaptation resilience risk reduction has been a key element discussed at the meeting.

The partnership between us as UNDRR, and we are the UN office for disaster risk reduction, and with this responsible for working with member states, but also the broader communities, so the private sector, NGOs, parliamentarians, the UN, the international finance institutions, to drive disaster risk reduction, to many different hazards, manmade and national hazards. Within this climate is a big important element, but we are also looking at, I said, manmade disasters such as technological disasters or biological disasters.

So the first step in our partnership with you all was to look at case studies, where we could see from what’s already ongoing within the ICMIF community in terms of reducing risks. And here you see in the slides, a little overview of case studies that we published in 2020. As you will see at the bottom, it says more in the ICMIF DRR Hub, and I’m sure Liam will talk to this a bit more. I’m not quite sure at which number we are by now, but I think we are nearing like 70 case studies, which I feel is really a proof of the leadership that you are all taking in this area.

Now, next to the case studies, we also took a next step already and developed what we call Mechanisms for Supporting Disaster, Risk Reduction and Resilience, so looking at what the industry can do in concrete terms right now to shift from protection to prevention. And here we have identified seven mechanisms. Some are direct mechanisms, which look at what insurance products can do to reduce disaster risks. The other ones are indirect mechanisms, and here we look at what insurance providers can do to reduce disaster risks. And so I’m just going to take a minute to go through these different mechanisms and the case studies speak to some or many of them.

The first one is that you can apply variable pricing of insurance to provide incentives for risk reductions. This really comes hand in hand to include prerequisites and exemptions to provide incentives for risk reduction. So this is really what you can do to through the product side. Number three, looks more at your role as asset managers and investors, where you could play a big role in ensuring investment reduces and prevents risks and build resilience. And I know that our colleague chart will speak more to this later. In terms of the indirect mechanisms, one point that I believe you’re all doing quite a lot already is to raise the awareness of the systemic nature of risks and provide transparent information and advice for reducing hazard exposure and vulnerability. Obviously, I think you are one of the industry who understands risk the best, and you see a lot that is happening.

I would dare to say often before anyone of us sees it. So we feel this is very important element of where you can take a strong leadership. This also links to mechanism number five, which is building and sharing capacity and technology for risk modeling analysis and monitoring. Over here, the broader insurance sector and reinsurance sector comes in strongly as well. Number six is, promote and enhance local social capital for responding to disasters and innovating to reduce risks. Again, I feel this is really a strong point of the co-operative and mutual industry as you’re embedded really in the communities and in working together with the local population to help them understand the risks and reduce them. And last but not much least, is the collaboration with the public sector to signal unsustainable development and support decision making towards disaster risk production, and risk informed investments while closing the protection gap.

I think examples include one that we have in the report from Suncorp in Australia, who basically withdrew the insurance offer because it was simply getting too expensive in a certain area, which actually alerted the public sector that there was really something not going very well. They addressed it and afterwards the insurance industry could come back. Now, ideally we would have to see this in the future being a collaborative effort, which I think would help us generally create more resilient communities, which is in best for all of us. So with this short introduction, I would like to go to the different presentations. And I’m very excited to hear from all three of you. So Marc and Chad will give us some concrete ideas on what the industry is already doing in order to look at a prevention approach. And Liam will afterwards give us a bit of an overview what ICMIF is currently doing, including the new DRR Hub and is planning to do over the coming months. With this, I would like to pass the flow to you, Marc. Thank you.

Marc Scheers:

Thank you very much for the introduction. I will present to you two cases from Achmea. One is already in place right now, and one small pilot we are now doing, it’s not a big disaster pilot we are doing, but it’s also a form of prevention I’d like to share with you guys. Maybe it brings you guys to new ideas. So the first one is a BlueLabel. BlueLabel is a label we founded in 2018, and it originally came from 2015 because in 2015, the Netherlands was on heavy weather in the summer storms, with lots of rains and we saw a lot of clients having damage. And we saw a lot of troubles in the Netherlands and we thought, “Okay, it’s time for action within our company,” because also our loss rates were sky high.

So we formed a work group, and we say, “Okay, let’s start thinking about prevention and what should we do about this?” Now after long brainstorming, we have a long list of ideas, but we thought, “Okay, let’s validate on the streets.” So we went on the streets and we asked people who had losses through water damage, and people didn’t know about it, who were on other sides of the Netherlands. And then we discovered we were on the wrong path. So we had to go back to the drawing board, but why were we on the wrong path is, when we talked to these people, they had no idea they had any risk involving water damage. So they said to us, “Okay, why are you talking to us? What is it and why are you… As an insurer, talking to us about this?”

There were no insights in the risks. So if you’re telling me, I am at risk, show me. And the insights that were in the Dutch market were from bureaus who were talking to governments and their plans were not readable for the normal people, for us also not. Another insight we had is that, where the rain falls is not where the rain is going to flow. So there was no casualty between those two, where the damage is and where the damage occurs, the rain occurs. So that was a big one also, and gave us a lot of insight. Okay, so for prevention, that’s a big thing. And citizens think flood prevention is something from the government, so they were pointing to the government. And the last one is, “I’ll pay you guys, so that’s why I pay for years. So why should I do something and pay more instead of paying you guys, to go into prevention?”

So we had to go back to the drawing board and we had to say, okay, let’s go from prevention, go to awareness first. So we have to go back and yeah, where then to start? What’s awareness, how do you create awareness from a risk that people don’t know they have? And then in the Netherlands was a lot of attention for flooding. And we saw this guy on the news and this guy said on the news, “I know exactly where the water is flowing.” So he knows by 25 centimeters, he can say the water is flowing and what he’s pointing out. He say, “in my model, you see the cow over there?” And in real time you see the cow in the picture.

That’s exactly where the cow was standing, and there was no flooding over there. So we thought, okay, maybe we could use this kind of modeling he’s using to show the people on the streets that their houses were at risk. But then also from how do you do that with cars or something like that. So we set up a meeting with this guy, we validated this algorithm. And after validating this algorithm with them, there was a joint venture. We were going to work together with Nelen & Schuurmans and after that, a year later, USV joined us. And we’re setting up a strategic partnership as a goal, to set awareness in the Netherlands about floods risk. And for our company, this was really new to set up joint venture with Nelen & Schuurmans companies. So what we did is show you in the next slide, and that’s a small movie…

[VIDEO]

The impact of climate change is increasing at an alarming rate, combined with increased urbanization and more intensive use of agricultural land. This could lead to more serious flooding than experience to date. By mapping out areas that are vulnerable to this kind of flooding, measures can be taken to prevent this. Quality of life can also be safeguarded and improved. BlueLabel is a flood risk digital surface that depicts, in detail, all the vulnerable areas in any given area. BlueLabel provides valuable insights into the risks and impact of floods, both at street level and at property level. All information is clearly represented using a single BlueLabel ranking. The relevant ranking is based on detailed calculations, combining hydrodynamic models and extreme rainfall data. BlueLabel increases awareness of the impact of flooding caused by rainfall. It enables municipal authorities, businesses, and citizens to work together to create a climate proof living environment. We develop BlueLabel in close collaboration with stakeholders. Contact us via our website to get started.

Marc Scheers:

Thank you for the movie, so that’s what we did with BlueLabel and that’s where it all started. So what we did is we took all the existing data and all the water models in the Netherlands. We took them and we built algorithms on them to translate all the very highly level data into outcomes labels that everybody could read. So the AB22E everybody could know if their house is at risk and you see the picture of the house there and other buildings, every building, every zip code, every house holds has a label right now in the Netherlands. So we created a very big database of understandable labels.

These labels could be used in a communication tool. So what we now see is that governments can use these ones to talk to people and say, okay, your house at risk. How can we together do something in your street to make this label go up? So make it from an E to A or something like that. And I say together because 50% of the land is private. So a lot of measures are on private ownership land. The other thing we did is make a dashboard and in the dashboard, municipality or government can say, okay, this is my boundaries of my land and these are my labels.

You can see what the labels are now, but also in past. And if you take any measures within your municipality, you can see it’s getting better, or you can see it getting worse if you don’t take any measures. So that’s what we did as dashboard. And that’s what we all selling within the Netherlands to governments, but also to any other companies like banks who are trying to handling it for their assets and saying for their mortgages or to McDonald’s who wants to know exactly what the risks are for all the McDonald’s in the Netherlands. So we give them a dashboard and then they can see what’s on there.

What we also learned is that the water is not everything. There are all kinds of climate risks. So what we did is after water, we also did for flooding. So the fluvial floods the rivers, we built a label, understandable label for customers. We also did heat stress, and we also do draft, and we did it because all these labels are related. All these things are related. If you do take measures for fluvial floods, it also affects heat stress and it also affects drought. So there has to be a balance in those labels. So that’s why we now also build these labels within BlueLabel and selling these ones.

And now last slide for BlueLabel is what we learned so far, because we are still learning… Is work together. And that’s also, I think this help is about working together because the biggest insight right now is if you don’t work together, people and customers get different views from different people. So in the Netherlands now do it yourself shops are advising customers, what they should do to climate change based on what. So there is no standard and everybody has his own standard and gives his own advice.

We say maybe he should put grass in your backyard. And another one says, no, this not, you should go to the government. So there are lots of different advisors right now in the Netherlands. And I think in Europe also, and working together, should come to understand that where we can say, okay, this is happening. This is the risk and this is the measure you can take, this is the prevention you can take. So the differences are in the risks, someone says, okay, you have a high risk. And we say, maybe we have a low risk. And the difference are in the prevention measures. That’s are two fine things.

And the other thing is that you should definitely work with governments. I think that are the main speaker for the public, and public is looking to them. So it doesn’t make any sense if we, as an insurer also go speaking to all those people, if they think maybe the government knows best. So that’s about BlueLabel and just a quick new one. It’s just we started last month, but I just wanted to share you about prevention. It’s called MD go, it started from Israel. And we try to reduce death in traffic. And what we do is every client gets a small box in their car. The box is passive, but if the car crashes, it becomes active and sends a signal. So it’s first notification of loss, but the signal goes in our case directly to the ambulance. We are now working with the bills of the ambulance software and goes to the ambulance and why to the ambulance? Because the box I see over here, you see a car crash right now, if it’s okay.

Let’s say in the desert, in Israel, the box gets active and the box says, okay, first notification of loss, where is the car hit? What’s the death of the hit. And what’s the kind of damage, but more important the box says, where are the people hurt? Where should the ambulance EMT look first to which people left front or right front, maybe the people on the back, which other people are the most hurt and need the most immediate help. So that’s what we’re doing right now. And some small disaster for, but it can be a really big for people, but this stuff is right now also on the market. And we are looking into that to reduce these risks. And it’s nice to share these kinds of prevention with all other insurers. So this was my talk right now. And thank you all.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you Marc. So firstly, really interesting pilots from our perspective, to me showcasing, is said how ADMIA is already implementing the mechanisms. I took a bit of note and I can easily say already that you definitely applying all four indirect mechanisms. I would be really interested to see how, because you’re saying you are selling the new tool, talking about BlueLabel now to the government and businesses. And I would be interested to hear if you’re already applying it also in terms of your pricing on your product design. And the second question I would have is, you highlighted very much the collaboration aspect. Do you have just a reflection? Are other insurers interested? Are they picking it up or would you offer in a certain way, collaboration with others?

Marc Scheers:

I say collaboration is key. So there’s no competition in these kinds of stuff. So if other insurers want to join, may please join. And we also sold it very cheap to other insurers. So there’s no competition in that. Another thing is we had quite a discussion internally about pricing. And why is that? Because of solidarity. We take solidarity very high as a company. And we came to the conclusion that a lot of these people with climate problems, don’t have any… The handling perspective. So as within our team, we say also their solidarity with handling perspective and their solidarity without handling perspective. And if you going to price these groups who are always at risk and everything they could in the Netherlands, they’re a bit the drain of the Netherlands and in the cities, they’re also in the drain and they’re always the same people.

And we should be aware that you don’t get any groups that can’t get any insurance about this kind of risk. And we also discovered that mostly in those kinds of drains in the Netherlands, there are a lot of people without much money to take measure. So that’s why I am always set internally. I don’t want our pricing department to go work with BlueLabel right now. So it keeps the discussion, but I think it has to yeah. Always look if people have a perspective to do something or not.

Irina Zodrow:

To me, it was also very surprising to hear that people in the Netherlands are not even aware of the risk, which thinking about the fact that we are facing new risks and new disasters in places that we’ve never even seen before. And then we look at the Netherland who is obviously a front runner in dealing with floods. We realize how much more we have to do together.

So with this, I would like to pass the floor over to Chad for his presentation on a different pilot. Definitely equally interesting. So Chad, the floor is yours.

Chad Park:

Hi everyone. Nice to be here today. I’m participating from Canada and for those of who may not follow the Canadian news, it’s pretty timely for this conversation. That we’ve had major flooding in British Columbia last week, the province of British Columbia’s in a state of emergency the city of Vancouver and the whole lower mainland around it is cut off from the rest of Canada by road and by rail because of washing out of all the major highways and including the Port of Vancouver, which is one of the biggest ones in Canada. So this is a real and live conversation about the impact of our societies, not being as resilient as we need them to be. So I’m going to talk about one pilot in particular, but I will also give a little bit of context for some other activity that the co-operators is involved with.

Did the same thing as Marc I’m going to focus on climate change, but of course, disaster can come in many forms. We will focus on climate change just because it’s very present, it’s perhaps the largest crisis of our time. And it’s really a threat to the very kinds of societies we’ve built. So there are… If we don’t act, there are large swaths of people and organizations that will be in growing financial insecurity. And for us co-operators, that’s a direct threat to our mission and our social purpose, which we state as being financial security for Canadians in their communities. So we’re aware that to confront these challenges and ensure that we can remain resilient in the face of these changes we have to place an increasing focus on preventing loss, not just on indemnifying, our clients after the losses occur.

That’s what we’re trying to find ways to do. And of course that’s what the seven mechanisms are focused on. And I don’t need to go into too much depth because Irina already introduced them. So I’ll just go to the next slide as Irina pointed out, I’ll go to focus on number three, mainly, but just before I do I’ll mention that co-operators has also done some activity related to some of the other mechanisms. So mechanism number one, for example, that’s about variable pricing to incentivize risk reduction. Cooperates provides discounts to homeowners that install back water valves or secondary sump pump systems. And so this creates a direct financial incentive for clients to materially reduce their risk. Number four is, about raising awareness of systemic risk and providing information and advice to reduce it. So there we built a website a number of years ago, it’s water.cooperators.ca and that provides information about water risk right down to the household level, along with tips for managing that risk.

And so we offer water damage endorsement everywhere in Canada, unlike any other insurers, regardless of where the flood risk level or what the flood risk level is. And so that sends a really clear risk signal to the market to inform its decision making. Mechanism five is, about building capacity for risk modeling and monitoring. And we’re also doing that through a dedicated team that’s focused on climate hazards and advanced modeling as well. And then mechanism seven, about public sector collaboration. While there we work through a whole range of coalitions and partnerships to try to influence public policy or to advise them advocate for public policy. So those are few of the things that we’re doing on the other mechanisms, but I’ll focus now on the one I’m here to dive deeper into, which is number three, of course, as ensures many of our organizations have significant assets we can bring to bear for climate action.

This scenario where co-operators has really spent a fair bit of focus over the years on and specifically on impact investing. We currently invest over 20% of our total invested assets into impact investments. This is somewhere in the range of 2.5 billion and so impact investments generate of course, a healthy market rate of return, but also they provide solutions for pressing environmental and social challenges. We direct our impact investments to support projects in a range of different thematic areas. Climate change is definitely one of them health and well, this is another education and community development. But by far the largest share of our impact investments are directed toward climate change. So in 2020, 75% of our impact investments were directed towards climate change related investments, like renewable energy, green buildings, local-urban transportation, and so on.

We’re proud of that. It creates a platform to build from and as great as those might be the reality as we got a long way to go to where we need to get to, and there’s much more we could do. And I say that with two different meanings in mind, first of all, we could invest more of our money this way. So 20%, why not more. And in fact, earlier this year, co-operators announced a new set of specifically climate investing goals. And there were in addition to committing to achieve net zero in our investment portfolio, by 2050, we’ve set a target to increase the proportion in impact, and also in investments set directly support the transition to a low carbon economy to 60% by 2030, so that’s a big stretch goal. And the second thing we could do is to better ensure that our investments build climate resilience so far in our case, none of our impact investments are directed to climate adaptation. And so this is where our pilot project with ICMIF and UNDRR comes into play.

We’re working on this with that kind of a lens in mind. So I’d just like to invite everyone for a moment to consider the following. The UN has estimated that adapting to climate change worldwide will require somewhere in the range of 140 to 300 billion per year in US dollars by 2030. And that will increase to 280 to 500 billion by 2050. So for Canada alone, the estimates are over five billion per year. And so that’s the demand side of the equation. Now consider the potential supply side of the equation, insurers, our important investors with something in the range of 36 trillion dollars in assets under management, and currently on average insurers invest just under 1% of assets in low carbon investments. What if we did the same with climate adaptation investments that build resilience, for example, through infrastructure? Imagine if we could increase the proportion of our investments in building resilience to just 1%, that would mean 360 billion of investments from insurers alone.

What if we could increase it to 10%, that would be 3.6 trillion. So only about 7% of global climate finance flows are directed to adaptation. If we could get really serious about climate adaptation and not just our sector, but in all sectors, imagine the impact that we could have together. That’s what we’re hoping to do. We’re committed to providing Canadian leadership on this challenge as part of a collaboration with ICMIF and UNDRR, and really we’re for now aiming to initiate a pilot project in Canada to learn, improve and ultimately scale the impact globally. And really this is about figuring out how we can create a model for applying our… Investing our assets into these resilience building measures. So it’s not going to be easy, if it were easy there would be more of it happening already.

But our view is that we have to try. And so just like we did when we helped establish the market for impact investing in Canada, we’re going to be advancing an intention around resilience investing. And we’ve established three work streams on resilience investing for this pilot. One is to identify a pipeline of investible resilience building projects. So I’ll walk you through that in just a moment, but that’s a really key challenge is finding the appropriate projects.

The second is, identifying the pools of capital and how to access them. Won’t be enough for just the co-operators to be investing in these projects. And when we’re talking about the scale of the need, so we’re committed to working with other investors and to getting creative about the financing mechanisms. And then the third stream is, about the enabling environment to addressing the barriers. A lot of those are regulatory, but other forms of barriers as well. So I won’t walk you through all the considerations on this slide, because we’re still in very much the early stages, but we’re committed to working on this and to getting to the point of having both a pilot and ultimately to scale the learnings from that. So I think I’ll pause it there and we can have some discussion, Irina.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you very much for the excellent presentation as usual.

From my own side, I can just reflect on what you just said Chad, that the astonishingly limited amount of funding or investment that’s going into adaptation. Is something that is not new to us working in the disaster risk reduction area. We just launched a report, which is on one of the targets of the International framework that we are the customer agency off. They send our framework for disaster risk production and this showed that even official development assistance.

So even the governments only investing out of a hundred dollars of ODA, only 50 cents are going to reducing risks. And even within this, it’s often more the preparedness for when a disaster happens rather than preventing and reducing the risk of a disaster happening in the first place. And so here comes my question to you Chad. So if even the governments are not investing enough in this area, I’m wondering, we know net zero resilience impact investing ESG. Everything is really, it’s talked about a lot, but I would say that I dare to say that often it actually comes to making an investment decision. Some people in a company say that’s not so possible. So how did you get the buy-in from your board for this project?

Chad Park:

Well, I suppose it might be that we’re a little bit odd in this sense, my answer to your question, but I don’t think this was one of our major challenges. In our case, our board is highly committed to the things we’re talking about here. And in many ways, always asking us or compelling us to find ways to do more. Specifically on investments, I guess they can feel comfortable doing so largely on the basis of the track record that we have established and the experience we’ve gained through our broader impact investment work. So, that gives the board confidence that we can find the appropriate investments here that our investment manager, Addenda Capital has proven that we are not suffering for financially in terms of our impact investments.

In fact, through the pandemic, the Addenda Capital pooled impact fund has performed better than most investments financially. So, the choice here it’s not a trade off really, in terms of the broader impact investment movement. So I think that gives the board confidence that we will apply the same kind of thinking when we get into this other new realm. And then, the other thing is just more broadly, there’s something that is… Well, two more points. There’s something that’s unique about co-operative and mutuals, and is certainly reflected in the way that our board is set up in the governance structure. And so on that really puts the mission of the organization front and center and that’s financial security for Canadians in their communities.

And it’s hard to argue with the fact that our mission is under threat from these various risks. So, the solutions are not always clear, like in this case, we need to work our way through to find the solutions, but the risk is clear. And so, as a purpose driven or mission driven organization, it behooves us to take the full picture into consideration when we’re determining our priorities. I think in the broader world though, the drive to ESG investing, climate concerned capital and so on is obviously just growing as we saw with COP26. And so, if there are aren’t already, there are going to be a lot more investors looking to find solutions here. And really, we don’t see the challenges being, finding the investors in these projects because there’s a lot of capital ready to be deployed to address climate issue. It’s really more about finding the right match and the right mechanisms. Match between the projects and the investors needs and the right creative mechanisms. And that’s going to take a bit of work.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you Chad. Now you definitely, I think embarked on a quite ambitious adventure here, and I’m personally looking forward to hearing about the progress. And I’m also convinced that some of the audience will be listening very intensely. And maybe I can say, please reach out anybody to Chad. I’m sure he’s happy to talk more about this project and the other work the co-operators are doing. Similarly, may I say tomorrow. And before I hand to Liam, I just saw this one question coming in, and I would like to raise that it’s addressed to both of you. So it’s related to the circular economy. So it states in terms of preventing claims, it’s great to hear that the products and initiatives but other co-operators are doing anything with their circular economy to help settle claims in a more sustainable way, when there are some claims that cannot be prevented. So maybe, may I pass the floor first to you Marc and see what you would like to say to that?

Marc Scheers:

Yes, we are. If house claims or property claims we are looking always is possible to rebuild it or to make the damage in a sustainable way. So that’s, I think we are always doing it. We’re looking into it also in motor, but we thought to OEMs and it’s really difficult in the future to make a car which is damaged with secondhand components parts, because maybe that’s also a security thing in the future. So the OEMs are saying, if you put a different secondhand part in a car, it could affect the security of the people in the car driving it further on. So that’s what really looking into right now also. And mostly, we are obligated to make insurance possible for circular companies.

A lot of startups are coming. A lot of companies are into recycling. And mostly in our company, if you say the word recycling, everybody thinks every month there’s some big fire with recycling companies, but mostly that other companies with our recycling tires or old cars or something like that. But there are a lot of high tech recycling companies coming up right now, which needs insurance and really difficult to get insurance also for the secular economy company. So the first thing we should do and I think everybody should do is, make it possible to get insurance for those companies. And one example is cars is a kitchen as a service. We have to ensure that this kind of assets in the households. How do you do that? So we have to make it possible for the companies and for the people who are getting a kitchen as a service or a bathroom as a service or something like that, that’s coming up right now.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you Marc and I just realized I can scroll up a bit and I see some more questions that came through. Liam, I hope it’s okay if I put you a little bit longer on hold. So Chad, maybe we’ll listen to your answer on circular economy. And then I’ll ask you a follow up question related to telematics.

Chad Park:

We’re also pursuing circular economy in the claims’ area. It’s… I would say this is another instance where it’s for us very early days. And we’re in more in pilot phase, we had a senior leader in our claims area who actually did a research project as part of a graduate program to totally focused on examining the business case for circular economy and claims. And so she has translated that into some ideas for early pilot projects and developing out the business case.

This builds on a track record, where we have had, for example, in the past partnership with habitat for humanity, that takes some of what would otherwise be waste from the claims process and sees it directed towards some of habitats programming. But that’s not really circular economy in at least in the grand scheme of the opportunity that the question is getting at. So the initial business case is looking at the opportunity to save both money and waste through some, for example, drying on site for when there’s drywall damage and then saving money and material flow to be able to invest it elsewhere. So the opportunities are there, but we’re just beginning, but definitely see it as a big area for development as well.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you. I have to say I’m very happy about the question about circular economy. Talking about the silos we live in from the disasters who are perspective, this was always a bit of a separate topics, but it’s really good to see. And I don’t know who asked the question, but I’m very happy that it comes up in our discussion here. Now, Chad, just a quick follow up, not related to circular economy I believe, are you co-operators doing anything around IoT or telematics to help reduce claims in property or motor insurance?

Chad Park:

We had a pilot in, with telematics and it was focused on motor insurance. That was discontinued a few years ago. The business case wasn’t working. And so it’s something we’re keeping an eye on, but currently we don’t have an active program on it.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you. And maybe the last question that I see for now, and it nicely, I think brings you both back together. The question is for Marc, which says would a logical step for BlueLabel be to use investment funds to fund greater resilience in danger areas as the co-operators are looking for?

Marc Scheers:

I guess that’s a logical step. But first I think we have to collaborate more and set standards because you can’t get all the investors and other companies on the same level. So we have to invest, yes. But we’ll have to invest in the same things altogether.

Irina Zodrow:

Yes. And this is indeed a big challenge.

So with this, and also looking at the time, I would like to pass the floor now to Liam, to brief us a bit about what you all, as the ICMIF community are doing over the next coming months. Liam, floor is yours.

Liam Carter:

Thank you so much and thank you to everybody for joining us today and quite how do I follow those two wonderful the stories. And hopefully when I follow with is going to provide some value for the broader membership.

So just as a recap, Irina mentioned that previous work with UNDRR we launched a report and the report is extremely valuable. We got 20 incredibly good case studies out of that. And in a career time that we have a lot more information to share and a lot more good examples coming out of our membership and cutting out what our members are doing.

So, we sat down, we thought let’s put this things together in sort of a hub, to create a collection of documents that we can present to the membership to help them find solutions to help them set up their own initiatives or actually just lean on each other for advice and grow this incredible need that we have. So, one of the unique prose of the hub that we’re setting up that we haven’t really discussed yet is, we are making this a globally access Hub.

The idea behind this is that, not only do our members and other mutual and co-operative get to lean on this information, but actually other insurers as well. So this is such an important piece of work. The ICMIF Knowledge Hub is something that we do for our members and something that we share to our membership. But this is something that we feel like the world needs to get on and work with and work together. So we are at the early stages of development, but we are setting this up to build upon itself, to really create a body of knowledge and an archive that can live on and grow from strength to strength.

Just to show you get an idea of where our stories are coming from. So Irina, we have 50 published cases. I still have about 20, 25 sitting in draft. So just to go to 70, we getting there and they’re coming through fast, but for the launch, we’ve got 50 published cases and it’s coming from all parts of the globe and all parts of our members. So 24 members and it’s important to note that’s now sitting on around 200 members. So we’ve only scratched the surface of what we are getting in terms of this expertise from our members and it’s grown. So more members are becoming really active and more members are contributing. So this is something that we are going to be able to share the reach of our global network. These examples are coming from all types of mutual and co-operative, all types of lines of business, all different types of risks. And it’s a type of picture that we are looking to paint.

Just to have a look at what the distribution around the mechanisms are. So it actually sounds quite logical as you listen to the stories that I’ve been told today, but the three mechanisms that are heavily featured are the ones around investments, awareness and advice and modeling and data. And this is something that mutual have been doing intrinsically as being mutual. It’s something that’s quite easy to share as an example. The next level is sitting in orange is you’ve got pricing, prerequisites and exemptions and social capital. And a lot of the examples that we’ve discussed on today do touch on those and seeing that grow. So I think that’s also important thing to note, the stories that are coming through people are starting and members are starting to incorporate about their business.

And the only thing that we’re not seeing much of at the moment is collaboration with the public sector. And I think to no fault of anything, but we are at the beginning of this journey and formalizing this. And that is something that will grow as the value of the other mechanism stands up. So I am calling to any members there who have any great examples, please, by all means let me know, I’d like turn into an orange or green as a consultant. I don’t like red on slides. It just shows there’s a problem. So if there are any good ones, we can bring it more. Okay, so what does a hub look like? It is really simple. And it’s designed to be really simple and it’s designed to be easy to use.

Very simply we have started the hub with a bit of a recap. So for anybody who is a first time visitor, you can get a basic understanding of what the mechanisms are. We also have a link directly to the report is great foundation reading. So if anybody needs to actually go back and look at that body of work, they can get it directly from there. That’s simple to make it really easy for everybody who is around searching on mechanisms and hasn’t. So mechanisms being the key part, it’s one level search, but you can literally click on any one of these.

And it is going to automatically filter into stories that are within that mechanism. As Irina mentioned, there are various mechanisms in different examples. So there is a little bit of crossover, but it has been categorized as to make this a really easy way to access this information. So frameworks have come in terms of 150, we have pulled them into the more common risks you’ll be able to pull something around, road traffic accident and get all the stories that are sitting in there.

So, what is next? What are we doing with this? So, whilst we are building this body of knowledge and calling for our members to share these stories and mining these stories with them, we are looking to create a benchmark. The idea here, the next phase of this is to create a mechanism by which our members could rank themselves within their prevention levels. And we can then help them and put them in touch with other members to actually move their scores as they need. So, to do this, we are setting up a specific task force, which we’re going to be working to select few members to really get into this and figure out what the best way to actually benchmark this is. And then we are going to be ranking what we are going to be asking our members to come with to where they are and figure out the further solutions and better ways of sharing information.

And the idea there is, its flash forward. It’s 2025 and all of our members are benchmarking themselves and have a score. And we are working together to further this agenda across the business. So I think it’s very easy URL. Then we can click over to the next one. If you want to have a look, there we go. So it’s www.icmif.org/prevention.hub/ it is line for anybody to go have a look at, if you have anything that you would like to share or reach out, please have a chat to me at liam@org, and I’m happy to help you get the answers that you need. Are there any questions?

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you, Liam. I hope there will be lots of questions, how to join the Hub and how to access all the information, but I’ve seen, and also looking at the time that there was one last question coming in, which I feel is a very nice question to finish this webinar with, which is saying that, other insurance stock owned and shareholder owned half prevention initiatives as well. So how can prevention be a true strategic advantage for the mutual and co-operative sector? Now, me coming from the UN, I obviously have my views on this, which include the fact that we do see a strong shift. I personally have never, in my 15 years in UN, spoken to so many people from the private sector who really want to do a change and people from all walks of life.

And so I do believe for an industry who actually takes this forward and shows in very practical terms, but scalably that a shift is possible and that it is valuable, will have an advantage. But these are my UN views so I’m aware that this might not always be what counts yet on the other side, so to speak. So I would like to invite all three of you to just give just a one minute quick reflection on this last question. And then with that, I would then close. Marc, do you want to take the first stab at this quite challenging question?

Marc Scheers:

I think it’s a difficult question. Because insurance is becoming a commodity more and more, so you have to have some USP for your clients, and the touchpoint with your clients are becoming more and more important. So if you’re going to help them with living and making their daily living easier and prevent them from a disaster, then they’re most likely going to stay with you.

That’s a strategic advantage and they’re not going to go to someone else, but also I think, should there be a strategic advantage and in these kind of social things, this is that’s big, this problem climate, should we make profit on that? Maybe it should work together instead of you make money on this. And maybe I’m cursing right now where a lot of insurers, but I think otherwise everybody is going to do something by himself to make as much money instead of working together. And we are never going to achieve what we want to achieve. That is mainly thoughts I have, and we have to discuss these kinds of things. But I think it’s a nice discussion we should have.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you. Chad, you want to add something to this?

Chad Park:

I think the insurance industry in general is always challenged with trust issues. And so I think one of the big opportunities for strategic advantage here is the inherent trust that can come from being a mutual or a co-op. And I say inherent, you have to go ways to explain the difference and to communicate and so on. But by virtue of how we’re organized, I think there’s an authenticity to our intention that is, we can communicate. And so, because a lot of these issues are really about forging new ground or finding some creative new ways to meet community unmet community needs and so on. And if you’re doing that in a context where your organization isn’t trusted, it can be really hard.

So I think that’s actually the source of our big competitive advantage is we can, by virtue of how we’re organized, we can claim trustworthiness, or actually you shouldn’t claim trustworthiness. Other people should tell you’re trustworthy, but we can be confident in our trustworthiness, I think. And it doesn’t mean that we inherently will take that leadership or that advantage, but I think it’s a good ground to start from. And then, practically, I think being rooted in communities and going out of our way to kind of support the communities that our clients are in and to connect the two together consciously. That’s what we’re trying to do more of with, for example, through our community partnerships and community investments and so on.

Irina Zodrow:

Thank you, Chad. Liam, last words.

Liam Carter:

I think I’m just going to build on both points, but as Chad said, the way that we are, we sit up as mutuals and co-operative. There is a sense of community. And I think as a strategic advantage, when disasters hit communities, hit individuals, but they hit communities. I think and as insurers, we are ensuring communities and ensuring people for the betters of the people around them. So again goes to communication and marketing. And some of our mutuals we do use that as a strategic advantages and some of them haven’t yet or starting to, but there’s something about telling individual members that by doing this together, we actually do it for the better of the people around us as well. And that is the way that we do insurance is the way we do business as mutual and co-operative. I think that getting that message across letting it land is a really good a way for us to build.

Irina Zodrow:

Great. Thank you all, especially also for your eloquent closing here, I shall not say much more. I think you said it all and just to say thank you to all the participantsand a big invitation to everybody to please join the partnership, come work with us. We’d be delighted. Thanks again to everybody for this conversation. Goodbye.

The above text has been produced by machine transcription from the webinar recording. ICMIF has made every effort to ensure that transcriptions are as accurate as possible, however, in some cases some text may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. Listening to or watching the webinar recording will allow you to hear the full text as delivered during the webinar but this is available in English only. Our transcriptions are provided to enable members to select the language of their choosing using the dropdown menu above.