Day one AMRAE: What the risk managers are saying

François Beaume, Amrae Board Member, Vice-President in charge of digital risk and VP Risks and Insurance at Sonepar

What are you speaking about at AMRAE?

The world’s current main challenges, ecological transition, digital revolution, sustainable growth and geopolitical risks including the rise of sovereignties will be at the forefront of our discussions, as well as some more technical topics like cyber risks, hardening of insurance market’s conditions, raising of compliance related matters etc.

What is the one key takeaway for risk managers?

More than ever, stay tuned to the world and build or reinforce exchanges with other internal functions and external partners.

What is the biggest trend affecting risk managers today?

The world in which we live and work as risk managers is complex, simultaneously more global and fragmented than ever. In addition to this, its evolution never stops accelerating.

We must, as Risk Managers, be connected to these changes to understand them and find ways to embrace them in risk management processes that we deploy and maintain in our organisations.

Following that path while maintaining risk management systems accurately is not an easy challenge!

In addition to that, for those of us also in charge of insurance, we must deal with the change in the insurance market which is moving from soft to selective or harsh for some lines or risks.

This reinforces the need to implement preventative actions and share them with the market, but also the interest for a corporate of having an insurance or reinsurance captive to better deal with these market conditions and build up to something robust in the long run.

Elise Vandenbrouck, Head Property France, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions

1) What are you speaking about at AMRAE?

I will discuss and demo technology which can help Risk Managers to have more effective risk preventions measures. In terms of NatCat exposures, there a number of tools available including:

• CatNet® can be used to assess the risk, from individual locations to entire portfolios, by combining hazard, loss, exposure and your insurance information with selected background maps and satellite imagery.

It uses maps and data about climate change, catastrophic event impact, population density and more to support risk manager’s daily work.

• FLOAT, a cost-effective and highly accurate way to assess and manage a location’s flood risk and uses drones to capture location-specific elevation data.

2) What is the one key takeaway for risk managers?

Straightforward technology can be a powerful tool to help risk managers to prepare and manage NatCat exposure and prepare for claims. A Risk Manager will learn how to become more aware of their NatCat exposures and learn how to implement steps into risk prevention measures. Ask us about FLOAT and CatNet.

3) What is the biggest trend affecting risk managers today?

The impact of climate change, and related Nat Cat events, which can cause devasting business interruption for corporates around the world.

Anne Marie Fournier, Risk Manager, Kering: Interesting times for risk managers: changing world, changing markets!

In the recent past, we used to refer to technological development as changing our tools but not deeply impacting our know-how… but today we are facing situations characterised by extreme volatility and very low predictability!

In a sense, volatility, low predictability and potentially high consequences are the essence of “catastrophic” type events which are usually the ones preferred by insurers.

At the same time, insurers do not yet offer cover for these new types of risks. As an example, political risks and war risks still are defined under “old” definitions referring to the physical war between nations.

But this means that the cover is no longer well adapted to modern warfare and political threats including economic attacks, violent terrorism and arbitrary or discriminatory decisions made by nations or groups of activists.

These new threats carry new consequences such as financial losses, destruction of data and reputational impacts which are very much at the forefront of business leader’s minds today.

Such events are difficult to anticipate and tough to assess in terms of potential losses. There are regular predictions, which often reflect recent trends but they rarely show the way for the future!

This is why we need to keep building scenarios that allow us to get prepared for these new risk situations. At the moment, we simply don’t have good enough quality tools to get prepared for all hypothetical cases.

We are relying on further IT development to help us build new hypotheses and to help us better assess consequences. At the same time, we are counting on insurers to develop insurance products responding to this new world!”