Terrorism pools focus on systemic risk

Last week the International Forum of Terrorism Risk (Re)Insurance Pools (IFTRIP) held its first online conference. IFTRIP membership covers 17 terrorism pools from 15 countries and the conference gathered international terrorism reinsurance pools, insurers, reinsurers, security specialists, academics and thought leaders in the industry. Live panel sessions and Q&As were supported by on-demand seminars.

New and emerging threats in the terrorism landscape, including the emerging CBRN threat, the changing nature of terrorism, the insurability of hostile cyber and the long and short term impacts of covid19 were covered in a highly topical first day.

Throughout the conference the expert panels covered issues as diverse as coverage gaps and how to fill them, social media-driven unrest, the critical part that modelling has to play, and campaigning for victim compensation.

Unsurprisingly, the topic of systemic risk in the 2020s – both terrorism and beyond – and the need for resilience was a key area of discussion. It was the first time the conference had looked broadly at systemic risk and it was clear that there are many lessons that pools can learn from each other, but also how relevant it is to look beyond the pools to organisations such as the California Earthquake Authority – the second largest buyer of reinsurance in the world – that also has recently become responsible for managing wildfire peril in that state. Information sharing, transparency and trust were topics that arose across the whole conference.