Round-up: Airmic in the news

Published on Thu, 10/09/2020 - 19:50

Airmic’s leadership is regularly requested to provide comment on topical risk and insurance matters of the day and, as usual, they have been busy over the past few weeks in providing timely commentary to the industry press.

John Ludlow, Airmic’s CEO, featured in an article titled ‘Navigating the harsh market‘ by Matt Ford at Strategic Risk Europe on 7 September.

The article also included comments from Alexander Chester, Global Placement Leader, Marsh UK & Ireland and Dirk Wegener, president of FERMA.

“I think [insurers] really do have to face the charge that they are not giving enough notice of changes in lines they’re covering, whether that’s in terms of the coverages they’re giving, the exclusions, their pricing,” Mr Ludlow said in the piece.

“We started saying to people earlier in the year that they needed to start their renewal earlier. Well we do, but you’re still not going to get an answer until one minute past midnight. So it’s not very customer friendly.”

Julia Graham, Deputy CEO and Technical Director at Airmic, described the insurance sector’s response to the pandemic as “underwhelming” in article written by Gabriel Olana for Insurance Business Magazine.

“Often there is ambiguity, poorly written or badly communicated contracts,” Ms Graham said. “In these cases, insurers do have choices to make. They can either interpret ambiguous contract wordings with their balance sheet in mind, or they can act as partners to long-standing customers who seek business protection - this means responding to claims with fairness, flexibility and clear communication.”

Mr Ludlow also featured in a piece from the Intelligent Insurer (paywall), written by Jenny White on 1 September stating that COVID-19 can allow risk managers to shine.

“Now that this risk has crystallised, what does that do to your other risks? Risk management is moving from being about managing each risk individually to much more whole-business thinking,” Mr Ludlow said.

“Enterprise risk managers can now go to the C-suite and executive committee with a much more credible voice because they are talking about a few high priority business issues.”

While enterprise risk management is very much a leadership and coordination role, those on the second line of defence—health and safety and security, for example—have had to step up too.”