The Insurance Insider’s InsiderScope Conference was held on May 11, 2011 at the New York Athletic Club in New York, New York. Intended to provide “insight and intelligence” on the international insurance markets, a number of speakers focused on the cat market and the roadmap for the (re)insurance sector in 2011 and beyond in light of several recent large-scale natural disasters.
The morning session included presentations by Rod Fox, Chief Executive Officer of TigerRisk, and Kean Driscoll, Chief Underwriting Officer and Executive Vice President of Validus Re Ltd, discussing the U.S. property cat market, and the Florida market in particular. Mr. Fox projected a 10% to 15% rate increase in the Florida market with no significant change in capacity. Mr. Driscoll also highlighted rate increases, speculating that rates will increase through 2012 due to the impact of the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) model change effected with their latest version (version 11). (To see a description of the RMS model changes, click here.) Mr. Driscoll stated that as most companies face May and June renewals, they have already exhausted their retro-coverage and are forced to go back to the market and “re-up or go bare for the rest of the year.”
The afternoon session included a presentation by Kevin Kelley, Chief Executive Officer of Ironshore, on public versus private insurance. He noted that the demand for government intervention has increased as the number of natural disasters has increased over the past decade. However, he criticized government involvement, underscoring the government’s inability to put liquidity back into the market place quickly, due in-part to its being ill-equipped to handle claims-processing and its overall under-investment in loss-prevention. Mr. Kelley suggested that the best role for the government in insurance is that of “backstop,” rather than on the front-end where it then competes in the market place with “adverse consequences.”
The day concluded with a networking reception attended by the conference delegates.
