The insurance industry needs to work harder to get a seat at the table and get in the ear of CEOs, according to the head of international broking firm Ed.
In company boardrooms, insurance can sometimes be considered a necessary evil or even an unnecessary cost, says group CEO Steve Hearn.
“That dynamic is unhelpful when we’re trying to evidence that actually, we do a lot more than that. We are value creators,” he said. “It is frustrating that the intermediary, as well as the risk management community, isn’t always sitting around the boardroom table.”
Despite being undervalued at times, insurance remains a fundamental part of the international ecosystem, according to Hearn.
“There is nothing you can look at today where insurance isn’t relevant… things are built because of the insurance industry,” he commented.
“We have a very significant role in the global economy, but what we need to do is get the CEOs to understand that. Maybe we haven’t done a very good job over the 300 or so years we’ve been going. But that is the reality. The world would stop without insurance,” he said.
The challenge for the industry, particularly intermediaries and the risk management community, is to get through the CFO to the CEO, and to advocate for insurance as a means of value creation, rather than just protection or an extra cost.
“I think in there lies the answer,” Hearn said.
Currently, while many individual parts do that well, the industry as a whole doesn’t do a great job, according to the CEO: “There’s no industry body,” he said. “There’s broker bodies, underwriting bodies, but we don’t actually come together and do a good job at advocating for ourselves.”
The UK industry, and the London market in particular, needs to
keep pace with a changing global community as other markets develop at pace, Hearn warned. London’s position in the global insurance world had been changing for some years, he said at the Brokerslink conference in Marrakesh last month.
But with Brexit acting as an accelerant to change, the market needs to work out how it will remain relevant, he urged: “The world is not changing, it has changed, and we’ve got to work out what London’s role is within that context.”
Related stories:
Ed CEO: London’s position in global insurance world is changing
UK brokers bullish on London market despite Brexit
