‘Collaboration’. It’s one of those fascinating five-syllable words that is infinitely easier to say than it is to make real. Particularly in recent years, this well-meaning, multi-purpose word has elevated itself beyond buzzword status to become something of a corporate mantra – a well-deserved promotion for a concept that, with the right intentions, can achieve so much.
Of course it all comes down to intention. Collaboration rubs shoulders with words such as resilience, solidarity, empathy and accessibility – without action, they’re merely banal lip service to concepts that deserve better. As with each of these words, collaboration is comfortable to think about, easy to talk about and exciting to brainstorm about – implementing it in a practical and meaningful way is far more difficult.
At a time when many businesses are wrestling with the matter of how to rebuild their brand and standing in an economic and social environment that changes on almost a day to day basis, it’s not hard to imagine how attractive the prospect of even the emptiest soundbites around collaboration must seem. Luckily for those operating across the insurance profession, the plethora of far-reaching collaborations and partnerships announced even since the beginning of this year serve as a welcome indicator that co-operation is being embraced less as an opportunity to ‘look good’ and more as an opportunity to ‘do good’.
These news stories are emerging from a variety of industries, and provide a positive signal that the challenges posed by COVID-19 and other external factors are being slowly but steadily metamorphosised into opportunities for the insurance and risk management sectors.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk has risen to the top of the agenda for many businesses since COVID-19, and recent reports from the likes of Aon and the World Economic Forum imply that it’s here to stay.
The recent announcement from the international specialty insurance group Chaucer that it is collaborating for a first-of-its-kind ESG scorecard with the risk assessment firm Moody’s is a key step towards the market’s inevitable move towards a more proactive approach to managing ESG risk. The scorecard, which will help Chaucer measure counterparties’ ESG performance using 158 metrics, will enable the organisation not just to derive its own ESG profile but also to help its counterparties understand their risk from both a stakeholder and an enterprise perspective.
Flooding and inclement weather, in general, are especially timely topics given the rare red weather warning issued by the Met Office for parts of South-West England and south Wales today. The warning has noted that Storm Eunice could bring gusts of up to 90mph, causing significant disruption with damage to homes, cancelled trains and power cuts likely.
Read more: Flood Re taps Addresscloud tech
Insurance businesses including Allianz, Simply Business and FM Global have issued advice and updates on necessary precautions and first steps in the event of a claim – but the shifting trends around extreme weather conditions in the UK also calls out for longer-term solutions.
One such solution was recently posited by the partnership between Flood Re and the geocoding specialist Addresscloud which will oversee the development of a Property Data Hub (PDH) in order to provide property-specific information that will allow insurers to make rapid and accurate ceding decisions at the risk level. At a time when one in four UK properties are deemed to be at risk of flooding, the need for new, innovative and proactive solutions has perhaps never been so pressing.
Only earlier this week, STORM Guidance’s CEO Neil Hare-Brown shone a light on how the collaboration between the cybersecurity services provider and the British insurance giant Aviva is a positive sign that the gauge of cybersecurity services is swinging to a more proactive stance. Some insurers have ‘caught a cold’ in recent months, he said, as high-profile cyberattacks have raised the profile of the value of cyber insurance.
However, he believes that overall this is good news for the wider market as it means insurers and brokers now have to be more diligent in their risk management and in understanding what controls and safeguards their insureds have in place – ideally before they bind on a particular policy. Taking a proactive approach is critical, he said, as in doing so the insurer wins, the broker wins and, most importantly, the insured client wins.
Across the gamut from cyber, to ESG, to flooding, to employee benefits – new alignments are being struck all the time – and with each new successful join-up, the future of collaboration across the insurance space looks brighter every day.
