When executives of property/casualty insurance carriers assess emerging risks—those already visible as well as those sitting just beneath the surface—the ones that are most worrisome have the potential to snowball and multiply in unexpected directions.
Executive Summary
Words like "aggregation" and "accumulation" routinely pepper conversations of carrier executives and chief risk officers when they talk about the risks that keep them up at night and those that should rise to the level of boardroom attention. Here, P/C executives identify three risks starting to emerge on their radar screens with the potential to add up to weighing down bottom lines or balloon quickly into balance sheet liabilities.Words like “aggregation” and “accumulation” are quickly followed by “board-level concern” when executives speak about the risks that keep them up at night and how they prepare their organizations to address them.
“When you do the math, it’s amazing what happens,” says Ken Kurtzman, chief risk officer for the Bermuda-domiciled reinsurer Platinum Underwriters, referring to one risk unique to the P/C reinsurance space: the risk that disruptors to the traditional reinsurance model from the capital markets will pressure traditional market pricing year after year, creating a downhill avalanche that will be tough to dig out from under.
