Kelly Lyles is Chief Executive Client and Country Management at XL Catlin (now AXA XL), with responsibility for managing XL Catlin’s insurance presence around the world. Her role includes leading teams in Strategic Client and Broker Management, Global Programs Centre of Excellence, Captives Centre of Excellence and Portfolio Solutions. She has more than 30 years’ experience in the insurance industry, including several senior roles in financial lines underwriting and management.
Executive Summary
Yesterday's emerging risks have become today's evolving risks. In this Q&A, XL Catlin's Kelly Lyles discusses lessons learned from three decades of experience with risk evolutions. Traditionally, insurers have celebrated the hierarchy of experience and expertise, favoring answers over questions, predictability over discovery. But that is changing for modern insurers like XL Catlin, she reveals, explaining how collaborations outside the industry help today's underwriters and partners to co-create methods of managing new risks.Here, Lyles discusses emerging risks and the new ways of working that insurers are adopting to collaborate outside of the industry and co-create new ways of managing and transferring these risks.
Q: What challenges do emerging risks present for leaders of insurers, and how do you adapt and stay ahead of the game?
Cyber, as a standalone policy, is a great example of a risk that would previously have been classed as emerging, that is now firmly on everyone’s radar but which continues to evolve. Both the exposure
and our clients’ concerns shift and change with time, geography and relevant jurisprudence. To that extent, it reminds me of other emerging risks I have encountered in my career, like employment practices liability or pollution. Certain coverage for elements of cyber risk are still embedded within other existing insurance covers, so from an enterprise risk management perspective there is uncertainty over aggregation. This is a challenge. Of course, we have teams of expert underwriters, claims adjusters, actuaries and risk management professionals who are monitoring, calculating and adapting to the shifting nature of this and other risks.
