• GIRO Conference 2021

About this event

Watch leading experts to discuss key issues, emerging ideas, and new research across the general insurance sector. 

GIRO 2021 Webinar Recordings now online

You can now watch all the webinar recordings from GIRO 2021 on our dedicated GI area in the IFoA's Online Learning Resource.

 

 

 

Workshop Mon, 08/11/2021 - 11:30 - 12:30 Third party working party

Twelfth iteration of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Third Party Working Party looking at trends in Private Car Comprehensive experience. 

In addition to the working party’s traditional analysis comparing and contrasting environmental and legislative changes with trends in frequency, severity and burning cost for UK:
• third party bodily injury claims;
• total third party property damage; and
• total own damage claims
They have also considered the significant impact the COVID-19 pandemic and potential impact of the Whiplash reform.

Speakers: Simon Black, Aviva and Robert Treen, Willis Towers Watson

Workshop Mon, 08/11/2021 - 13:30 - 14:30 COVID 19 - Spotlight on Business Interruption

This session will look at the key outcomes of the FCA test case for COVID 19 BI claims, communicable disease exclusions and regulatory intervention.  We also look at estimating reserves for a COVID 19 exposed portfolio and reinsurance considerations for COVID 19 claims.

Speakers: Kevin Sockalingum, Humboldt Re and Aaron C. Koch, Milliman

Workshop Tue, 09/11/2021 - 09:30 - 10:30 Plenary: Going net zero

In the face of the global climate crisis, Aviva has set itself the target of becoming net zero by 2040, the most demanding of any insurer worldwide. This session will cover why they set themselves this goal, how they aim to achieve it and what barriers they will need to overcome on the way.

Speaker: Doug Brown, CEO Aviva (UK & Ireland Life)

Workshop Tue, 09/11/2021 - 13:00 - 14:00 Ogden - what could happen and what do you need to think about for year end 2021?

Should you be making an Ogden allowance for this year-end? What are the considerations you need to think about? Come and hear from the Ogden Discount Rate working party who have considered market conditions, surveyed the market and carried out quantitative analysis on key topics you may want to consider.

Speakers: Members of the working party

Workshop Tue, 09/11/2021 - 16:00 - 17:00 PRA letters – market moving or missed opportunity?

The primary goal of the session is to inform the GI actuarial community of the aims, underlying work, drivers and results of the PRA letters to general insurance Chief Actuaries (and last year’s letter to general insurance Chief Risk Officers).It will be in the format of a debate session where a person reporting to a Chief Actuary puts the case against PRA Chief Actuary letters while a senior person at the Bank of England explains the great work the PRA are doing which drives the letters and how the market has moved following them.GIRO 2021 is a good time to reflect back on PRA Chief Actuary letters as they have been established for several years now.The presenters would also like to engage the audience and understand their views on PRA Chief Actuary letters.

Speakers: Paul Moorshead, Aviva and Cassandra Archer, Bank of England

Workshop Wed, 10/11/2021 - 09:30 - 11:00 Lloyd’s update

Speakers: Mirjam Spies, Kishan Patel, Catriona Geraghty, Adhnan Chaudhry, David Bracewell; Lloyds

Workshop Wed, 10/11/2021 - 11:30 - 12:30 Actuaries: past, present and future

RESCHEDULED – FRIDAY 19 NOVEMBER, 14.00 – 15.00

The world of risk is an ever-evolving landscape. Recently recognised risks such as terrorism, cyber or pandemic vie with more conventional risks to be reviewed and priced. When losses occur reserves have to be assessed and claims settled.  Actuaries are increasingly at the heart of these decisions and their role is only likely to become more important.

Speaker: Stephen Catlin, Chairman and CEO, Convex Insurance

Workshop Wed, 10/11/2021 - 14:00 - 15:00 A network theory-based approach to pricing cyber risk

In 2014, McAfee estimated that global cyber crime costs ranged from $375-575 billion per annum - a 2015 report by the Ponemon institute stated that the cost per incident was as high as $3.8 million. Attacks lead to widespread leakage of data and business interruption, which can have massive consequences on a company's business and reputation.While cyber crime incidents have been examined as a general phenomenon on a large scale, and while several insurance companies now offer protection across a wide variety of cyber attacks, it is important to understand how an attack can spread across the computer network of a given company, since this information could be essential to ascertain the risk to which the company may be currently exposed.In this talk, I will review certain methods by which one can factor in the structure of a company's IT system in the underwriting process. Research using contagion models to track the spread of a computer virus over a network can be used, along with knowledge of a company's security level (e.g. network protocols used) to generate risk profiles and calculate the expected value at risk based on probability of a given node being affected.

Speaker: Karthik Tumuluru, Milliman

Workshop Wed, 10/11/2021 - 16:00 - 17:15 It’s not all social inflation---Is general inflation back for real? worldwide overview of how actuaries should consider these two forms of inflation - *Jointly presented by IFoA and CAS*

Unfortunately this webinar is now oversubscribed. A recording will be made available for IFoA members on the Virtual Learning Environment.

In partnership with:

Workshop Thu, 11/11/2021 - 09:00 - 10:00 Update from the UK asbestos working party

An update from the UK asbestos working party, including the detail behind the latest Insurance Market scenarios and the recent deaths and claims experience.

Speakers: Members of the Working Party

Workshop Thu, 11/11/2021 - 11:00 - 12:00 Agricultural Microinsurance- Actuarial and Operational considerations

Agriculture insurance has a potential role to play in agricultural development particularly in developing and emerging countries. This session will focus on some of the key actuarial and operational considerations and learnings on agriculture insurance over the last decade. Index insurance product development, use of satellite-data, other data sources, design and pricing of indemnity-based and parametric products and other actuarial topics will be discussed, along with key operational and policy related topics for agriculture microinsurance.

Speaker: Agrotosh Mookerjee, Risk Shield

Workshop Thu, 11/11/2021 - 16:00 - 17:00 Actuaries as INEDS

This session will attempt to help actuaries understand how to transition to INED roles and what is expected.

Speaker: Penny Shaw

Workshop Fri, 12/11/2021 - 09:00 - 10:00 Are ransomware claims speeding up development patterns?

The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving and over the last few years there has been one clear trend: The rise of ransomware.

During the presentation we will share insights into:

  • Cyber claims trends
  • Timelines for ransomware vs non-ransomware claims
  • Argue for and against the hypothesis: Are ransomware claims speeding up development patterns?
  • GallagherRe benchmark patterns
  • Key considerations when reserving in Cyber

Speakers: Emily Chillingworth, Patrick Brooke and Ed Pocock, GallagherRe

Workshop Fri, 12/11/2021 - 11:00 - 12:00 Cyber catastrophe: Another Y2K?

Session kindly sponsored by 

This talk will discuss all the contributors to rising losses in the Cyber market to raise awareness of the potential for losses. This will involve an initial presentation and then discussion of:

  • trends in Cyber crime
  • near-misses
  • the barriers to seeing a co-ordinated action to eliminate cyber crime
  • how non-Cyber insurances can aggregate causing systemic risk across lobs
  • the trends in losses that start every so often
  • model vendor views

Speakers: Visesh Gosrani, MPS; Simon Cartagena, SCOR and Justyna Pikinska, Gallagher Re

Workshop Fri, 12/11/2021 - 13:00 - 14:00 What can insurance do to save the world?

Insurers are increasingly divesting their investment portfolios, and many are now ceasing to underwrite activities such as thermal coal extraction. What more can or should they be doing about climate change? And what role can actuaries play?

Speaker: Louise Pryor, President of the IFoA

Workshop Mon, 15/11/2021 - 11:30 - 12:30 Machine Learning Reserving on Triangle Data - Method Comparison and Interpretation

Members of the Machine Learning in Reserving Working Party’s (‘MLRWP’) will build on the working party’s presentation at the 2021 IFoA Spring Conference to further explore the application of selected machine learning (‘ML’) models to triangle data for reserving, focusing on:

  • Validation and feature engineering options
  • Relative performance of ML and traditional reserving methods for different claims characteristics
  • Interpreting ML model results

Prior knowledge of our Spring Conference presentation would be beneficial but not essential.

Speakers: April Lu, Deloitte MCS Limited and John McCarthy, Enstar Group 

Workshop Mon, 15/11/2021 - 14:00 - 15:00 Balancing technical complexity and clear communication to scale up financial protection for poorest

This talk will set out the objectives of the financial resilience programs to support developing countries, the lessons learnt to date, and highlight the role and opportunities for actuaries and financial specialists to drive meaningful change and the challenge balancing actuarial complexity and accuracy, with simple implementation, and communication. This will be brought together through the example of scaling up insurance for drought and other financial services in the Horn of Africa. 

Speakers: Evie Calcutt, Lisa Yu and John Plevin, World Bank

Workshop Mon, 15/11/2021 - 16:00 - 17:00 Insuring the transition: how do we measure the insurance industry's contribution to decarbonisation?

The global insurance and reinsurance industry has a vital role to play in individually and collectively driving and accelerating the transition towards a resilient, net zero economy. A key element of this role is in supporting and contributing to this transition through harnessing underwriting portfolios to both provide insurance support to climate-positive solutions, as well as encouraging the transition away from carbon-intensive industries and insuring this transition. As part of HRH The Prince of Wales' Sustainable Markets Initiative's Insurance Task Force, led by Lloyd's CEO John Neal, the presenters are currently developing a framework to measure the climate positivity of underwriting portfolios and the insurance industry's contribution to the climate transition. Our session will cover the progress to date towards this goal, and key considerations for actuaries and other insurance professionals who are involved in this new and important area of practice.

Speakers: Rebekah Clement, Lloyds; Alex Twose and Alice Boreman, EY

Workshop Tue, 16/11/2021 - 09:30 - 10:30 Navigating the challenges of the new FCA rules on GI pricing practices

The workshop will go beyond implementing the FCA’s pricing remedy itself and will offer participants insight into the following areas:

  • Areas that are not straightforward to interpret such as fair value, close matched products, products within scope, etc.
  • Considerations in planning for product governance for both legacy and current products
  • Making it easier for customers to opt out of auto-renewal, and the implications of this
  • Governance and accountability
  • Data requirements
  • Potential impacts on customer behaviour.

Speakers: Simon Sheaf, Mark Wu and Ben Farmer, Grant Thornton UK LLP

Workshop Tue, 16/11/2021 - 11:30 - 12:30 D&I: Moving from awareness to action

From Black Lives Matter and #MeToo to trans rights and better accessibility for disabled people, recent years have seen an explosion of personal and professional conversations about diversity, equality, and inclusion. It can sometimes feel overwhelming and leave us with more questions than answers: Why does this matter? What role can I play? How can I get involved without offending?

This session will explore common D&I challenges, with a focus on driving meaningful change.

Speakers: Raluca Stefan, Steven Ingram and Bethan Gill, Grant Thornton

Workshop Tue, 16/11/2021 - 13:30 - 14:30 2022 and beyond: a board’s-eye view, and what actuaries can do

What's keeping insurance boards up at night?  What are the biggest threats and opportunities in 2022?  What does success look like in a post-COVID, post-Brexit, hybrid-working, ESG-savvy, D&I-conscious market?  Charl Cronje, author of “The Virtuous Cycle”, a guide to how insurance boards can work better with actuaries, interviews a panel of directors from leading firms on the big issues facing the market, including how actuaries can help ensure firms remain competitive, sustainable and relevant.

Speaker: Charl Cronje, Tom ClementI, LCP and Jo Fox, Independent NED

Workshop Tue, 16/11/2021 - 15:30 - 16:30 IFRS 17: The impending transition (Working party update)

The working party will update on the transitional consideration of IFRS 17 implementation and will cover market practice, pitfalls to watch out for and more.

In particular, we will deep dive into the impact of transitioning to IFRS 17 on acquired business, loss portfolio transfers and ADCs - where current earned claims balances could suddenly become part of an insurers unearned balances (Liability for Remaining Coverage) and the operational, modelling and strategic challenges this poses.

Speakers: Alice Boreman and Jamie Grant, IFRS17 WP

Workshop Wed, 17/11/2021 - 09:30 - 10:30 Future pandemics are coming: are you ready?

-- Review of recent evidence showing that emerging infectious diseases are becoming more frequent.

-- Why experts, including the thinkers at No More Pandemics, believe that exacerbating factors (e.g. deforestation and manmade pathogens) outweigh mitigating factors (e.g. healthcare improvements).

-- Implications for insurers: when would you expect pandemics to lead to increased non-life claims. Would you expect a material asset impact, even for an asset portfolio with minimal market risk?

-- How can insurers tackle these risks?

Speaker: Sanjay Joshi, Hymans Robertson

Workshop Wed, 17/11/2021 - 11:30 - 12:30 Developing your team for the future

During this session, we will examine key steps risk and actuarial leaders should be taking now, to ensure that their teams remain effective for the future.

We will cover key aspects of this wide ranging topic, including:

- The ideal future skillset
- The role of technology
- Benefiting from inclusion and diversity
- Interacting with the business
- Effective hybrid working

The session will be co-presented, to give both in-house actuarial and a consultant perspective on these key issues.

Speakers: Tom Durkin, LCP and Seema Thaper, Enstar

Workshop Wed, 17/11/2021 - 13:00 - 14:00 Plenary: Diversity and inclusion in the financial sector

Despite the focus and previous efforts by different organisations over the past couple of years, progress on diversity & inclusion (D&I) in the financial sector has been slow. To help drive change, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Bank of England and the Prudential Regulation Authority published in the summer a joint Discussion Paper on D&I in the financial services sector, opening a discussion with the industry on this topic.The FCA will join us in this event to speak about their work and why they have sought to use their unique position as regulators to drive change.

Speakers: 

Sheldon Mills, Executive director, consumers and competition at the Financial Conduct Authority

Georgina Philippou, Senior Adviser, Public Sector Equality Duty at the FCA

Peter Curtis-Valino, Manager, Governance and Professionalism Policy team at the FCA

Simon Hall, Head of Governance, Accounting, Resilience and Data division in the PRA

 

Workshop Wed, 17/11/2021 - 16:00 - 17:00 Whiplash reforms – understanding the change and its impact

The UK government implemented major changes to the law around motor whiplash claims in 2021.

This talk will discuss the recent history of changes to the law around motor bodily injury claims. We will outline the detail of the whiplash reforms on individual claims and claimants, as well as the expected impact at a market-level. We will also consider how various areas of actuarial work will be affected now and in the future.

Speaker: Josh Flack, Milliman LLP

Workshop Thu, 18/11/2021 - 09:30 - 11:00 PRA Update

The PRA presentation will cover updates on reserving, capital, exposure management, stress testing and policy development.

Speakers: Nylesh Shah, Stefan Claus, James Orr, Min Wei Chan, Cassandra Archer, Ryan Li, Giorgis Hadzilacos, Angela Zhou, Bank of England

Workshop Thu, 18/11/2021 - 13:00 - 14:00 The strategy-led ORSA

SII requires insurers to regularly perform their ORSA as an integrated part of their business strategy. However, in practice, the ORSA is not fully embedded within the insurers' strategic framework.

We will look at how the ORSA can be built around the balanced scorecard framework to produce an ORSA that really adds value by informing strategic thinking and decisions.

Speakers: Peter Moore and Robert Murray, BDO

Workshop Thu, 18/11/2021 - 15:00 - 16:00 Actuarial Reporting Roundtable

Through live polls and discussion, the Good Actuarial Report Working Party will help you to see and sidestep the subtle barriers to reader satisfaction. This covers more than report planning and structure, one must understand users and self equally plus find ways that success can be measured. 

Speakers: Chris Smerald, Emerald Lake Consulting; Matthew Byrne, NFU Mutual; James Orr, Bank of England and Kathryn Moore, SDA LLP

Workshop Fri, 19/11/2021 - 09:30 - 10:30 A framework to analyse the financial effects of climate change

Climate Change is affecting the economy. Financial organizations and investors are being forced to identify the risks arising from climate change, including transition risks and changes in consumer sentiment towards the environment. 

Regulators are becoming increasingly concerned about whether companies are fully cognizant of the implications of climate-related risks. Companies are expected to understand how climate-related risks affect their business environment in the short, medium, and long terms. 

In this paper, we describe a general framework to calculate the risk management implications of climate change. Our framework can be used to identify the vulnerability of a company’s upstream and downstream firms to different climate events. We derive an easy to compute an expression for the probability of default that incorporates the impact of climate events. The analysis is extended to a multi-period framework that can be used to assess the financial and risk management consequences of transitory risk, as discussed in an April 2019 Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) Consultation Paper published by the Bank of England. We show how to construct a time profile of risk exposures to different types of climate events. 

This information can be reported to senior management, directors, shareholders, and regulators. We extend our analysis to incorporate scenario analysis over multiple periods, allowing for the refinement of tactical and strategic decision making, fulfilling PRA requirements for corporate governance.   

Speaker: Lawrence Habahbeh, HedgeGenomics

Workshop Fri, 19/11/2021 - 12:00 - 13:00 Keynote plenary: Exploring the fascinating research on “evil” in cyber, eco, and work environments.

Join criminal psychologist Dr Julia Shaw on a journey into the darker side of human behaviour. Cyber, environmental, and work environments all provide ample opportunities for bad actors to flourish. How do we identify and understand these risks, and are they insurmountable?

She addresses why the internet changes how people behave, and how criminologists have had to rethink theories of crime to understand new cyber spaces. She takes a look at environmental decision-making, and how memory processes make it easier to look backwards to a distorted past than forwards to a sustainable future. She also discusses what characteristics of workplaces can provide fertile ground for inappropriate behaviours, and how she has applied her research to create a practical tool which helps organisations around the world tackle workplace harassment and discrimination.

Join Dr Shaw for her playful but rigorously evidence-based talk, with an opportunity for questions afterwards where together you can learn how her findings can inform actuarial work.

 

Julia Shaw is an established psychological scientist at University College London and bestselling author. She co-founded the start-up Spot that helps employees report workplace harassment and discrimination, and empowers organisations to build a more inclusive and respectful work environment.

Julia is an expert in the areas of memory, criminal psychology, AI and diversity in the workplace. She is committed to building more respectful and inclusive working environments. She is also an expert on legal cases, particularly those with historical allegations. Her expertise is in false memories and how law enforcement can use "tactics that may lead people to recall crimes that never occurred”. Julia’s work often appears on TV, radio, online and in print: Julia is also regular contributor to Psychology Today Scientific American. Her first book ‘The Memory Illusion’ was an international bestseller that appeared in 20 languages, and her second book ‘Evil: The Science behind Humanity’s Dark Side’ became an international bestseller in 2019.

Her unique background allows Julia to engage her audience. She is knowledgeable, passionate and a fantastic, uplifting communicator.

Workshop Fri, 19/11/2021 - 14:00 - 15:00 Actuaries: past, present and future

The world of risk is an ever-evolving landscape. Recently recognised risks such as terrorism, cyber or pandemic vie with more conventional risks to be reviewed and priced. When losses occur reserves have to be assessed and claims settled.  Actuaries are increasingly at the heart of these decisions and their role is only likely to become more important.

Speaker: Stephen Catlin, Chairman and CEO, Convex Insurance