BMA’s Cox attends IDF workshops at IIS forum

Jeremy Cox, chief executive officer of the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), attended workshops at the global insurance forum of the International Insurance Society (IIS) in Singapore last weekend.

During the forum, the Insurance Development Forum (IDF) began its work with 90 public and private sector participants engaged in eight working groups in an open forum.

Stephen Catlin, IDF chair, executive deputy chair XL Catlin and chair of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR), stated that he was greatly encouraged to see Cox in attendance.

He said: “This is a very positive step to see a senior regulator engaged. Many of these eight work-streams involve insurance regulatory systems that must encourage use of reinsurance to diversify risk across borders; and that must allow the sale of micro insurance products that mutualise risk. We will need senior insurance regulatory officials to address critical issues that impede the deployment of insurance capital.”

Catlin believes that this is the beginning of a critically important process that “will result in specific insurance risk transfer, public policy and resilience recommendations to be considered by the newly appointed IDF steering committee at its late-September meeting to be held in New York in the margins of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly session”.

“This public private partnership between insurers, the United Nations and the World Bank Group creates a once in a lifetime opportunity for insurers’ risk management skills to be applied to close the Protection Gap – affording the benefits of insurance in helping protect people and property from natural disaster risk. And protecting society by preventing future death, destruction and injury by building a more resilient infrastructure,” he added.