Category Archives: brokers

Insurance industry gets social media – check out the Twitter use at #BIBA2011!

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BIBA 2011Last week UK brokers gathered at their annual event, BIBA 2011 in Manchester and for the first time in UK insurance and broker communities, social media was used fairly widely.
This follows hot on the heels of risk managers and insurers gathering in Vancouver a week earlier for RIMS 2011, which was a staggering success on Twitter.
BIBA attendees used #BIBA2011 to bookmark their tweets about the event, RIMS used #RIMS2011.
What was interesting was who was using Twitter. In Vancouver, what was most striking was the use of Twitter by BIG corporates – there is a list here in the last blog – but included Aon Corporation, FM Global, XL Capital, ACE Ltd, Zurich, Willis and Marsh. In the Manchester event, there were a lot more individuals and much of the noise came from press such as Post Magazine, Insurance Age and Insurance Times and their reporters. Continue reading →

What a Tweetup! Well done to those at #RIMS2011

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RIMS (knicked from excellent Risk Management Monitor)

RIMS (knicked from excellent Risk Management Monitor)

Well, well. Knock me over with a feather – social media has come to risk management. At the RIMS conference in Vancouver we saw a whole swathe of mega-corporates Tweeting their hearts out, expressing opionons, talking to each other and delegates.

It is normal for the press now to tweet, but the most surprising thing was the gusto with which some really embraced Twitter this year.I have to acknowledge Risk Management Monitor here – I’ve stolen one of their pictures here. They did a grand job for those of us who could not make it and kept us up to date with words and pictures.

There were some big corpoations who obviously get it, with @AonCorp and @ZurichNAnews topping my list of non-press Tweeple (twitter people).  Other biggies out Tweeting their corporate messages out (and doing a very good job too) were: Continue reading →

Monte Carlo report

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Last night the Rendez-Vous at Monte Carlo, reinsurance’s big annual conference, kicked off in usual glittering style at the Guy Carpenter party in the Hotel de Paris.

Sipping glasses of Tattinger, the good and the great of the reinsurance world met in the gilded ballroom. Chief executives and presidents rubbed shoulders with brokers and caught up with each other. Continue reading →

March Madness – reinsurance and insurance conferences a go-go

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I’m dusting off my conference gear this week as March is going to be packedglobe full of reinsurance-relevant conferences – so if you need to work up your air miles, here is a guide to the best on this month.

This list takes you from Qatar, to Bermuda, to Arizona, to Dublin – a nice round of geographies and subjects being covered. Continue reading →

The CCRIF – in light of the catastrophe in Haiti is the pot for the insurance and reinsurance of the Caribbean nations enough?

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I was going to write today about XL Capital moving its domicile from the Cayman Islands to Dublin (and by the way, DIMA, well done on bagging this one). I was going to write about what it might mean for the company going forward, for its listings, for its long-suffering shareholders and for its global HQ in Bermuda.

But I’ve been watching the events in Haiti, and, to be honest, the news of XL getting its EU passport seems to pale into insignificance. Continue reading →

Reinsurance and insurance social media – ones to watch in 2010…

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As we start a new year, I though my first blog of 2010 would be a list of who to watch and listen to in the world of reinsurance and insurance in the context of social media. It is still quite a small list, and if you know of anyone I’ve missed out, please let me know and I’ll keep updating it. Continue reading →

Five key tips for using social media in the re/insurance markets

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Mairi Mallon In the past couple of months,  word about the importance of social media has definitely reached the ears of those at the top of the insurance and reinsurance markets.

Many may not understand the ins and outs of it all, but a growing band of CEOs and marketing executives are starting to dip their toes into these unknown waters – take as an example, Munich Re America, which is now on Twitter.

For those of us who are carefully trying to find the best use for social media in our part of the corporate world, helping remove scales from their eyes is a big part of our job. We come in and look to see if this would work as part of their overall PR strategy and then help work out a digital strategy. Then we can help implement it.

This is how we do it:

  1. Watch what others are doing in this space. Showing examples of just how well it can be done and how it can be used is a great way of converting the uninitiated. But there are very still few out there with an implemented plan – reinsurance brokers Guy Carpenter (for blogging), US attorneys Goldberg Segalla (especially on LinkedIn)… Us folks at rein4ce… Erm. That’s it (bar a few good publications and individuals).
  2. Working out a digital PR strategy. A lot of what is out there already is all based on business to consumer, on engaging and talking with customers, which is fine if you are Confused.com (who, by the way, spend just 10 to 15% of its PR budget on  digital, which seems surprisingly low). But for the brokerages, London Market, Bermuda Market (click through and that will take you to a good PwC survey on the Bermuda Market) and other global reinsurance giants, this model does not work.
  3. Keep it corporate – and legal. Remember the old adage of don’t put anything online that you wouldn’t want your mum to read or your boss to see. Corporate guidelines need to be set. And by having a properly run campaign, you can minimise the risk of litigation by rogue employees blogging about your company in their own time – as it ring-fences your corporate brand and identity under your own umbrella, which is controlled by you.
  4. What is it worth? In our world, social media cannot be measured by a straightforward “ROI” as so many claim. It is much more intangible than that. But some if it can be measured – by the number of clicks on your website, by how many people log on and read your blog, by how many people follow you on Twitter, by how many mentions you get online. When helping our clients in this world, we have to show the pitfalls. There is the thorny issue of moderation – who monitors and reports what is being said. And implementing the resources required to feed an audience that is hungry for content can be costly, especially because the key point about social media in this sector is about providing quality content.
  5. Keeping it up. Consistency is also important. Many fail to keep up with the idea once the decision has been made – you cannot set up a Twitter feed or a blog and not keep it updated. Generally, a lack of resources can stop the best laid plan in its tracks.

Mairi Mallon heads up the niche PR company rein4ce and blogs and tweets as reinsurancegirl – rein4ce is also on facebook if you’d like to join the group type in rein4ce on facebook’s search box.

From Quill, to Biro, to Mouse… to Twitter

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This week I’ve been working on developing a social media marketing plan for one of my favourite clients, Yellowblox, an insurance communications hub.

It has been great fun, and showing the company just how easy it is to use and how it can specifically target the very niche areas of reinsurance and insurance technology it works in has been deeply satisfying.

It is great to help companies in what is a very traditional market see how effective social media can be both as a networking tool but also to build brand awareness.

Blogging is an obvious way to put yourself forward as an expert and to gain a loyal following.  And the benefits of social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook with their huge user numbers are also well documented.

And while Twitter may not be for everyone, there are more and more insurance and reinsurance-related people signing up to find out what all the hype is about.

There have been many jokes about how behind the times Lloyd’s of London is when it comes to technology. But look at the way reinsurance companies have embraced the super-techie world of modelling – and even in a smaller way, who is nowadays not plugged 24/7 into their BlackBerry? And if you have learned to use your BlackBerry, you can certainly blog, Tweet and join in the conversation – it really is not that hard.

In just a few years Lloyd’s has been pulled (admittedly kicking and screaming) out of much of its “deal now, details later” culture through the use of the kind of technology that Yellowblox advocates. Many worried (and still do) that the advent of all this new technology would stop the face-to-face meetings that so characterise the London Market. That simply has not happened.

The new ways of communicating with social media also will not replace human interaction. Instead it will enhance interaction and allow us to reach a far wider audience.

From writing this blog, Tweeting and taking part in LinkedIn conversations, my company’s website has had visitors from around the world. In fact, as many people from the UK as the US regularly follow my blog, and I have a strong following in the Middle East and India. Go figure.

So, for those of you in the London Market who have not had a shot on it all yet, go lay down that quill pen, and (while the boss is not looking) log onto LinkedIn, Twitter or facebook and have a wee poke around. There is even a Lloyd’s of London page on facebook, with less than  a dozen members…  You’ll be amazed who you will find on there.

What worries reinsurers – the price of insurance

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You can never be quite sure what the hot topic will be in the run up to renewals on January 1 in the world of reinsurance.

This year, I suspect it will be the lack of discipline and overall falling rates seen in the realm of primary insurance – particularly in the casualty market. A mixture of grabbing for market share following the troubles at AIG combined with clients being more sensitive to pricing means that business is currently being placed at below technical pricing.

Also, after getting a fright with AIG, cedents  wanted to take their eggs out of the single AIG basket, and spread the risk. From the moment AIG got into trouble there has not been one competitor offering expiring prices, let alone factoring in an increase.

This month, October, it will be one full renewal cycle of insurance. Business has been redistributed and now customers feel more comfortable that the brokers have done their job, the players who came in will have a piece of that business, and the merry-go-round is likely to stop.

What I’d like to know is are the 30 to 40% reductions in pricing all being taken as part of a measured risk to expand market share or whether it  will have repercussions in the years to come?

No one knows where inflation will go from here – and what the real price is for insurance. If you would let underwriters write, on their own, without competition, they certainly price insurance higher given the low interest rate environment – but everyone is anxious about losing business.

Under Hank Greenberg, AIG was known for putting discipline in the market – but not AIG nor anyone else currently plays this role. Reinsurers are trying to put discipline into the market – but they do not seem to be able, in the current market, exert much influence.

But reinsurers, while they claim discipline, are not withdrawing en-masse from the US casualty market – one which is seen as the most under-priced. We are in a deep recession, the worst we have seen for 70 years. Inflation will most likely come in 2011 or 2012, and the underwriting that has been done at below technical pricing will dig companies into an even bigger hole.

What will turn the market? It will have to be a large catastrophe, some huge adverse development. And come it will – they always do.