FRONTIERS AND CHALLENGES FOR INSURERS AND BROKERS

Abstract

A worsening industry claims experience generated principally by a number of significant offshore construction losses, an increase in attritional losses from wells, and a firming of the reinsurance market has forced insurance brokers and underwriters to re-evaluate the largely conventional range of products and services which it has been providing to the energy exploration and production sector for decades.

Challenges posed by advances in technology, environmental pressures, the new geographical frontiers and the inevitable convergence of the insurance and capital markets has committed the energy insurance industry to a course of product innovation and cooperation with new providers of risk treatment products.

At the same time the industry must ensure that tried and tested products, which have evolved in line with innovations in the exploration field and which remain relevant, are retained and modified to ensure their continuing relevance and efficiency.

The energy insurance market, once generally perceived to be conventional and slow to change, has recognised the needs of its clients and the need to generate dynamic change in parallel with the industry it serves.