InsuranceERM's annual Insurance Risk & Capital EMEA conference returned to London this week. Martin Assmann and the InsuranceERM editorial team report on what we learnt from the audience polling
Despite the seasonal cheer, the conversations were grounded as delegates faced questions on emerging risks, modelling blind spots, cycle dynamics and supervisory expectations in a changed picture from last year's learnings.
Here's what we learned.
A shifting competitive landscape
We kicked off the day with our first panel jumping straight into what might be the most-discussed topic of 2025, foreign ownership and the role of private equity in insurance.
The audience expressed a cautiously optimistic tone, with 25% stating it makes insurers stronger, as 55% remained with a careful "it depends on the company".
Are UK insurers stronger under foreign ownership or better off homegrown?
Pension Insurance Corporation's chief risk officer, Giles Fairhead, explained the advantages its own foreign ownership from Athora brought. Capital-intensive life insurers "need shareholders who are willing to put up capital and generate a rate of return," he said.
Fragmented geopolitics and scenario modelling
If there was a panel that felt truly "of the moment", it was geopolitics. When prodding the audience on what geopolitical risks are on their mind, answers came back quick and clear: The poll was dominated by terms like "war", "fragmentation" and "uncertainty". And towering over all of them: Trump.
What word comes to mind when you hear geopolitical risk?
Panellists agreed that proper scenario planning is obligatory in modern times. Markel Insurance CRO Henry Gardener – who sat down with InsuranceERM for an exclusive interview earlier this year – warned the world is shifting "to more serious states of conflict", making geopolitical risk both more material and more interconnected across lines.
Yet, after all of this, the audience delivered a poll that showed surprising optimism.
Will insurers be net winners or net losers from future geopolitical realignment?
The large majority of delegates expect insurers to be net winners, citing their ability to support clients navigating volatility. Maybe a more risky environment to insure was the industry's "trump" card all along.
Cyber and the limits of insurability
Cyber risk produced the most animated discussions of the day. What troubled the audience quickly became clear, as the words "ransomware", "hacking" and "systemic" dominated the opening poll.
What word comes to mind when you think of cyber risk?
Panellists at another panel on insurability debated an adjacent topic: should insurers try to cover every risk, even when pricing, aggregation and systemic exposures become challenging? Only a small minority of delegates said yes, while most favoured selective cover, innovation pilots or public-private backstops.
Should insurers try to cover all risks, even when they're hard to price or volatile?
Market softening
Later in the day, attention turned to the insurance market cycle. Axis CRO Ben Stilwell said softening is visible "across most classes apart from US casualty", warning the downturn "may get worse before it gets better".
Audience polling suggested delegates expect a prolonged soft market, with 48% of the audience expecting the market to remain so for the next three years:
What's your outlook for the global insurance market over the next 3 years?
AI excitement
Across the entire conference, one topic kept resurfacing: artificial intelligence (AI). Whether discussing cyber, geopolitics, transformation or risk governance, panellists returned to the same question – how do we integrate AI and manage its unpredictability while using it to improve oversight?
In the underwriting AI session, Armilla AI's CEO Karthik Ramakrishnan reminded delegates that "AI is not like traditional software... you cannot model out the error rate beforehand".
However, after all the excitement, an audience poll showed a sobering truth: most believe clients increasing AI use does make them riskier to insure:
If a company increases its AI use, do you think it becomes riskier to insure?
The topic also took centre stage during another panel on AI risk frameworks. Robert Moorehead-Lane, interim chief risk and compliance officer at AmTrust, argued the biggest AI risk is not using AI at all.
He emphasised its potential to identify risks, prevent otherwise unavoidable errors and deliver significant efficiency gains. A poll during the session showed most organisations are already responding to this risk of inaction. Only 2% of the audience said they had not yet begun their AI journey yet.
How far along are you in implementing new AI technologies in your organisation?
This discussion connected to the role of risk in navigating complex transformation agendas. For insurers, a wide range of pressures is forcing them to rethink how they operate and what they prioritise.
What type of transformation dominates your organisation today?
Traditional transformation themes, such as regulation, culture and climate change, were less prominent this year. The audience was clear: technology, particularly AI, emerged as the defining focus of transformation agendas.
In short, most of the market appears determined not to miss out on the AI wave, yet it remains to be seen if this determination is material or artificial in nature.
Climate and regulation
Climate discussions were slightly less prominent than in previous years. ClimateWise programme director Felicity Alvey said extreme events are now "breaking down the assumptions many of our risk frameworks were built on".
Convex's head of sustainability, Rachel Delhaise, highlighted the value of materiality-driven frameworks shaped by legislation such as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and the UK's CP10/25 (a consultation paper on managing climate risk that has since been formalised into a policy statement).
In an accompanying audience poll, half stated data and disclosure remain the most concerning parts of CP10/25, as only 3% said they already meet all of it.
Which aspects of CP10/25 are most concerning?
Operational risk and resilience
Third parties (and its variant spelling, 3rd parties) was clearly the predominant operational resilience concern among the audience.
What are your big operational resilience concerns for 2026?
In a year when IT-based disruptions regularly made headline news, boards and management have understandably focused on cyber risk and operation resilience.
In the words of David Smith, chief risk officer at Ardonagh Specialty, "it really exposes the massive reliance we have on vendors and third parties – and fourth parties".
Operational resilience professionals have developed ways to minimise third-party risk, but the oversight can only go so far. So the approach has to be one of diversification of critical services, and having plans in place to cope should a critical supplier go down.
The panel further discussed how scenario testing has improved significantly in the last decade, with 94% of the audience saying they perform such tests, and 40% saying they test more than five scenarios.
How many operational resilience scenarios did you test in 2025?
However, running more scenarios doesn't automatically imply improved resilience. As Ardonagh's Smith said: "What you're really trying to figure out is how resilient are you, and what do you need to do to fix things."
The role of the CRO
Another panel looked at the evolving role of the CRO, and the importance of emotional intelligence. Axa UK's Martha Phillips described the modern CRO as a "chief sense maker", combining emotional intelligence with technical depth.
A quick audience poll on barriers to innovation underscored the point and surprised a few. Culture, not regulation, is the biggest barrier to innovation.
What's the biggest barrier to innovation in insurance?
That result echoed thoughts from several other panels: the biggest hurdle to new products, better modelling and AI-driven processes is not technology, but organisational mindset.
A confident close to 2025
As delegates compared notes and collected their coats, it was clear that 2026 will demand faster thinking from the industry. Soft markets, hard geopolitics, the fast pace of AI and climate change are all on the menu.
And judging by the engaging discussions over the busy day, the insurance industry isn't just bracing for what's to come, it's rehearsing confidently for centre stage.
Check out our events page for upcoming events and webinars and thank you to all who attended one of our events this year.
Bar and pie charts created with Datawrapper.
