I love the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous!
Look to the column on your right and you will see a roll call of the great and the good in the global reinsurance sector. In many ways The Insurance Insider Roundtable has become the definitive event of the gathering.
In previous years, the discussions that have taken place around this table, traditionally tucked away in the bowels of the Fairmont Hotel, have set the tone for the whole meeting, and even on occasion changed industry practice.
It's always a lively affair. Back in 2010 a certain Mr Ajit Jain gave us a rare-as-hens'-teeth audience and we had an interesting debate about the validity of low-tax offshore domiciles. Of course, there was no mention of the facilitisation of the market back then.
Meanwhile in 2011 a near legendary set-to between a prominent Lloyd's CEO and a senior broker changed the way reinsurance intermediaries have subsequently communicated their future price expectations at the Rendez-Vous.
In 2012 the room was gripped by real fear as the Eurozone crisis threatened to claim one of the PIIGS' scalps. This was the first time since 2008 that I'd seen a room full of CEOs talk for quite so long and in such detail about the dangers inherent in the world economy and the possibility of these spilling over into the global (re)insurance sector.
Optimism returned in 2013 as we saw global growth recover and we allowed ourselves to dream of a return to real interest rates for the first time in five years.
But by 2014 we were getting the collective hump that central bankers were still taking their
sweet time with getting monetary policy back to normal, and that one of the main consequences of this was too much yield-seeking capital coming into town, stealing our business and generally lowering the tone. Still, loss trends were benign and we were still making plenty of cash.
So what was vexing or pleasing our great gathering of 2015?
Happily, we had nothing to complain about at the venue as our seniority meant we were upgraded out of our basement and into the splendid surroundings of a TV studio suite, replete with opulent Mediterranean views.
The coastal view reminded us of that our margins were eroding further and capital was flowing ever more freely and widely, yet a still-benign loss environment and a certain degree of consolidation allowed participants to examine the past with a measure of detachment and discuss the future with a surprising level of optimism.
To view the roundtable please click here.
Mark Geoghegan
Editor-in-chief,
The Insurance Insider