There is no denying that the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous is a unique event in the reinsurance calendar.
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 is the event of the Rendez-Vous. In previous years the discussions that have taken place around this table, 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.
In 2010 a certain Mr Ajit Jain gave us a rare-as-hens'-teeth on-the-record appearance and we had an interesting debate about the validity of low-tax offshore domiciles.
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 forward-looking price expectations at the Rendez-Vous.
Last year the room was gripped by real fear as the Eurozone crisis threatened to go mainstream and claim a major Southern European scalp.
This was the first time since perhaps 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.
The realisation that global economic growth was slowing and possibly stalling meant that for the first time in a generation our sector was more worried by the potential for external shocks than its more traditional internal ones.
So what might be vexing our great gathering of 2013?
The good news is that this time it was all internal stuff. It seems that with growth returning to major western economies and the eventual return to a certain degree of monetary normalcy in sight, we could turn our collective attention back to our own sector.
The bad news is that far from being the more usual parochial themes, this was big, potentially existential stuff.
The strategic direction and likely final size of the ILS sector is of massive import to the global (re)insurance world.
And the ultimate effect of the Aon-Berkshire Hathaway "insurance ETF" sidecar on Lloyd's and the global specialty market is also pretty major.
We had a lot of stuff to talk about...
Read on.
Mark Geoghegan
Editor
The Insurance Insider
To view the roundtable, click here