Case addressed an audience this morning at the PwC breakfast briefing in Monte Carlo as part of the 2022 RVS event.
“We’re about to continue on a journey that’s going to literally define the relevance of risk capital for the next 30 years,” he said.
According to Case, capital is key and he stressed the need for the sector to work to mobilise it in a significant way in order to address pressing issues such as climate change.
“Climate change has got to be a priority. It must be a priority, in every way, shape, or form. In many aspects, climate change is going to drive the largest relocation of capital in history. Climate change is tangible risk, it’s what we do every day. The impact is immediate. It’s measurable,” said Case.
“This is a tremendous opportunity. It can be looked at no other way. It’s a tremendous opportunity,” he added.
According to Case, the industry should be getting bigger to close the protection gap and help clients and stakeholders manage risks, and ultimately provide real value in order to “fundamentally strengthen the impact of our industry.”
“Obviously,” he continued, “it’s got to work for the capital, it’s got to make sense. It’s got to work for a risk-return standpoint for the industry. But we should navigate that and get bigger. Instead, we’re getting smaller in the context of this.”
The CEO underlined the defensive posture of the industry, explaining that this limits its ability to have a meaningful and substantial impact.
“There’s only one path you can choose that’s going to actually accelerate impact in our industry. And only one path you can choose is going to change the reach of our industry. But it requires you to apply all of our capabilities, It requires us to collaborate on a scale we’ve never achieved before,” said Case.
“We’re the players who facilitate the movement of that capital. We’re the players who could help capital understand I can make that investment with less volatility. So we can make a difference that can be quite substantial. It really gets back to relevance and where we are in the global economy. My view this is the chance for us to do something that is beautiful and extraordinary,” he added.
Highlighting the current relevance of the industry, Case told the audience that risk placement as a percentage of GDP has declined since the mid-1990’s, driven by the sector’s failure to address numerous emerging risks.
“We are better positioned than anyone in the world to look inside and understand these risks and to facilitate this capital. Capital movement on this topic, changes everything. It changes everything in terms of the impact we have as an overall business, the impact we have as an industry, the impact we have at the client level, the impact we have at the societal level.
“But if we collectively keep not thinking about this, we wake up a year from now, five years from now, and we have missed, we have missed a generational opportunity to make a difference,” said Case.
Ultimately, Case feels that more capital is required to assist in enabling the re/insurance industry to “capture this generational opportunity.”
“Long term, we need more capital. We’re going to do some things that actually are going to mean we change forever. And its capacity that changes forever, not capacity that changes in the moment,” said Case.
