SCHEDULE

CHAIR: David Benyon, editor, Global Reinsurance

Natural catastrophe exposure across MEASA could present a significant avenue for growth for the DIFC. The protection gap – the difference between economic losses and insured losses – for this region is higher than most, and most cruelly revealed when a disaster strikes. Earthquakes and cyclones are not unknown in the Middle East region itself. Turkey and Syria, for instance, suffered a severe earthquake in February 2023; Oman has been battered by cyclone activity in recent years; even

Natural catastrophe exposure across MEASA could present a significant avenue for growth for the DIFC. The protection gap – the difference between economic losses and insured losses – for this region is higher than most, and most cruelly revealed when a disaster strikes.
Earthquakes and cyclones are not unknown in the Middle East region itself. Turkey and Syria, for instance, suffered a severe earthquake in February 2023; Oman has been battered by cyclone activity in recent years; even Dubai in 2024 suffered from the effects of sudden and heavy rains.
The region already has some national government-led natural catastrophe backstops, such as the successful example of Oman. Looking to the way the industry interacts with such schemes globally, reinsurance providing retrocessional support to public private partnerships, such as national level natural catastrophe protection funds, is one potential avenue for regional nat cat re/insurance growth.
Property reinsurance buying at local insurer level in MEASA markets has been characterised by proportional treaties, rather than the excess-of-loss structures that tend to go with property catastrophe risk. This might change in the wake of recent loss events, with non-proportional buying is now the direction of travel.

CHAIR: David Benyon, editor, Global Reinsurance

The remainder of this decade is expected to see the Middle East each new levels for economic growth and prosperity, driven by government-led investment projects in countries – particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including Dubai.
Much of this growth will be in sectors not traditionally associated with the region – think financial services, health, technology and tourism, as much as oil, gas and the energy sector – as economies seek to diversify and find sustainable avenues for future prosperity.
All this growth will be fuelled by investment, whether local or global, which will require insurance for investor confidence and sustainable growth.
This will in turn require reinsurance, as local carriers will need backing to meet demand. As towers rise, next-gen technology is implemented, and infrastructure is built, Dubai, as the region’s undisputed reinsurance hub, will play a transformational risk transfer role.
The DIFC is an essential part in this story. A significant share of the DIFC Authority’s time is spent developing investor relationships, as sources of fresh capital, from institutional titans to high-net-worth family investment funds.

CHAIR: David Benyon, editor, Global Reinsurance

The Innovation Hub within the DIFC has more than 1,100 innovative growth stage, technology-enabled firms. As an industry, we can expect to go through a significant digital transformation. We want this industry to be attractive to the next generation, and there’s nothing more attractive to them than being digitally enabled.
Over the last 20 years, as the insurance market and the DIFC have expanded, we’ve seen the regulatory frameworks continue to evolve and address emerging opportunities. The DIFC has done a good job of attracting capital, through this constant revitalisation and regulatory enhancement to attract the very best capital and the very best talent.

CHAIR: David Benyon, editor, Global Reinsurance

Ransomware, outages and systemic risk fears continue to dominate the cyber threat landscape. The cyber insurance landscape has moved fast in the past 20 years, but the technology landscape is moving faster, particularly the explosive potential of Generative AI.
Collaboration between business leaders, regulators, and industry peers is going to be important to promoting resilience to safeguard economies, organisations, and individuals while driving technological progress in the Middle East. Insurers are now in a strong position to bring about real change – helping to strengthen resilience in the region and around the world – by providing essential business continuity services and meaningful risk transfer through fit-for-purpose innovative products.

CHAIR: David Benyon, editor, Global Reinsurance

The prosperity of Dubai can contrast starkly with parts of the Middle East where the curse of war and conflict can be seen elsewhere within the Arab World. However, the international re/insurance industry plays a vital positive role in protecting business throughout this region and globally, particularly amid a new geopolitical era that seems characterised by unpredictability across large portions of the globe.
Within this context, businesses are increasingly turning to re/insurance products for war, political violence and terrorism (WPVT) to provide greater certainty through risk transfer, whether from civil unrest risks of strikes, riots and civil commotion, or more traditional threats of war, terror and armed conflict.
These volatile risks are presenting themselves globally, from Washington DC to downtown Beirut. Dubai, as a leader in financial services talent and an Arab-speaking regional hub for reinsurance capital, plays an indispensable role in providing risk transfer against instability.

CHAIR: David Benyon, editor, Global Reinsurance

Parametric products, developing and utilising new data and indices to accelerate and automate the claims process, have made progress within the insurance industry in the past decade. But they haven’t yet moved the needle decisively, instead seen as peripheral, small limit accompaniments to bigger, slower moving placements of traditional products. What is needed to change that?
For parametric advocates, is the route to success about focusing on proven perils and product experience – such as using plentiful meteorological data to transfer extreme weather property and agricultural risks? Or is it about innovating new data with new perils, prioritising fast-moving emerging risks and intangibles as focuses for growth, requiring deft use of limited historical data, which would make traditional underwriters turn to talk of strict limits or even exclusions?
Parametric is an area rich with examples of product innovation, so there will be exponents for both approaches, and a market broad enough to see different strategies vying for growth.