The Insurance Investment Exchange has expanded its popular events programme for 2018. Over the last four years its quarterly half-day seminars have examined a wide range of issues, focusing clearly on the key challenges facing chief investment officers, asset managers and their advisers. These have grown steadily in popularity as the mix of thought-provoking presentations, panel debates and specialist breakout sessions strike the right chords for the industry’s top investment professionals. The final seminar of 2017 set-out some of the key issues looming in 2018.
It also posed some challenging questions which the Insurance Investment Exchange is responding to in its expanded programme of events with a series of breakfast roundtables complementing the quarterly seminars. The only certainty for 2018 is uncertainty: economic uncertainty, political uncertainty and regulatory uncertainty. Reading the tea leaves may be hard, but we know the flux that has typified insurers’ approach to investments is set to continue. Earnings volatility, adequate returns on capital and profitability must all still be managed and that means thinking outside the box once again, whether it be frameworks, structures or assets.
In 2018, the Insurance Investment Exchange will take the theme of Waiting for Godot and apply it across the insurance landscape from the macroeconomic environment through to investment strategy through to implications for asset allocation and capital efficiency. We will explore the changes that have to be made regardless of whether there is a single, external stimulus – or Godot. Our events in the first quarter of 2018 include two breakfast roundtables on contrasting topics. These new, more intimate roundtables will dive into specific topics of interest identified by the community in greater depth and encourage an involved debate.
Thursday 8th February Responsible Investment: An Emerging Approach for Insurers? Breakfast roundtable, 8.30-10.30am Columbia Threadneedle Investments, 78 Cannon Street, London
Thursday 22nd February Real Estate Debt: 2018 Outlook and the Impact of Brexit Breakfast roundtable, 8.30-10.30am M&G Investments, Laurence Pountney Hill, London The roundtables are deliberately kept small so that everyone attending has an opportunity to join the debate, pose questions and contribute their ideas. Prompt registration is therefore strongly recommended using the link below. These will be followed by our traditional wider-ranging half-day event in March.
Wednesday 7th March Waiting for Godot: Understanding and Managing the Current Environment for Insurers Seminar, 8.30am-1.30pm (including buffet lunch) Skinners Hall, 8½ Dowgate Hill, London As the credit cycle grows long in the tooth, will 2018 bring a new reflationary paradigm? Or like Samuel Beckett’s seminal play, will the insurance industry find itself waiting interminably for Godot to arrive? These challenging questions will shape the debate at the first quarterly seminar of 2918.
Please click here to register your interest for events and apply for membership of the Insurance Investment Exchange if you haven’t already done so. Please note membership of the Insurance Investment Exchange is complimentary for insurers, regulators, policymakers and industry bodies. Independents and select others are considered on a case-by -case basis. Asset managers, service providers and others interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact the sales team.