Whenever the threat of a Brexit vote in the June referendum is discussed in City boardrooms, you can almost count the elephants lining up around the walls.

This week, published 2015 financials were positive. AXA raised net income by 3% with Chairman and CEO Henri de Castries saying that Ambition AXA had been successfully delivered.

The darkening mood of ratings agencies is heaping more pressure on investment portfolios and managers in the insurance sector.

Climate change. No, this is not another article to send onto those poor underwriting folk, as they struggle to develop new models for assessing and transferring climate change related risks, especially at the catastrophe end of the risk spectrum.

Regulatory pressures, investment constraints, and the difficulties of managing the portfolio construction process are converging to challenge the insurance industry and its investment managers.

The appointment of Andrew Bailey to head up the Financial Conduct Authority has set off a chain of consequences across the City regulators, including the Bank of England.