The Political Risk Podcast

Featuring Tom Clementi, CEO of Pool Re, the UK's government-backed mutual reinsurance fund for terrorism risk. We discuss freshly agreed plans to transform Pool Re's operating model into a treaty reinsurer. Tom also talks about the IFTRIP 2024 international meeting of terrorism pools, hosted by the US Treasury. Cyber reinsurance and the role of government-backed PPPs like Pool Re was on the agenda in DC, and is also the focus of an industry consultation with Pool Re in the UK.

War risk insurance experts Michael Burle and Neil Roberts discuss challenges in insuring ships amidst Houthi attacks, Somali piracy, and Ukrainian war risks. They explore market strategies, ethical dilemmas, and post-conflict rebuilding in Ukraine, along with evolving threats in the Red Sea like piracy and surveillance efforts.

Michael Feller, partner at Geopolitical Strategy, discusses the decline of Pax Americana and the concept of living in a period of geopolitical interregnum. Topics include the transition from Pax Americana to uncertain global power dynamics, potential impacts of US secondary sanctions on Middle Eastern countries, and exploring future scenarios for US power and global stability.

Carla Jordan and Rafic Abi Saleh discuss South Africa's political future, election dynamics, Santam's diverse business segments, political violence insurance market trends, global impacts, and the role of brokers in risk management in the Middle East and Africa markets.

A special episode in association with Mosaic Insurance. Guests Yosha DeLong, global head of cyber, Mosaic Insurance, and Jason Nurse, reader in cyber security, University of Kent, discuss the need for greater alignment between insurance, corporate and government stakeholders for managing cyber security, particularly against the heightened threat posed by ransomware attacks.

Sir Stewart Eldon, KCMG OBE, is a consultant and former senior diplomat. His diplomatic postings include serving as UK permanent representative to NATO, ambassador to Ireland, and as the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the UN in New York. He advises Transparency International on counter-corruption in defence, and is senior civil adviser to the Higher Command & Staff College at the UK Defence Academy. Working with The Ambassador Partnership, a specialist consultancy of former diplomats, he recently published an article on geopolitical shifts for 2024. In this episode we discuss Ukraine, NATO’s expansion northwards, Turkey, the ambitions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the role of Sub-Saharan Africa in the Global South.

Bruce Carman is founder and chief underwriting officer of HIVE Underwriters. To coincide with the two-year anniversary of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when Russia's government seized many western aircraft, this episode focuses on the aviation war insurance market in the period since then. Reinsurers have withdrawn capacity and increased prices exponentially, and last year a civil war in Sudan led to several airliners destroyed at Khartoum's airport, demonstrating the value of systems like Sentinel, which HIVE has developed to monitor accumulation risk for its insured assets in real-time.

Political risk analyst John Hulsman discusses the evolution of American realism in foreign policy, emphasizing historical context for predicting geopolitical risks. Topics include the impact of neoconservatism post-Trump, geopolitical dynamics in Ukraine and Asia, and the influence of history on political risk assessments.

This episode features Chris Holt, CEO of Lloyd's broker and advisory CHC Global, and a former British Army bomb disposal officer. We discuss CHC's Annual Malicious Risk Report 2024, which has three themes: political polarisation; the implications of energy transition; and the race for technological superiority.

Insurers are used to catastrophe risk models, but modelling terrorism and PV, such as marauding attacks or outbreaks of civil unrest, is a very different challenge. Stephen Tench, Gallagher Re's head of Middle East & Africa catastrophe analytics, is a pioneer on this subject, employing fresh data for frequency as well as severity, adapting existing modelling techniques, and harnessing the revolutionary power of AI.