EN
LV
29.09.2016
The challenges of the insurance market – to use the technological progress of the moment to prepare for the next decade
Alignment of European legislation and customer data protection, supervision of insurance mediation, challenges of the so-called sharing economy – these and other issues were brought up to date at the “Insurance and reinsurance in the Baltics 2016” conference. In order to analyze the situation, trends and future perspectives of the European insurance market, more than two hundred industry specialists from fifteen European countries were gathering in Riga.
At the conference, the topics for discussion were the adoption and implementation of the already adopted and upcoming EU directives and regular requirements, legislative current affairs were discussed in depth, as well as the development of the vehicle insurance market and insurance fraud and security issues.
“The Baltic insurance market is becoming more and more interesting for Europe, we have room to grow. The market of developed European countries grows by a couple of percent per year, ours – by approximately five percent annually. I think that this growth will continue in the coming years. The market here is compact and technologically very developed, however, innovative things do not have all the prerequisites to develop here. The insurance industry is facing a serious challenge with new era technologies when it is necessary to understand – how to work in the conditions? Especially in the context of the sharing economy, when, for example, one machine will be used not by one person, but by an unlimited number of people. After several years, Google cars will move on the streets without drivers – how will insurance work? These are issues that need to be tackled today,” emphasizes the president of the Latvian Insurers’ Association (LAA) Jānis Abāšins.
“We live in a relatively unpredictable era, everything changes. Therefore, it is difficult to give a long-term forecast in the field of insurance, and we have to take this into account,” the head of the European Association of Insurance Actuaries and deputy head of the Finance Finland Esko Kivisari pointed out at the conference. On the other hand, one of the leading specialists in new insurance technologies in Europe – Matteo Carbone from Bain & Company in Italy – emphasized that insurers should be able to use the current technological progress to prepare for the situation that will be in ten, twenty years. “Whether it’s a Google driverless car, the latest telematics solutions in cars – insurers must be ready for this situation in time!” explains Carbone.
The conference also paid special attention to fraud and security issues. For example, interested parties had the opportunity to view the Lithuanian Fire Protection Research Center’s only mobile laboratory in the Baltics, the equipment of which allows for particularly effective determination of the place of origin of fires and the substances that caused them. The experts of this laboratory have also assessed the reasons for the recent Riga Castle fire, as there is no equivalent laboratory in Latvia.
Among conference speakers were representatives from Insurance Europe, German, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and Estonian insurance associations, the Polish Motor Insurers’ Bureau, Riga Technical University, the Lithuanian Fire Safety Research Center, law firm Kļaviņš Ellex and companies Gen Re, Hannover Re, If, Bain & Company, knowledgeprice.com, Møller, Larmtjänst AB and Sherlog.
Representatives of the supervisory institutions from all three Baltic countries – the Financial and Capital Market Commission, the Bank of Lithuania, the Ministries of Finance of Estonia and Latvia – also participated.
