Keynotes
Andrew Coburn
Chief Scientist, Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies
Dr Andrew Coburn is Chief Scientist of the Centre for Risk Studies, coordinating the inputs of consumers of research into the Centre’s risk agenda. Andrew is the principal coordinator of the research programme on ‘System Shock’ at the Centre.
Andrew is one of the leading contributors to the creation of the class of catastrophe models that over the past 20 years has come to be an accepted part both of business management in financial services and of public policy making for societal risk. He has extensive experience in developing models and using them for business decision support. Andrew has also provided research inputs into government policy, such as House of Congress legislation on terrorism risk management policy and urban planning for disaster mitigation in Mexico, Metro Manila, and Southern Italy.
Researching Business Risk – the Past Ten Years, the Next Ten Years
Ten years ago, the Centre for Risk Studies was established at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge with a mandate to carry out research into risk in business.
The past ten years of business risk research has been a journey of discovery and community-building. Research at CCRS has spanned trying understand the complexity of business interconnectivity, and the potential for widescale collapse of highly-connected systems, through to detailed explorations of highly technical dimensions of emerging risks. The Centre has produced well-regarded research outputs that have influenced several areas of business risk management.
One of the key research philosophies of the Centre has been the need to compare disparate risks using standardised metrics. A key research output has been our taxonomy of risks, that has structured much of our research agenda and approach. This is incorporated in our Cambridge Global Risk Index, published each year for the past five years.
We advocate taking a multi-threat approach to risk management, and this has been a distinguishing feature of our work. Today’s conference is in fact structured to represent the six main classes of risk that feature in our taxonomy of risk: Financial & Economic Risks; Geopolitical & Security Risks; Technology Risks; Environmental & Natural Hazard Risks; Societal & Sustainability Risks and Governance & Regulatory Risks.
The types of risks and the issues that businesses are faced with have changed very significantly over the past decade, and for our tenth anniversary, we decided that our Risk Summit should acknowledge how risk issues have evolved and challenge our presenters at this year’s conference to provide pointers to the risk landscape for the next ten years. We hope and expect that the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies will be contributing to the risk management decision-making of organizations in the next decade as much as the last.
Julian Enoizi
CEO, Pool Re
Julian Enoizi is the CEO of Pool Re, the Government backed UK terrorism reinsurance mutual. He joined Pool Re in September 2013, with the mandate to bring a fresh perspective to a company that had changed little since its formation in 1993. Since then he has presided over the repositioning of the organisation and a series of significant advancements. These include the renegotiation of Pool Re’s relationship with HM Treasury, introduction of a more sophisticated underwriting proposition requiring an amendment to an Act of Parliament, the purchase of the world’s largest terrorism retrocession programme, the launch of the world’s first terrorism Catastrophe Bond and a significant investment into a partnership with the Home Office in respect of a risk mitigation project. In addition, Pool Re is recognised a central sponsor of thought leadership initiatives and international collaboration with similar national level terrorism (re)insurance arrangements. In 2018, John Glen, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, described Pool Re as being “widely recognised as the world’s leading terrorism pool”.
Julian has occupied executive roles in the insurance industry for the past 17 years, eleven of which have been as CEO. His experience spans the Lloyd’s and London, UK Regional and Continental European markets, and has been focused on businesses undergoing important strategic transitions, often under challenging circumstances. Julian believes in a fast-paced, results-oriented and collaborative approach, encouraging his team to share his vision and commitment to success.
Making a Market for Acts of Terrorism: A Model for Addressing the Difficult to Insure Risks of the Future
Businesses, governments and the (re)insurance industry are all faced with a growing mismatch between capital, coverage, and vulnerability to an increasingly complex risk universe. With 26 years of experience in building the resilience of UK businesses to terrorism risk, how can the success of Pool Re’s public/private model be replicated to grow the commercial viability of risks which are difficult to insure, and in so doing, marry market and social objectives?
Dr Robert Muir-Wood
Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Solutions, Inc.
Robert Muir-Wood is the chief research officer of science and technology at RMS. He leads the branch of the company that’s responsible for identifying models for new areas and novel applications of risk.
Based in London, Robert has more than 20 years of experience in developing probabilistic catastrophe models across a wide range of perils and has most recently focused on models for the clustering of catastrophic events, insurance loss amplification, time varying activity rates, and “mega” catastrophes.
He was the lead author of insurance, finance, and climate change for the 2007 and 2011 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports and has written seven books – the most recent was The Cure for Catastrophe published in 2016 – along with numerous papers and articles in scientific and industry publications.
Robert is chair of the High Level Advisory Board of the OECD International Network on Financial Management of Large-Scale Catastrophes. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College, London. Robert holds a first-class degree in natural sciences and a PhD. in earth sciences from Cambridge University.
What Does a Business Need to Know about the Likely Impacts of Climate Change?
Just as we are seeing some of the initial signatures of climate change on sudden onset catastrophes (like inland floods and wildfire) as well as slow onset hazards (such as drought and heatwaves), we can track the business response to events beyond previous experience. Within this response we can find examples of how successful businesses anticipate and plan for unprecedented extremes, pioneer new solutions for adaptation and develop business continuity plans that recognise the multiple impact pathways of significant disasters.
Andrew Hill
Management Editor, Financial Times
Andrew Hill is an award-winning columnist and senior journalist at the Financial Times. As Associate Editor and Management Editor, he writes a weekly column on business, strategy and management, as well as contributing longer features and taking part in video discussions and podcasts. He is a regular public speaker and chair of panels on leadership and management.
Since joining the FT in 1988, Andrew has worked in various roles, including editor of the daily Lombard column on British business and finance, Financial Editor, Comment & Analysis Editor, New York Bureau Chief, Foreign News Editor, and correspondent in Brussels and Milan. He is a member of the FT’s Editorial Board.
Andrew was named Business Commentator of the Year 2016 in the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards and Best Commentator at the 2009 Business Journalist of the Year Awards, where he also received the Decade of Excellence award for sustained achievement in business and financial journalism.
His latest book is Ruskinland (Pallas Athene, 2019), a personal exploration of John Ruskin’s life, work and enduring influence on our world, published to coincide with the bicentenary of the great thinker’s birth.
He is also the author of Leadership in the Headlines (FT Publishing, 2016), a selection of his FT columns and insights about how leaders lead.
Andrew is a trustee and chair of The Blueprint Trust, the charity behind Blueprint for Better Business, which supports and challenges business to be a force for good. He is also a trustee of The Ruskin Foundation, responsible for the UK’s largest archive of material relating to the life and work of John Ruskin, the Victorian art and social critic.
Andrew lives in St Albans with his wife and children.