Comment – A brave new world…

The hard copy version of CRA published at the IRMSA conference here in South Africa will be followed up by a regular monthly electronic newspaper that is designed specifically for risk and insurance managers who have risks to manage and transfer in the Sub Saharan Africa region. The paper is aimed primarily at risk and insurance managers in Europe and the rest of the world who work for companies that are expanding to this fast-growing and exciting region. Commercial Risk Europe itself was only launched three years ago to deliver the latest news, views and analysis of relevance to the European risk and insurance community and has been a great success. We have worked very closely with the key national risk and insurance management associations across Europe and their continental federation—the Federation of European Risk Management Associations (Ferma)—to make sure that the publication truly represents the community and furthers their goals and aims. We are more than aware that this is a busy time for corporate risk managers as they struggle to cope with the ever rising range of risks faced by their companies and expanding duties. Many of these emerging risks and resultant expanding duties come as a direct or indirect result of legislation and regulation generated by the European Commission in Brussels. CRE has worked hard to help Europe’s hard-pressed risk managers identify these new rules and regulations, analyse the risks and challenges that they and other forces produce and how best to manage and transfer them.hideTo help identify the key risks and find out the best ways of measuring and managing them we spend a lot of time talking to our core readers—the risk managers—not least though our annual Risk Frontiers survey of leading European risk managers, attending and reporting on key events and holding our own specialist seminars across Europe. To help our readers identify the key challenges and opportunities represented by the risk transfer element of risk chain we spend a great deal of time also talking to the leading providers and brokers of corporate insurance and other services. The intelligence we gather from the customers—the risk and insurance managers—is taken to the insurers, brokers and others and they are challenged to respond through interviews and discussions at our events in an independent environment. This is a simple, some would say old-fashioned, approach that works and one of the biggest successes that we have had in this regard is with global programmes. Since our launch we have written a lot about global programmes as our readers’ companies have sought new sources of production and demand in new territories, not least the so-called emerging markets of the world such as the Brics. It soon became apparent that the risk managers that read our paper were not happy with the way global programmes work. They are clearly the most cost-effective and efficient way of attempting to manage cross-border risks. But the complexity and inconsistency of local insurance rules across the world make this a tough and often very frustrating task. Through the pages of CRE we began to challenge the insurance industry to come up with a more coherent approach that would help achieve that holy grail of true compliance. And, at an event that we held in London early last year, a number of market leaders agreed on stage to sit down with representatives of Ferma, the UK risk management association Airmic and others to try and create a global database of the rules as a start point. We were very proud of the role we played in helping to kick-start and facilitate this important process. And we have not dropped the ball since. In October we launched our first dedicated specialist newsletter—International Programme News—to maintain the news flow and keep our readers up to date with important elements in this critical part of the market (to see IPN go to www.commercialriskeurope.com). The fact that global programmes have become so important to our readers also confirmed to us that the business can no longer be limited to neat and easy to manage geographical boxes. CRE has a fast-rising number of risk manager readers from outside of Europe who want and need to know what is happening in this core market. Also all our readers are keenly interested in what is happening elsewhere in the world where their companies are expanding to and specifically what the key risks are, how they can be best measured and managed and then transferred. To help our readers in this challenge we therefore decided to deepen our coverage of the key growth markets and hence the arrival of Commercial Risk Africa. Sub Saharan Africa is an exciting growth market for European and international companies and also of course African companies that are keen to grow outside of their traditional national boundaries too. It is also a hugely diverse region that has many challenging risks that need to be properly understood, managed and transferred if those companies are to succeed with their growth plans and also contribute to the regions’ overall wealth development. We have kicked off CRA in South Africa at the IRMSA conference because this is the biggest gathering of risk managers across the region and also the most mature and sophisticated risk transfer market. It is a natural start point for corporations, insurers and brokers that are keen to expand into the region. We are keen for African risk and insurance managers to enjoy CRA as much as our European and international readers and so the IRMSA conference was an obvious place to start. But CRA will not just focus on South Africa and its immediate neighbours. We will cover the whole region in the same balanced and fiercely editorially independent way that we cover Europe and other international markets for our readers. To help make sure that we achieve this goal, write about and discuss the topics that really matter to all risk and insurance managers with interest and activities in this region—whether they be international or local—we need your input. Please write or call and let me know what you think about CRA, whether we have the right balance of coverage and what you would really like to read about in our pages as we progress. CRE has been a great success in Europe and internationally because we work so closely with the people that really matter—the risk managers. To repeat this success in Africa we need to make sure that the same thing happens. So please get in touch and let me know what you think and what you want to read about. I look forward to hearing from you. Adrian LadburyEditorial Director—Commercial Risk Africa

Comment – A brave new world…

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