Patrick Fiedler: The man in the hot seat

Patrick Fiedler, senior vice president of insurance at chemicals giant BASF and CEO of its captives Lucura Versicherungs in Germany and Lumerica Insurance in the US, was announced as the new president of the German risk and insurance management association GVNW back in May of this year at the association’s annual general meeting.

He took over from Christian Böhm, managing director of insurance at global technology group Freudenberg, who stepped in on a temporary basis at the end of last year when Alexander Mahnke resigned as head of financial services at Siemens to take on a new role at Mitsui Sumitomo.

Böhm stepped back to being deputy president of the association. He was joined in this role by Dirk Förster, vice president of insurance at BMW Group.

Fiedler has been a member of the GVNW since 2017 and on the committee since 2022. He was previously deputy secretary of the association.

Fiedler, a Doctor of Law and educated at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and Clare College Cambridge, has been at BASF since 2002. He started as senior manager of legal and  insurance at BASF’s East Asia headquarters in Hong Kong and took the role as head of insurance for the group in October 2018.

Before taking on the top job at GVNW, Fiedler was already in the news as one of the founding members of MIRIS, the Brussels-based mutual cyber insurer. MIRIS was created by a group of leading European risk managers keen to gain some independence from the commercial insurance market that has struggled to deliver what customers want and need in recent times on cyber.

When MIRIS was launched at the start of this year, Fiedler was keen to stress that the goal is not to compete with traditional commercial cyber insurance markets, but to provide specific benefits to its members.

He pointed out that the insurance buying community has historically looked at ways to help itself rather than solely relying on the commercial insurance market, hence the rise in the use of captives during harder market phases. In Germany, for example, Hannover-based insurance group HDI, now a listed insurer within the Talanx Group, was originally founded in 1903 as a mutual by leading German industrial companies because they could not secure adequate liability cover at the time. The foundation of MIRIS was a further extension of this, said Fiedler.

Along with the other leading founder members, Fiedler said that mutuals or use of captives should not be viewed as a quick fix to a tricky market phase. Claims do occur and reinsurance needs to be used properly to help manage the potential for fresh capital requirements.

This is why MIRIS has established a strict entry requirement for members that need to show they are properly managing their cyber risk at source, are committed for the long term and understand the legal and regulatory complexities involved. Mutuals and captives are important tools for risk and insurance managers particularly during hard market phases but must be viewed as long-term projects and not quick fix, ‘silver bullet’ solutions, said Fiedler.