The flying Dutchman-Peter den Dekker

The last two years has been an incredibly busy time for the European risk and insurance management profession and the risk community was very fortunate to have Peter den Dekker in charge of Ferma at this time, if only because it is unlikely that anyone else would have been able to expend quite so much energy for the cause while still holding down a demanding day job.

The key is of course passion. Mr Den Dekker has enjoyed his time in charge of Ferma very much and is extremely serious and passionate about the future of his profession. This has meant that he has made the time required to deliver some truly impressive results and progress and left his successor—Jorge Luzzi of Pirelli—with a very solid foundation on which to build.

“I have enjoyed it very much. I have learned a lot and it has been a really new experience and wholly different to being in charge of a national association. It is amazing how many people you meet and network with. Having this job has simply been great,” he explained.

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According to Mr Den Dekker the main difference to being president of a national association such as Narim is that within national associations everyone speaks the same language, literally and figuratively, and, more or less, have the same background. Running a European federation, however, is a completely different ball game, as any politician or bureaucrat involved with the European Union will readily attest.

“Europe is a play garden of all sorts of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds and it has been very interesting to try and speak with one language as a European organisation. I have a broking background so this helped but bringing so many cultures together to reach a consensus on some big matters is a challenge. It’s great when it works,” he said.

Mr Den Dekker said that one of the biggest challenges he and the Ferma team faced was to improve the communication with the members because a federation such as this can only work if it achieves results for the members and the members are aware of what it is doing.

“In my view we have succeeded with communication. It can always be better of course but I feel that the national associations and their members have a much better idea of what Ferma is doing for them and can do and why it is good to be a member. We also have worked hard on raising the level of feedback. This was the biggest challenge and I think we have managed a reasonable result.”

The effort to improve communication meant that he personally had to do an awful lot of travelling to countless conferences and association meetings to explain what Ferma was up to and win support among national members.

“Communication is critical, to send the messages to the community. Obviously I had to show my face at general assemblies in the beginning to tell the members of our ideas and explain why it is important for them to be a member of a European organisation doing a lot of lobbying and influencing at the European level. Remember, we at Ferma do not do this for ourselves, it is for the members and all we do is in the interests of the members,” he said.

“I started two years ago and had to take control of certain objectives and strategic goals. We had to ask why are we doing certain things—is it benefiting the members or are we just doing it because we always have? I found that Ferma was doing many things for the members but perhaps not showing them and including them in the projects enough. It goes both ways because you can’t just have nine or ten people doing everything, it needs wider involvement and this is easier said than done when you have so many different backgrounds and cultures. Reaching agreement with all the associations is not easy especially if you don’t communicate with the members,” added Mr Den Dekker.

CRE readers will also have noticed Mr Den Dekker and his colleagues at Ferma given a lot more column inches in the press than in the past and this was intentional.

“This is why the press has been important for us. Commercial Risk Europe has been a key communication platform for us as you have written about the key issues that we are dealing with since you launched last February. This has been a big bonus for Ferma as the members of the national associations read CRE and other publications and learn what we are doing for them,” explained Mr Den Dekker.

Ferma also introduced a monthly phone call with the heads of the associations which was vital to receive feedback on what the federation was up to and help with planning and the development of strategy. And Ferma has been working on its website to improve it and using other forms of social media.

There was no shortage of big issues for Mr Den Dekker and his team to deal with over the last two years. Solvency II was really beginning to kick in when Mr Den Dekker took charge at Ferma and it was not so ‘on the ball’ as an organisation with this complex new set of rules as it could have been.

The problem, as ever for Ferma, is that it has limited resources and when faced with a very complex and fast-changing topic such as Solvency II it can struggle to keep up. Mr Den Dekker identified it as a priority though and ultimately made the sensible decision to work with, rather than in competition with, the European Captive Insurance Owners Association (ECIROA) to promote the cause for all risk and insurance managers in Brussels.

“We needed a stronger voice in Europe with the European Commission and CEIOPS. We needed to stand up and have our voice heard in the debate. This is easily said but hard to prove and actually do it which goes for all the actions we take. But if you promise something you have to deliver. This is a given. I am not a specialist in this area and especially not captives but we teamed up with ECIROA and we are strong together and are delivering the best for both memberships together rather than in competition,” said Mr Den Dekker.

Other big topics that needed tackling included the EC’s collective redress project for which Ferma gave response to the green and white papers, the block exemption ruling, corporate governance and environmental liability. “This is not easy because there are such differences in national approaches in this area and we had to deal with very different positions from the Germans and English for example. But this worked very well and again we worked with the press and social media very well on this project,” he said of the collective redress project as an example.

Then of course there was the agreement with the brokers which took a lot of time and effort to achieve. “I promised in Prague that we would have an agreement in place by Stockholm and we have done it. Some countries are looking at having it translated into national agreements and some appear to have done nothing with it. All the national associations were involved in the debate and we had many interesting exchanges and drafts and then it had to be finalised with Bipar. This cooperative effort forms the basis of the report to the commission and it is being used in the revision of the IMD and will hopefully help ensure that large risks are included, said Mr Den Dekker.

He did say, however, that in his opinion, one of the best things the Ferma team did during his tenure was the document on corporate governance produced with the ACII. “We had a lot of input from both risk management and internal audit sides and I am very proud of that even though I was not directly involved. This was led by Paul Taylor of Airmic, Michel Dennery of Amrae and Marie Gemma Dequae of Belrim. So this was a very diversified board of half CROs and half insurance managers,” he said.

The mix of insurance managers and risk managers is one of the things that makes running Ferma more difficult than it may appear to outsiders. The membership is a broad church and this can clearly make it difficult to focus. But Mr Den Dekker believes that diversity is a strength and that, if managed well, the two sides can learn a lot from each other.

“Interestingly the risk management workshops at the Forum are particularly popular and not just among risk managers but more insurance managers because they can learn a lot in such an environment. It does not make sense really for a well qualified CRO to talk to other CROs about what they do. This is a huge opportunity for Ferma and the members to get more involved in corporate governance and wider risk management because they can improve their skills a lot and position themselves well for the future and career development,” he explained.

Mr Den Dekker’s best moment is yet to come in his view. “I hope my best moment is to come in Stockholm. The whole committee has put so much work in on this Forum and I hope that this will be our moment of triumph. We now have 1420 registrations and 405 risk managers. The total registrations for Prague was 1070 of which 267 were risk managers so we have a record number of delegates and 140 more risk managers than last time which we should all be very proud of. This is a record number of total delegates and, more importantly, a record number of risk managers. I had hoped for 500 risk managers in total and it is a big disappointment to me that we have not hit that but I understand that it is not that easy at this difficult economic time for everyone to spend time out of the office no matter how beneficial it will be.”

What advice did he have for his successor, Jorge Luzzi?

“What I really, really hope is that the work is kept up on the communication with members. It is vital that the membership appreciates the value of Ferma and what it is doing for the profession. My successor will need good feedback from the members on what they really need and what we are doing best and not so well. Hopefully we have a more structured approach and Ferma is better appreciated in the wider market and I hope that Jorge and the team can build on this,” he said.

And finally what comes next after this very big chapter in Mr Den Dekker’s life closes? Not surprisingly his farewell speech at the Forum in Stockholm will not be the last we will hear from the energetic Dutchman and that is good news.

“There is actually a big black hole in my back garden that I plan to jump into and see what happens, hopefully nobody will want to know me and nobody will want to call me. Seriously, I will stay a board member of Ferma and support the new president as much as possible. I will have to step back a little obviously which will be difficult for me because I naturally want to talk and be in charge so I have to be careful not to cut across the new team.” Watch your back, Jorge.