The world appears, on the surface, to be moving away from globalisation with talk of national agendas, tariffs, and potential trade wars. But much of this is political talk. The business world appears to be moving, not towards de-globalisation, but a shift to a multipolar world.

Nevertheless, political instability and tensions are concerns for businesses. And with such a challenging risk landscape, incorporating conflict, trade wars, growing climate risks, social inflation and supply chain disruption, the need for a coordinated, controlled global insurance programme is greater than ever.

This year’s conference will examine the challenging risk landscape and ask how the political tensions could affect corporate risks globally. It will provide an update on the insurance markets regionally in terms of rates, coverage and T&Cs, as well as focusing on some key areas, from political

violence and terrorism to protecting executives, to transactional risk insurance.

A big focus of the conference will be on climate risk and the increasing levels of extreme weather around the world. A key session will examine the growing risk, how corporates can improve their resilience, as well as the role of parametric covers and captives in financing climate risks.

The conference will also look at the growing problem of social inflation, with nuclear verdicts in the US and concern that class actions, increased litigation and litigation funders are all on their way to Europe.

Finally, the conference will tackle the ongoing issues in the global programme world, from tax and regulatory changes, a growing role for captives, the importance of data and digitalisation, and the nuts and bolts of global programmes: premium allocation and the setting of retention levels.