Dubai International Financial Centre issued the following announcement on Feb. 27.
Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the leading financial hub in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region (MEASA), co-hosted the second edition of the Dubai World Insurance Congress (DWIC) on 27-28 February, under the theme “Emerging markets, emerging technologies, emerging customers”.
Held in partnership with Global Reinsurance magazine and DIFC Insurance Association, the two-day conference brought together regional and global industry experts who discussed the risks and opportunities in the evolving insurance sector through topics such as artificial intelligence, the digital world and InsurTech.
Arif Amiri, Chief Executive Officer of DIFC Authority, said: “In the past decade, technological advances from artificial intelligence to blockchain have transformed business models in every sector and insurance is no exception. Dubai World Insurance Congress embraced the future of the industry with insights from the sector’s most established and innovative leaders. DIFC’s insurance community includes start-ups and disruptive entrepreneurs as well as world’s leading firms, and DWIC is just one of the initiatives we already have underway to support the significant growth in this sector.”
Confirmed keynote speakers for DWIC’s first day included Eric Andersen, Chief Executive Officer of AON Benfield, who presented a global view on the theme of ‘Emerging markets, emerging technologies, emerging customers”; Vincent Vandendael, Chief Commercial Officer of Lloyd’s of London, discussed new business models making insurance fit for the future; and Emil Bauer Griston, co-founder of Remitradar, spoke about accessing emerging market consumers through technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The second edition of DWIC also featured a number of panel discussions and workshops that addressed a number of issues, including artificial intelligence and its implications for the insurance industry, risk management in aerospace and the impact and opportunity of blockchain technology in the insurance sector.
A panel on the second day of the conference featuring Raja Al Mazrouei, Executive Vice President of FinTech Hive at DIFC, Nigel Walsh, Partner, Deloitte and Jack Grocott, Group Publisher, Insurance Times, StrategicRISK and Global Reinsurance, will be looking at the emergence and significance of InsurTech, as DIFC prepares to launch its major initiative in this sector in 2018
As part of its commitment to supporting FinTech in the region, DIFC is introducing two new programmes this year focused on InsurTech and RegTech which will support start-ups specialising in finding technological solutions for insurance and regulatory companies.
The conference concluded with a start-ups live session, where five Dubai-based InsurTech start-ups presented and pitched their businesses: Adapt Ready, ChainThat, Turnkey IS, VIP RESCUE SAL and Vizru. This session reflected DIFC’s commitment to discover and nurture the next generation of industry-leading companies.
DIFC has developed into a leading insurance and reinsurance hub, home to 98 insurance-related entities and more than 1,000 insurance-related staff. The GCC’s insurance sector is expected to reach $62.1 billion by 2020 and set to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.7% between 2014 and 2020, emphasising the region’s significance as a growth market for the industry.
Original source can be found here.
