I'm the group's Chief Underwriting Officer, which means I set and monitor our global insurance portfolio strategy and risk appetite. What we do across our segments – in life insurance, in health insurance, and in property-casualty insurance. That's the fundamental part.

Firstly, we want to be very successful in our home market in Germany, in life, in health and in property-casualty. We want to expand our brand presence and provide both individual and commercial clients with tailored insurance solutions. Secondly, we also have defined a certain number of core markets in Europe as well as growth markets in Asia, in which we want to further strengthen our positioning and, where it is not the case yet, establish ourselves among the leading insurance players.

We want to be at least among the top five insurance companies, wherever we are present. That is our vision, our ambition. And we have made significant progress across markets in recent years. Thailand is an example. Here, we have grown organically and made a number of acquisitions – even predating my arrival at Ergo. And now we are a top-10 property insurer in the largest market in Southeast Asia.

We invest in Europe – organically and also inorganically. Last year, for example, we have acquired Storebrand ASA’s shares in our Norwegian health insurance joint venture Storebrand Helseforsikring AS, making us the company’s sole owner. And we have signed an agreement with Gjensidige Forsikring ASA last summer to acquire their non-life Lithuanian subsidiary ADB Gjensidige – including the branches in Estonia and Latvia. These acquisitions will enable us to further expand our presence and competitive edge across both Scandinavia and the Baltics.

Good observation. We have a very strong governance when it comes to what we call the risk view of our businesses. So, we form those views in our risk committees based on thorough analyses and assessments – and some of those exposures and mentions such as geopolitical risk do feature in our risk assessment. We adjust our strategies and undertake appropriate measures as needed.

Insurance products, I suppose, are not as homogeneous across the world as many banking products. The credit card proposition is more or less the same everywhere. Insurance is often individually regulated in each country because the development path of every country is a different one. To give you an example, let us look at Indonesia. There, the insurance penetration, defined as the ratio of insurance premiums underwritten to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is hovering at about 0.5%. And the average spend of an individual for insurance products is less than 200 US dollars per year. Compare that to our society in Germany where we are probably paying four digit amounts each year. In Germany, we are not only aware of insurance, we know how to compare insurance, we know the value of insurance.

Yes. The attitude towards life insurance is, for example, different. In Asia, people usually take a very high degree of responsibility for their personal life planning. The state is involved, but the state is not involved in everything. And so, life insurance in Asia becomes a very personal decision: how do I fund the future of my family's education? People want to put their children into great schools. The same applies to retirement habits and wealth planning. In Germany, my perception is that those who aspire to a certain living standard are taking care of these questions privately, right?

I don’t see that in our business. With our dedicated risk carrier Ergo Vorsorge Lebensversicherung AG in Germany, we have a growing life insurance book, for example. We believe we have the capability to grow further with select products, which fit well to our business appetite and are accretive to our long-term value creation. At the same time, as an enterprise, we are committed to offer good products with adequate, tailored protection to our customers.

I cannot say that extrapolation is the right path for any insurance product category. Simply, because there are so much risk assumptions that come into play. For example, in some product lines, we have to consider interest rate development. That involves prediction. And risk models need to be updated very fast. In Greece, for example, we have developed a detailed map, identifying the risks of wildfires for each location in the country to the most granular level. That also helps with prevention, another crucial pillar when it comes to keeping risks manageable at global scale. The map has been built together with our parent company Munich Re, based on similar maps they already have in use in California and in Australia.

One reason is that governments and society deal with risks differently. Japan’s government recently informed its people about an increasing risk of earthquakes and the needed investment to prepare for that. Singapore just sensitized its citizens that billions have to be invested over next 100 years to prepare the country for rising sea levels. But, in Germany, it seems to be the other way around. The debate about the introduction of a mandatory insurance scheme for natural catastrophes is a typical example. We shouldn’t only discuss if we need it but also how to prepare ourselves so that insurance solutions remain sustainable in the long-term. Why don't we incentivize people to move out of highly exposed risk areas prone to river flooding, making sure that we naturalize rivers again a little more so that those things don't happen as much. It is this type of questions that governments need to address urgently. Paying insurance premiums isn’t enough.

Never – as insurance products alone cannot prevent the actual damage from materializing. And also, there are simply not enough resources, i.e. people and materials, to repair the damage. It will take forever, especially since natural catastrophes will only increase both in terms of intensity and frequency. And the economic damage comes on top of it. So, I think one has to go with the other: awareness-raising, prevention, climate adaptation, and insurance.

Insurers can contribute a lot with data, with insights, and with risk prevention and mitigation.

For example, we basically can calculate the flood risk of about every home in Germany down to the house level. We are open to collaboration, involving all relevant stakeholders, to improve the awareness and understanding of exposure. And the risk paradigm is changing so fast that we have to adapt very fast.

We call that flood dementia. Look at the Ahrtal Valley flood of 2021. There was a big uptake in insurance against natural hazards immediately afterwards. But people forget fast. That is why I see it as part of my job to make people aware of certain risks. I am a senior insurance executive. If I say something that an average human can connect with, I've done my job. Because I can't only talk about the balance sheet. Nobody cares about that. I have to be relatable to our customers.

Well, people lose everything. That's one of the dilemmas of the risk paradigm in society. There's not a good equilibrium of where the hazards are and where resilience in society and financial gaps are being managed. So you have the extremes, you have very well insured countries like Japan, and you have Indonesia on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I think cyber insurance gained more prominence simply because we see exponential growth in the need for cyber insurance. And there are risks we cannot even measure yet. How do we quantify the potentially catastrophic impact of AI-related risks? This will soon be relevant, highly relevant. How does AI change the risk profile of a software? Right now, with all the digitalization in business processes, we still know that there's a human controlling it in the end. But when a pure AI model enters into the frame, do you understand the risk of the AI model as good as you understand human risk?

Multiple large events could create a financially outsized burden. So, I see the risk paradigm changing. I'm an advocate in saying cyber insurance risk premium must be exposure-based. We should not just be looking back in time, stating that there have been no cyber claims 10 years ago and taking this as a basis for premium calculation. That's not even relevant.

I would not want to cast doubts on any other insurance companies in the marketplace. But I think all insurance carriers involved in cyber insurance must step up in their risk-based assessment. And fortunately, Munich Re Group is a very strong global reinsurer in the cyber sphere. The private insurance industry has a finite capital base. So, we will not be taking on risks that pose systemic risks to our balance sheet for sure.

For sure, but not just in cybercrime. Often you can see it in bad governance, too. This behaviour always has one major target: eliminate personal risk at the cost of increasing the company risk.

I can give an example: As you know, there are a lot of sanctions in place given the current geopolitical turmoil. It would have taken our compliance team two weeks to check all our policies and our coverages in Germany alone. Now, we're talking about hours. That is an immediate productivity gain And it's only the tip of the iceberg. In the insurance value chain, from product design over underwriting to claims handling, AI can help us optimise. So everything has two sides to it. Risks and benefits need to be weighed carefully.