This session will provide an overall economic outlook of the property/casualty insurance industry. This session will include a high-level look at industry trends and disrupters. The always-popular Robert Hartwig, Ph.D., will provide important insights that will help you manage your company’s risk.

This webinar qualifies for one FMDC credit in the Operations & Insurance module under the course name Emerging Industry Trends.

Robert Hartwig, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Risk & Uncertainty Management
University of South Carolina

How might the traits of millennials and Gen Z alter how mutual insurance companies view and manage their investment process? In this informative session, speakers from Strategic Asset Alliance and Vanguard will analyze the developing demographic changes, as well as the regulatory and technological trends, that will impact the asset allocation decision-making and investment process of mutual insurance companies. The speakers will review recent regulatory changes that are opening more efficient investment choices for mutual insurers.

Alton Cogert

President & CEO
Strategic Asset Alliance

Kelly Sweppenhiser

Head of Insurance General Account Solutions
Vanguard

Insurance entities typically require a great deal of customization because of their unique business considerations such as lines of coverage, short-/medium-/long-tail mix, severity vs. frequency, management, and the board's risk appetite, along with regulator and ratings agency considerations. Therefore, effective investment management of insurance entities requires a thorough understanding of both sides of the balance sheet. Nuances behind each of these issues must also be considered. This presentation will explore each of these topics to help the audience appreciate the complexities involved in managing insurance assets and the myriad of issues that must be addressed by the asset manager.

John Lefebvre, CFA

Vice President, Research
Opus Investment Management

Environmental, social, and governance factors are being advocated by some insurance regulators as a better way of measuring the sustainability and impact of an investment to a company or business. Former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones was the leader of a multi-state effort that administers the NAIC Climate Risk Disclosure Survey, and he launched the California Department of Insurance Climate Risk Carbon Initiative requiring the reporting of fossil-fuel investments held by insurance companies. Insurance regulators in California and five other states – Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Washington – mandated completion of the survey by insurers. A new global sustainable finance group at Fitch Group will review how ESG factors are incorporated into the credit rating process. This session will explain what the ESG factors are, why they are considered important, and the different ways insurance companies can address ESG factors in their investment portfolios.

Tom Karol

General Counsel
NAMIC

This session will provide an industry analysis of mutual investment portfolios with consideration for their relative risk posture given how portfolio composition has evolved post-financial crisis. This examination will highlight current portfolio sensitivities in mutual portfolios relative to other insurers and propose investment solutions given these risks.

Scott Jeffreys

Senior Strategist, Insurance Solutions
Macquarie Investment Management

Marc Mercurio

Senior Manager, Insurance Solutions
Macquarie Investment Management

This session will explore the driving factors behind the insurance industry’s increasing use of exchange-traded funds as tools within general account portfolios. It will provide in-depth details on insurance-specific ETF use cases derived from statutory filings and survey-based insights from a recent study on the topic.

Chad Nettleship

Vice President, ETF Business Development
State Street Global Advisors

Andrew McCollum

Managing Director
Greenwich Associates

Join us for this educational session as experts from Aon’s investment teams will share asset class views and highlight investment strategies that property/casualty insurers in the U.S. and Canada could use to increase portfolio yields, diversification, and total returns. This session will cover the teams’ latest thinking on a diverse range of investment alternatives with a focus on private markets, such as direct lending, private equity, and real assets investment strategies. It will also include perspectives on the risk-return expectations and the typical implementation options to consider for the strategies that are discussed.

Karen Rode

Partner
The Townsend Group

Prashant Tewari

Principal
The Townsend Group

The U.S. economy has continued to exceed expectations for profitability and growth due mostly to tax reform and regulatory relief. However, are global concerns from Brexit, rising rates, growing Chinese debt levels, emerging market dislocations, tariffs, and the ever-present Trump tweet being properly discounted in the capital markets? The speaker will discuss Conning’s views of how these important global economic trends may come to shape U.S. fixed-income markets and insurance company portfolios.

Michael Mix

Managing Director & Portfolio Manager
Conning

Insurance companies around the world are rapidly embracing Exchange Traded Funds strategies. The number of insurance ETF adopters in the U.S. has more than tripled over the last two-and-a-half years. This growth has been fueled by both equity and fixed income ETF allocations, which have allowed insurers to leverage low-cost, easy-to-access, market-cap-weighted exposure.

This webinar will explore industry and company level insights into portfolio construction using index-driven investments. BlackRock’s insights stem from modeling 500+ company balance sheets and more than 800,000 CUSIPS, which collectively represent more than 90 percent of the total U.S. insurance industry.

Joshua Penzner

Managing Director
BlackRock

Del Stafford

Managing Director
BlackRock

Indexing continues to evolve the $38.5 trillion fixed-income landscape for all institutional investors. This webinar will discuss methods of investing and building efficient portfolios through an understanding of indexed bond funds as well as the future of fixed-income indexing.

Steve Laipply

Managing Director, Head of U.S. iShares Fixed Income Strategy
BlackRock

Equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been at the core of insurance portfolios for years, offering accessible market cap-weighted indexes. This webinar will explore the ways in which insurers have led implementation of equity-factor strategies and exposures.

Joseph Nelesen, Ph.D.

Director, iShares Smart Beta Strategist for Institutional Clients
BlackRock