The Insurance Landscape

Cathy Hampson and Gustavo Ortega

INTRODUCTION

In the remainder of this book we discuss the current ways of operating, and the current regulations relevant to insurers. This chapter is dedicated to examining the insurance “landscape”, by which we mean how insurance fits into the broader business world, into politics and economies, and how that might develop over time.

Insurance has a long history from the coffee shops of London in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has grown in scale and scope but has fundamentally stayed the same in how it operates for syndicates, underwriters, brokers loss adjusters and clients. The advent of technology made the location of where insurance is agreed and underwritten less important; however, still the hubs around the world have tended to remain. What has changed has been the new players and new methods entering the market, and this chapter will explore how far they have come and what we might anticipate.

We will examine how regulation and political changes could affect the insurance landscape. June 23, 2016, was a watershed moment, when the UK’s Brexit vote overturned the status quo: suddenly, expected voting patterns were being torn up, no longer having their previous