Full Capacity: Bridging the innovation gap
October 4 2025 by Mithun Varkey
Welcome to Full Capacity, a weekly briefing on all the most important developments of the past week with a personal take on the news from our editor-in-chief, Mithun Varkey, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
Nat cat brief. Only a week after Super Typhoon Ragasa ripped through the region, Typhoon Bualoi made landfall in Vietnam, causing significantly more destruction despite the lower windspeed.
The windstorm caused over US$432m in economic losses in Vietnam, while the damages to the 1,330-megawatt Vung Ang II thermal power plant in the northern Ha Tinh province is expected to trigger reinsurance claims.
PVI Insurance is understood to be the lead insurer, while Starr is understood to be the lead reinsurer of the plant’s fac program.
Leadership exit. Lloyd’s regional director for Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa Chris Mackinnon will leave in 2026 to pursue new opportunities. He is due to leave Lloyd’s in April after over a decade working for the firm in Australia and Singapore.
Mackinnon has been head of APMEA at Lloyd’s since March and previously served as deputy regional director for the region from April 2023 to March 2024.
Brand refresh. In a major rebranding exercise, MS&AD Insurance Group has announced that following the merger of its domestic non-life insurance businesses, the group will change its name to Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group.
It will also rename the combined domestic non-life insurance business of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSI) and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance (ADI) to Mitsui Sumitomo Aioi Insurance. The rebranding will be effective April 1, 2027,
Mapping out. Mapfre Re has placed Asia Pacific at the heart of its growth strategy, with an ambition to increase its GWP in the region to EUR1 billion (US$1.2 billion) “as soon as possible,” according to Javier Sánchez Cea, chief regional officer for Asia Pacific.
The Spanish reinsurer, which wrote around EUR700 million GWP from Asia this year, sees life reinsurance in China and India as a key driver of this growth, alongside casualty and other lines.
Rolling with the punches. With the renewable energy insurance market becoming more and more competitive, it is important for developers, owners, as well as insurers, to take a long-term approach to ensure 25-30 years of insurability, Will Hiller, underwriter at Tokio Marine GX (TMGX), told InsuranceAsia News’ Between the Lines podcast.
TMGX is Tokio Marine Holdings’ newly launched underwriting platform, providing coverage to support clients through the decarbonisation process and the green transition.
Embracing the future
Insuring emerging frontiers of technology transition – both digital and physical – continues to confound insurers. And frankly, that’s understandable.
A lack of historical data, coupled with a justified fear of the unknown, hold back the industry from stepping in to underwrite the risks associated with cutting-edge technology.
However, the new and widening protection gap emerging with the technological transition is indeed a frontier that needs addressing.
Insurers may have patched themselves into understanding cyber and mainstream renewables, but they are falling back on the next wave of innovation.
As a senior underwriter aptly noted, the risks themselves are not entirely new, it is that tools for assessing them are fundamentally broken.
The traditional approach of excluding risks that don’t have a 10-year loss history is irrelevant because historical data isn’t just scarce, it’s useless with pace of change, they noted.
The deployment of AI, newer forms of green energy as well as the fast-growing applications of drones, etc., present not just a new array of risks, but with them, also exciting opportunities.
AI applications, for instance, are transforming traditional industries, be it manufacturing or logistics, or even how lawyers and accountants operate. If insurers fail to keep pace, they leave trillion-dollar transitions AI exposed.
This is also true about green energy. The complexity of risks has escalated, the number of stakeholders has multiplied, and the urgency for a sustainable transition has never been greater.
Tokio Marine GX, the Japanese carrier’s new sustainability platform, in a recent report noted that among the greatest pressures is the instability of the insurance market on which clean tech relies.
Despite their best intentions, insurers are not currently doing enough to support the green transition. The insurance market is failing to keep pace with innovation in clean tech, leaving a critical gap in how risk is managed and transferred, it said.
As the report noted, it is the insurance market’s role to transfer as much risk as it possibly can, at a fair price, within its financial means.
Perhaps the single biggest opportunity for today’s underwriters is not in the risks that are known, but in those they have the vision to imagine and the courage to insure.
A head-start in solving for some of these risks, which have yet to really manifest, may be the key to building the champions for tomorrow. The future is waiting.
People moves
Willis has promoted insider Ollie Moore to head of broking for the Pacific region.
Aon has appointed of Shinji Kuriyama as enterprise client leader for Asia Pacific in Japan.
US MGA XS Global has named Steven Barnett as its chief executive officer and Wendy Law as Asia Pacific regional casualty underwriting manager.
Do check out our weekly people move round-up to stay up to speed on the most important appointments in the region.
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