SIRC 2026: Diary day three – Taxi driver
November 4 2026 by Marcus Alcock
I just love the (re)insurance market, I really do. A vast array of technical expertise, people who really understand the changing nature of risk, and at the heart of it all a business still predicated on meaningful relationships.
This is not to say that we are luddites when it comes to technology – far from it, the market has made huge strides in recent years in embracing digitisation and making the whole transactional policy chain so much smoother and more efficient.
But walking round this year, bumping into so many old faces and meeting some brilliant new ones, reminds me just how much this is people business, and long may it remain so. In a world which is increasingly boring, corporate and digital, face-to-face contact and trust remains integral to our sector.
The reinsurance market also remains at heart an intimate one. I was pleasantly reminded of this while in a taxi on the way to an after-party with a colleague and an Aon employee. Naturally we were chatting about the conference and how our respective days had gone, when the taxi driver pipes up by saying how amazing reinsurance is and how he will be bereft of income when the conference finishes, as he has been furiously busy ferrying brokers, underwriters and us journos around town these past few days.
We laugh and agree, telling him this year has seen record numbers of delegates, to which he replies: “even bigger than Monte, right?” It transpires that he used to be a senior property treaty broker at Aon who is now semi-retired and enjoys being a taxi driver. Turns out some of his best friends are C-suiters at some of the biggest cedents in the world, with a fair bit of name dropping going on. Brilliant!
Fac is back
Of course, it never really went away, but one of the real themes to emerge from this year has been the resurgence of the fac market, with talk of how it is really coming to the fore in these current soft market conditions.
Chatting to folks here, the mood music is that demand is really up for facultative solutions across the board as cedents look to remove volatility and smooth out attritional losses. This is taking the form of a number of new facultative facilities, but also traditional spot fac, which enables clients to take a more bespoke view of their portfolio and purchase tailored reinsurance protection.
Property nat cat-exposures for specific locations come to mind here, but I’m hearing that demand is also strong for fac to support other lines, including aviation, construction, cyber, financial lines and energy.
-
BlackRock | Rethink the rules: how TAA and ETFs are reshaping portfolio construction
BlackRock's Daniel Caderas and MSCI's Raman Aylur Subramanian explain why tactical asset allocation (TAA) and exchange-traded funds (ETF) have become essential as global markets fragment and static allocations lose their reliability.
-
BlackRock | Infrastructure comes of age for insurers
Are insurers capturing full value from the asset class? BlackRock shares its perspective.
-
Beazley | Navigating geopolitical risks at sea
Maritime shipping faces growing geopolitical threats — missiles, drones, GPS interference, and cyber sabotage — requiring better intelligence, crew welfare, and resilience measures.
-
Zurich | Why resilience will define the winners of Asia’s clean energy transition
Planning for future conditions from the outset can improve operational reliability, reduce potential disruption and protect long-term asset value.
