With over 7,300 delegates attending the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) Annual conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre meeting have to be planned with precision as those who have been to the Monte Carlo Rendezvous will attest the best of intentions can be thwarted by seeking someone out amid a sea of faces.

While Dan Glaser is recognisable to most in the industry Alex Moczarski has not enjoyed such a previously high profile so the fact that MMC has created a huge coffee shop in the convention centre and our meeting is in a designed and curtained off “meeting room” makes life simpler.

The MMC executive teams have changed and with Mr Glaser moving up to a group role his former job as Marsh CEO has been taken by Peter Zaffino, former CEO of Guy Carpenter a role that has fallen to Mr Moczarski.

It is a small oasis of calm amongst the hustle and bustle of what must be the insurance industry’s biggest conference of the year and Mr Glaser is quite open as to how he sees the future for the market and the company.

“Marsh is back on the front foot and has been for a while,” he says. “The fact is the firm is doing very well and I feel glad as to where we are positioned at present.”

He said the first role he has it to get ever more familiar with MMC;s four operating divisions.

“I have no doubt that Alex and the Peter [Zaffino] will take their operations forwards and we are privileged to have such premier executives at the company.”

One interesting move is the arrival of Ben Allen from Kroll who will join the group as its first Chief innovation Officer.

“His role will be to create a systematic approach to  innovation across the company,” explains Mr Glaser. “He will work with each of the operating units to ensure that we are taking innovative approaches to our clients’ needs and the challenges of the market.”

Mr Glaser said the company was still on the growth trail and believed that while it is seeking to expand its Marsh retail broker network in North America it would also be acquiring firms and teams as the year progressed and market conditions turned.”

When asked whether he felt there was set to be a rise in the firms which could well be looking for acquisition he was candid.

“The growing need for firms to deliver levels of expertise analytics, risk modelling and advisory services will stretch the capabilities of the medium sized brokers,” he says. “I believe we will be in a situation where these firms will be under pressure to provide the levels of service to compete with the larger intermediaries and as such they will have to make some serious decision on their future structure and ownership.”

Risk managers at RIMS were spending much of their time still trying to digest the potential impact of the first four moths of the year where major earthquakes has been followed by an exceptional period of tornado activity in the Southern United States.

Mr Moczarski believes the start of the year has given the market plenty to think about.

“Certainly the first quarter of the year has been defined by a number of natural catastrophes and the events in Japan have been the most concerning for the reinsurance industry,” he explains.

If Mr Moczarski’s public persona is anything to point to then his leadership of the reinsurance operation will be one where there will be a careful and considered approach to the job, and we can expect things to be done in a quiet and unassuming manner.

He believes that despite the media attention and coverage of the Japanese event and the figures which have been publicised by market analysts and underwriters alike it is still a case of having the wait and see what the full costs and therefore the impact on the industry will be.

“These events are notoriously difficult to quantify in a short periods of time as the damage is not often readily apparent to some buildings,” he adds. “With the earthquakes in Chile, New Zealand and Japan in little over a year the risks seem to have increased and the underwriters are looking at their pricing and appetite for such risks. There has been talk of further realignment of capacity to different underwriting areas ands classes and that may well have an effect on pricing at some stage.”

“There is all this talk to these “black swans”, but it is becoming apparent that these are not black swan events because they can no longer we viewed as events which are once every 200 or 300 years,” adds Mr Moczarski

He has also been in Japan post the earthquake and tsunami to visit both the MMC teams and their clients to assess how the firms can help.

“While I was there we experience a 7.0 aftershock,” he adds. “I know that the big question we have been asked while we have been at RIMS is what will happen to rates after the events in Japan but it is a difficult question to answer until we have more details on the costs to the economy and the re/insurance markets.”

“Japan certainly has presented some major issues for the insurance and reinsurance market on the ground there,” he says.  “What do you do with your staff? You are there to pay claims when there are events such as these, but what if it is dangerous to be there? Do you stay or do you withdraw your staff?

“It is all about timing if you retreat too early then you open yourself up to claims you have abandoned your clients. If you leave it too late then you are unable to evacuate your staff to safety. It is a very difficult decision for any firms which are an area which have been affected by natural disaster.”

He added that the threat of contingent business interruption remains a major factor in determining the final costs of the event, with the issues around global supply chains now under scrutiny.

“However we are in a good business and now is a good time to be in our industry. The underwriters and broker have really stood up to the tests we have faced in the first part of the year.”

But what of his new role how does he see Guy Carpenter, the market and the future?

“Someone described Guy Carpenter to me as the Tiffany & Co of the reinsurance industry. We have a great business and a great team of people so my aim is to continue to build on the wonderful reputation we already enjoy.

“Having spent a great deal of my career within the international markets I believe that I can bring that experience to the company at a time when the market continues to meet the needs of businesses which are driving globalisation.”

The efficient use of capital is what our clients are seeking to achieve and we need to be in a position to help them do so. There is also a need to deliver a detailed prospect on the risks they face and the steps they need to take to mitigate those risks.

Mr Moczarski spent 14 years with insurance group  AIG/AIU  before joining MMC 18 years ago performing a variety of role which have seen him posted to a number of locations across the world.

Indeed beside his recent visit to Japan Mr Moczarski has first hand knowledge of the  effects that natural disaster can have on a country as he splits his time between the United States and his family home in Chile.

Ongoing globalisation is a trend recognised by Mr Moczarski and he acknowledges  the need for the firm to continue to expand its geographic footprint as the primary insurance markets develop across the world.

“Asia is clearly a region where there is growth in terms of the domestic economies and the primary insurance market which leads to a need for reinsurance support, “he explains. “However it would be wrong to single out Asia and other regions such as Latin America are also developing and creating attractive opportunities for reinsurance markets.

“Clients will have a need for ever more innovative ways in which to deal with the opportunities and challenges they face both now and in the future. I think our role will go beyond the advice and understanding of the underwriting demands our client face. There is a need for a real partnership approach and one which the relationship between the company and the client goes beyond the transactional needs.”

“I have been in the business for 30 years and I have been handed a company which is humming along very well. It has been delivering great results and improving quarter by quarter driven by a great team.”

“It is all about the transparency we can deliver to our clients as their reinsurance broker and working towards the delivery of advice, expertise and tools that our rivals are unable to do.

“It is also about capital allocation. It is about pooling our capital and coming up with a better offering.

“What we are seeing following the losses of recent months is that risk managers are now being elected on to the risk committees and having greater access to the company’s board and what we are doing is helping with that transition.”

He said the events of the past year has illustrated quite clearly that underwriters and risk managers have to face the fact that what had deemed to be an impossible scenario was now all too real.

“The fact is that however hard you try you cannot identify every risk or weakness your business has and therefore you need to have a plan to put into action when things happen, as they eventually will,” he says. “Things happen and if you do not have a plan then the result is paralysis.”