Sustainability

As the world moves to a low carbon economy, energy from wind and solar is increasingly important in keeping the world’s lights on. However, these projects are susceptible to damage by hailstorms, lightning strikes, wildfires, and mechanical failures. Oliver’s work plays a crucial part in helping these renewable energy developers to protect their projects across the globe. “In my opinion solar risks are the most interesting. Solar technology itself is not complicated, but there is an array of issues that have to be taken care of to make the projects work.”

After leaving school, Oliver secured placements at insurer Liberty and broker Howden, which made him realise that working in the specialty insurance market was for him. An apprenticeship at insurer Chaucer led to Oliver securing a full-time role at AXIS as an Underwriting Assistant in the Renewable Energy team. Nearly three years on, he now works as an Assistant Underwriter mainly reviewing North American renewable energy risks that are based on dry land.

“It’s really motivating to know my work is helping the planet towards a cleaner future,” says Oliver. “The most interesting thing about being involved in insurance for renewable energy is the subtle difference between the technologies and varied weather conditions all over the world. With London being the global hub for specialty insurance you get to see the full array of risks that can occur worldwide, which I find fascinating.”

“As well as the challenges of understanding the projects that you work with and the sorts of risks that they face, specialty insurance is really based on both expertise and building strong relationships,” adds Oliver. “At AXIS our business comes to us through a broker, so it is important to develop long-term partnerships, which can often turn into social friendships, especially in renewables, which is still deemed a relatively new sector.” As renewable energy technology develops and the risks become more complex, London is the place where project owners come to for support to help navigate those risks and to protect the viability of their projects.

Elizabeth left the university in 2016, having finished her MA in History at Leicester, and had worked in in a variety of part-time jobs but was working with a removal company when she discovered insurance. “In the removals business there is inevitably damage to goods from time to time and people want to claim on insurance. But what fascinated me was how much investigation and analysis it took – piecing together the jigsaw of information – what happened, who was responsible and what was needed to make it better. I was really interested”.

She joined BMS, a specialty insurance broker, in 2022 to work in claims. “This is what really matters” she says. “If a hurricane hits, or something else terrible happens, then we are dealing with all the after effects. These are real people and real lives that we are supporting. We, the claims service, are the product that people have actually been paying for with their insurance payments”.

So what makes a good claims person? Elizabeth explains “This is a financial service so you need to comfortable with numbers but you don’t need to be a maths whizz. You do need to be a good communicator – both in picking out key bits of information but also communicating the important information to clients and colleagues. But both the technical and softer skills are things you learn as you go along”. Being comfortable with IT and happy on the phone are also useful.

As a history student, Elizabeth particularly appreciates the deep roots that specialty insurance has in London. With the first businesses being created over 350 years ago, the London insurance market has a history like no other. “London is the place to work in our sector” says Elizabeth. “Everyone knows everyone and there is the most amazing opportunity to meet people. For example, with a complicated risk, I might have to deal with six or seven insurers – because they spread the risk between them so no-one loses too much money. But they might be different for each risk – so it is a spider’s web of connections in a good way and you learn from all of them”.

Having grown up in Pakistan, Raza Hassan is all too familiar with the concept of load shedding – electricity suppliers cutting power in order to reduce demand on power generation plants. That awareness of the potentially unreliable nature of electricity supply led to a growing interest in the energy sector and a career as an energy insurance broker.

Having dropped out of university, Raza sought a role in which a degree was not a necessity. Accounting and air traffic control were both high on his list but then he found insurance. “Insurance sounded cool,” Raza remembers. “I did some research, found out about Lloyd’s of London and the City and got a first job working for a car insurance operation in Southampton. My funds had dried up so I needed to earn.”

Having settled into his new role, Raza set about contacting underwriters in the London insurance market. This led to a role as an underwriting assistant with insurer Munich Re looking at the risks of extracting oil and gas from the ground.

Today, Raza is a broker focusing on the renewable energy sector with broking firm Ed. “Working in renewables means that I’m predominantly involved with wind and solar energy as well as battery energy storage,” he explains. “My clients tend to be independent energy companies buildng new facilities and solar farms. They depend on loans from banks so need insurance to protect their investment.”

For Raza, the prospect of working in the energy sector as it under goes the transition to cleaner forms of power is an exciting one. “It’s a really dynamic space at the moment,” he says. “The risks are changing, the tech is changing and the scale of projects is increasing. Insurance protection needs to be more specific and more bespoke.

“Overall, we’re in a world in which the renewable energy sector is still new and changing. It’s where the oil and gas sectors were 20–30 years ago – and I get to be on the front line of how the market is developing.”

With climate change a reality for everyone, our ability to understand the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters are vital to helping populations to adapt and survive. Guy’s background in Geography and Environmental Hazards gave him a great base as a catastrophe risk analyst, working to model the risks of the future.

Guy has worked as an analyst with insurer Munich Re since 2015 – with a brief foray into the NHS during the global pandemic. “Every time a hurricane hits or a community gets flooded it adds to what we know about how often these types of catastrophes occur and the cost of the damage they do” explained Guy. “By using the data over a specific timeframe we can get a grip on what the costs might be, and then work out the price we should be charging to protect clients against this risk”.

Guy’s passion for geography and understanding the how different natural occurrences are linked really helps in thinking about risks. “Yes, this is about analysis, but you don’t have to be a tech or maths whizz” explains Guy. “One of the key things in this job is explaining the analysis to my colleagues, making it understandable and packaging it in a way that means they can make a fast decision off the back of it. That is a different but equally important skill”.

As the world sees more frequent and more serious weather patterns from climate change – as well as its consequences like wildfires and flooding, Guy needs to make sure his models keep up to date with these unprecedented events. “We need to make sure the models are doing what we expect, and that means ensuring we adapt as the world changes”.

It is this sense of dynamism that Guys loves about the London insurance market. “Something is always happening, so many things all around the world affect what we do every day. You feel you are totally in tune with news agenda and real life. There is nothing else like it anywhere in financial services”.