View from the top: Looking for opportunities

While QBE's recent survey of UK SMEs showed that many believe it will be two years before recessionary pressures recede, I was impressed that 44% of businesses believe they are more competitive and 40% are fitter and leaner as a result of the recession. These upbeat findings reflect my own experience of businesses looking for new markets and locations in which to grow.

So, as clients are looking to new opportunities, insurers should be listening carefully and trying to understand their needs as business models change and evolve. This means going beyond basic product design or a standard relationship, and looking at new ways to design and develop insurance products that provide high-quality service and assist clients in seizing growth opportunities.

Seeking new business often means expanding horizons beyond home to international exporting and outsourcing markets. While this offers opportunities, it also brings a wide variety of new risks. Just as our clients are forging ahead, insurers also need to take the initiative and develop insurance and risk management products that allow clients to expand, while maintaining acceptable levels of risk.

To date, the focus of insurers has been on offering comprehensive international insurance products for large multinationals that have substantial risk management teams in place to manage the hazards that operating internationally brings.

I believe that insurers now need to offer a responsive on-the-ground multinational offering that can meet the needs of all our clients — regardless of their size. And go further in helping them to improve risk management by developing their own internal structure and culture.

To achieve this fully we must begin to understand clients' business needs now — but also look ahead as they grow — to ensure we have the in-house expertise and sufficient flexibility to anticipate what might come next.

The alternative is that insurers are constantly playing catch up and potentially inhibiting clients' ability to diversify their business without taking on unnecessary risk. Failing to respond to this challenge could result in turning a genuine opportunity into a needless threat.

Ash Bathia, managing director, casualty and motor, QBE Europe