Torus practice leader (management and professional lines, Continental Europe) Mathieu Borneuf spoke to StrategicRISK at this year’s Amrae conference about the key risks affecting its clients

What are the top three risks for corporates in France?

Competitiveness;
Fraud – whether computerised, internal or external fraud;
Regulatory changes.

What are the three most worrying emerging risks for businesses?

Cyber is a risk that is getting a lot of attention from our clients.

Fraud has always been an issue but what we are seeing now is high tech causing new ways of perpetration.

Professional indemnity is not an emerging product in itself, but certainly technological innovation has resulted in the constant creation of new services and/or activities that need to be covered.

How are risk managers dealing with these risks?

Clients are very inquisitive on cyber coverage but fraud seems to be, as always, a bit overlooked, notwithstanding the exposure that all corporates face. If the market is still soft, clients also face a challenging time in the current economic environment and a lot will use terms improvements to save on overall costs rather than expand coverage under their insurance programmes.

How is Torus innovating to deal with the changing risk landscape?

Torus has probably one of the broadest underwriting appetites in PI. We also endeavour to be flexible and act as local as possible; a class may not fall within Torus’s appetite in one jurisdiction, but it may do in another, depending on clients’ requirements.

What do you enjoy most about the Amrae conference?

Meeting clients and brokers face to face; hearing about their needs and the challenges they face; telling them the Torus story.

Torus has a booth at Amrae again this year and our underwriting team will be present to meet with any brokers and clients who wish to meet us and/or find out more about Torus’s offering.