Member in the spotlight Insurety

An interview with Donny Gouveia, Chief Executive Officer at Insurety

Lombard Guarantee has been a long-standing member of ICISA. However, since Lombard Guarantee joined Insurety, now the alliance becomes the representative within ICISA. In the next paragraphs, Donny Gouveia, Chief Executive Director at Insurety, answered the questions we had about Insurety.

Insurety has a presence across Australasian, African and Nordic surety markets. What are the key similarities and differences that you note across these locations and what is it like to work with such a diverse team?

The product is obviously similar although we range from issuing unconditional on demand guarantees in Australia to surety guarantees in the Nordics. Our approach and underwriting methodologies are consistently applied and are based on zero loss underwriting principals. We have common counterparties in the various markets, and we aim to provide them with facilities in the various markets we operate in.

The markets and operating environments are very different with more underwriting emphasis on the political environments when assessing risks in Africa when compared to more stable economies in Europe and Australia. If you ignore local in-country cultures, the various teams are not as diverse as you may think. People and corporate culture are high on our agenda and we recruit for cultural fit first and ahead of skill. Insurety is an alliance of specialist surety teams across 3 continents – Australia, Africa and Europe. The members of the Alliance are Assetinsure, Lombard Guarantee and Nordic Guarantee. Insurety offers standard and customised insurance solutions developed to assist clients in the construction, infrastructure, engineering, transport, mining and energy sectors in our respective regions of operation.

What are the challenges, as well as the benefits of being part of an organisation with a global outlook?

Our main challenges are around people and ensuring that we have a common corporate culture in all of our offices while still maintaining any local cultures. Our corporate culture or ‘the way we do things around here’ is an important aspect of our underwriting methodology, in that we give our underwriters mandates to make decisions but to also take accountability for the decisions they make. We are aiming to expand into other geographies thus create opportunities for our people while at the same time growing and creating diversification for our stakeholders.

While Covid-19 still lingers, we seem to be at the tailend of the pandemic, but wider issues in supply chains, rising inflation and geopolitical instability are emerging - how are you preparing for the post-pandemic world? Coming from smaller or emerging surety markets, is ICISA membership important - and what can ICISA do to better support members in similar markets?

Over the years we have used the ICISA membership to build networks with other insurers and have also enjoyed the opportunity to engage with the reinsurance market. The various, in person, ICISA meetings are great in getting everyone together in one location to enjoy meeting up with old friends and colleagues in an informal environment.

The world is fast moving and just when you get your head around a pandemic then war erupts in Europe and you need to consider, not only new risks but also new market opportunities. We view market changes and instability as opportunities, as much as new potential risks. We are continually investing in systems and data analytics that enable us to assess changing market conditions and to stress test the current risk we have under different scenarios.