October 2021 | The ICISA INSIDER
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Interview
Focusing on the future Interview with Kay Scholz During the last Annual General meeting of ICISA, the ICISA membership elected their new President of the association. Back then, Kay Scholz (R + V Re) was elected President of ICISA. Kay Scholz has been a member of the Management committee and Vice President of ICISA since 2018. His election marks also the first nomination and election of a Reinsurer as President of ICISA. We had the occasion to ask him some questions about his plans and priorities for the next months. In the upcoming pages you can read his answers to these questions.
What made you want to accept the nomination of, previously Vice-President and the current President position?
You are the first Reinsurer elected as a President of ICISA. What do you think that are the main challenges and opportunities in this?
When I was asked three and a half years ago by the former president Jos Kroon to become ICISA’s next Vice President, there was no doubt to take that role. Since R+V became an ICISA member, my company and myself received many benefits from this membership. I thought it is valuable and necessary to give something back now. I always thought that an ICISA member is expected to show its commitment to the organization by taking a membership in one of the committees or contribute to one of ICISA’s larger projects like e.g. the latest LGD Study. The three years were insightful, productive and – along the COVID19 situation – kept a certain challenge for the ICISA Management team.
Firstly, since I visited the official ICISA meetings, the group of reinsurers has always played a substantial role for the worldwide Credit and Surety Industry. Without reinsurers, it had been difficult to provide the requested insurance capacity for our lines of business in the past. Therefore, it is appreciated that since 2003 reinsurers were fully admitted members within ICISA. It is a recognition of the importance of reinsurers in our industry that a reinsurer’s representative had been asked to take the President’s role. This provides the chance for the president to make sure that insurance and reinsurance members always cooperate together in respect of ICISA matters.
We kicked off various initiatives. Some of these still need to be finished or to be intensified. This means within the two years in my role as president I put a substantial part of my resource to ICISA projects when needed. This should be seen as my contribution alone, but rather, the member company’s contribution to make ICISA an organization ready for its future.
“The smaller number of reinsurance players compared to their insurers’ equivalents offers the ability for ICISA to gain a concentrated feedback on worldwide market developments in a short period of time, which is key in these days.” From a personal perspective, I am happy to be the first reinsurer in this function, of course. It is an honor but also a challenge. Reinsurers might see the markets from a slightly different perspective as they usually underwrite various lines of business on a worldwide basis.
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