“Suretypedia” - Glossary of terms working group

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.

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. 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.

“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. 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. ICISA can gather, analyze and work with this broad range of industry related information enforcing to serve all their members by tailor-made initiatives. This is my challenge: always being the president of all members and not being biased by my “reinsurance genes”. Luckily, I am not alone - together with Benoît des Cressonieres as vice president and representing an insurer as well as the industry experts in the management committee who represent all categories of members, our governance structure will make sure that everyone’s voice is heard in the organization.

What is, in your opinion, the main value of ICISA for its members?

ICISA is an international organization for (re)insurance companies in the Credit and Surety industry – and to be more precise – the only international one for private corporates. This enables ICISA members to do networking across borders, markets, lines of business and even hierarchy levels. With the very high percentage of the market represented within it, ICISA membership grants an excellent access to the “behind the scenes” of the Trade Credit and Surety world within a strong ethical framework, which respects and maintains the competitive nature of our industry. This includes a whole network of expertise, solution providers, knowledge platforms, access to databases etc.

“With the very high percentage of the market represented within it, ICISA membership grants an excellent access to the “behind the scenes” of the Trade Credit and Surety world.”

The secretariat is always open for questions and it looks after the needs of its members. With the possibility of setting up a sub-committee or a working group, ICISA can grant a topic a broader or worldwide perspective. The pandemic related travel restrictions caused a huge deficit in personal exchange – exactly the core competence ICISA is wellknown for. Once we all can meet again in person at ICISA events, there will be no doubt about the benefit of an ICISA membership.

What are your main priorities for your mandate?

Richard Wulff, our Executive Director has named the “Pillars of Action” for the next two years very clearly: Advocacy, Public Relations and Cohesion. These topics define the frame for our actions, projects and initiatives. In particular, my first priority is to get the personal networking opportunity back. We are happy that the autumn meeting in Seville is taking place at the end of October.

Richard in his first months as Executive Director invested a large amount of his time to call members and asked what ICISA could do for them. During the summer, together with Richard, we went to Zurich to speak to some of our members in person. A nice opportunity to “reconnect” with members and a big success in respect of honest feedback from them. We still have some other destinations on the list but unfortunately, the pandemic still interferes with our plans.

At the same time, and this is the second priority, I want ICISA to become more sustainable. This is a challenge for the entire industry and ICISA should lead the way as a ‘good example’. ICISA itself wants to use resources in a responsibly way. We also try to implement processes for our members, which give them the ability to act in a sustainable way regarding all ICISA matters. The new meeting format (that will reduce travels abroad) and a mandatory sustainability concept from our meeting hosts are only two examples of this initiative.

The third priority is to (re)connect with other organizations in our industry. ICISA had good relations with e.g. PASA (Pan American Surety Association), SFAA (Surety and Fidelity Association of America) and many other. While in some instances, connections have grown due to shared lobbying activities; in others the pandemic has unfortunately reduced interaction, communication and cooperation. We need to address this, and to continue exchanging knowledge about markets and individual projects to learn from each other and to avoid redundancies within our organizations.