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Marketreport the INSIDE LINE SPRING 2019 marketreport THE INSIDE LINE THE SILK ROAD Travelling new old routes EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS Is it just the weather, or climate change? CONTENTS CYBER RISKS THE SILK ROAD “The key promise of Travelling new old routes performance is the claims 4 16 management process” SUSTAINABLE FINANCE New challenges in sales 11 and investment FROM REIMBURSING COSTS TO A LIFE COMPANION “We’re bringing together the current megatrends of health 18 and digitalisation” EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS Is it just the weather, 12 or climate change? LEGAL INFORMATION Published by: Images: Deutsche Rückversicherung istockphoto.com©real444, Oliver Tjaden, istockphoto.com©hakule, Aktiengesellschaft Temuulen Batkhurel, shutterstock.com©zhu difeng, stock.adobe.com©THANIT, Hansaallee 177 picture-alliance.com©Jan Woitas, Konstantin Mennecke, 123rf.com©ppbig, 40549 Düsseldorf, Germany stock.adobe.com©kromkrathog, stock.adobe.com©DragonImages Edited by: Stephanie Embach-Stein, Anja Jöhring, Sven Klein, Andreas Meinhardt (responsible for contents), Jan Stepic Graphics + printing: bernauer-design.de Published in April 2019 marketreport | 3 Dear Readers, The first quarter of the new financial year is already behind us. It’s a good time to present the hot-off-the-press spring edition of our Deutsche Rück magazine marketreport. In this issue we have once again looked at interesting topics that are causing a stir in our industry at present, or will do so in the foreseeable future, and that we would like to discuss with you. In our lead article “Travelling new old routes”, our editorial team takes a trip along the Silk Road. These rediscovered trade routes between Europe and Asia offer business opportunities for the insurance sector along the way. Dr Wolfgang Eichert, head of the EU office of the Association of German Public Insurers in Brussels, discusses new challenges for insurers in sales and investment in his report on the European action plan “Sustainable Finance”. The hot, dry summer of 2018 in central Europe wasn’t the first time we all stopped to wonder whether it was just the weather or climate change. In his piece, Deutsche Rück meteorolo- gist Dr Matthias Klawa attempts to shed some light on the subject and explains, among other things, what insights the relatively new discipline of attribution research can provide. Our guest author Monika Lier deals in her article with the question of what exactly the key promise of performance of a cyber policy is. Dr Oliver Lamberty, head of department for fa- cultative liability, accident and motor insurance business at Deutsche Rück, provides her with the answers. Finally, in a double interview, Michael Rohde, my colleague on the Board of Executive Directors of Deutsche Rück, and Dr Harald Benzing, a member of the Management Board of the insurer Versicherungskammer in Munich, explain how the megatrends of health and digitalisation can be intelligently combined and what cooperation between primary insurers and reinsurers looks like when it works well. We hope this makes for a fascinating and informative read and look forward to discussing these issues with you in person! With best wishes Frank Schaar CEO Deutsche Rück 4 | marketreport THE SILK ROAD Travelling new old routes By Kristina Wollseifen, freelance financial journalist From Shanghai to Duisburg: the Chinese state is currently investing billions worldwide to build up new trade routes between Asia and Europe. The “New Silk Road” project will open up busi- ness opportunities for insurers. There’s no trace left of the hustle and bustle of Duis- spices, porcelain and tea. The journey across the burg station in Germany’s busy Ruhr area by the time Taklamakan Desert and over the Pamir Mountains the train pulls into Malaszewicze in Poland, shortly could take up to two years. Today, haulage firms are before crossing the border into Belarus. Kilometre increasingly often dispatching vehicles, textiles and after kilometre, the train driver steers the freight food by rail. Trains can complete this journey of over towards the Far East. Rows of containers painted in 10,000 kilometres in about two weeks. bright colours and labelled with Chinese characters form a long chain of steel. The train still has many The renaissance of the Silk Road: that’s what Xi thousands of kilometres of rail track to cover before Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, reaching its destination, the Chinese port city of promised more than five years ago when he set up Shanghai. the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). His aim was to revive land and sea routes between the continents The overland trade route linking Europe with Asia and between 65 countries, going far beyond the has been known for centuries as the Silk Road. In original course. From Shanghai at the easternmost days gone by, merchants would have travelled along tip of China, the routes lead through the Kazakh caravan tracks on camels, their luggage full of silk, Steppe or along the coasts of Africa to the city of marketreport | 5 Duisburg inland port, by its own account one of the most important logistics hubs in central Europe. THE SILK ROAD Over 20,000 ships and more than 25,000 trains are processed and several Travelling new old routes million containers hand- led here every year. Duisburg in the Ruhr area. Chinese money is being used to build new roads, bridges and cargo centres, modern ports, railway lines and power plants along the way. New markets along trade corridors The mega-project will extend and regenerate existing trade routes between China and countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe. “The expansion of the Silk Road will permanently change the trade in goods between Germany and China,” says Klaus-Gregor Hahn, in charge of central and eas- tern European markets at Deutsche Rück. These trade routes between Europe and the Far East will open up completely new sales markets, lower logistics costs, speed up the transportation of cargo, and thus also 6 | marketreport Moscow RUSSIA Rotterdam GERMANY Manzhouli Duisburg MONGOLIA Venice KAZAKHSTAN Almaty Bishkek Urumqi Istanbul Samarkand Horgos Erenhot Beijing Athens Tehran Dushanbe Lanzhou Xi´an Shanghai IRAN PAKISTAN CHINA Fuzhou Gwadar Kolkata Hanoi Quanzhou INDIA Guangzhou Zhanjiang Haikou DJIBOUTI Colombo Kuala Lumpur Northern rail route Nairobi Southern rail route KENYA Jakarta Sea route China’s long journey to the West: the new Silk Road on land and water. New ports are to be built in many African countries to expand sea routes. lead to an increase in demand for insurance for all New ports, power plants and industrial estates companies that send their goods on the long journey The BRI project is now even enshrined in the Chinese or are involved in transportation. Construction pro- constitution. According to the Chinese government, a jects and goods transported along the Silk Road must huge sum of the equivalent of USD 1,000 billion will be insured and also reinsured. go into infrastructure projects in connection with BRI. Over 100 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and China in particular has high hopes for the New Silk Latin America want to help China set up and expand Road. The main reason is that while economic growth the New Silk Road, which is what those who came up in the country, whose population exceeds 1 billion, with the idea were banking on. “The New Silk Road is still between 6 and 7 percent per year, it is tending adheres to the principles of openness, inclusivity and to fall. “The massive expansion of China’s own infra- benefits for all,” Mao Jingqiu, China’s former consul structure and production facilities has led to excess general in Munich, said recently at a conference on capacity,” says Jens Hildebrandt, Managing Director the Silk Road in Nuremberg. “The New Silk Road isn’t of the German Chamber of Commerce Abroad (AHK) a small private street owned by one party, it’s a wide in Beijing. “This surplus can be reduced only if road that’s being built by everyone together and will Chinese businesses are able to sell their goods and benefit everyone.” services abroad.” That’s exactly where the country’s rulers hope that the Silk Road will come in. A wel- One example of this is in Pakistan, where for five come additional benefit is that the state will gain years China has been working on linking the port in political and economic influence beyond its own Gwadar to China via roads, railway lines and pipe- borders. “China regards itself as a global economic lines. China has already built several power plants power,” Hildebrandt says. as part of this and plans to construct a dozen more marketreport | 7 facilities to generate electricity. The Chinese govern- Length of time taken by different means of ment has invested the equivalent of more than EUR transport to travel the New Silk Road: 50 billion in Pakistan. The state is also actively investing elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, several ports are currently being expanded with capital from China, while airports are springing up overnight. In Europe, the Chinese have turned a terminal in Piraeus, Greece, into one of the EU’s most state-of-the-art container ports. Chinese companies are building a 200-hectare industrial estate near the Belarusian capital of Minsk. “China seems to be Camel train promoting economic development in participating several thousand kilometres countries with its infrastructure investments,” Jens up to 2 years Hildebrandt says. “German companies can benefit from that too.” German SMEs will benefit The Germans represent a particularly important part of the New Silk Road. While China lies at one end of the trade route, Germany is at the other – giving it access to a unique infrastructure network for trans- porting goods towards the East and receiving goods coming from there.
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