Evolving profile of Allianz Risk Consultants

It’s a wide range of expertise indeed: It’s mechanical engineers, previous oil tanker captains, cyber defence specialists or sustainability consultants working in Allianz Risk Consulting to support customers to better understand and manage risks and prevent losses to happen.

Michele Williams: Whenever you ask someone about the value that Allianz Risk Consulting brings, their first answer is typically “expertise”. Indeed, we have a tremendous amount of technical expertise and know-how in our ARC team across AGCS’s lines of business, and supporting many and diverse industry types, including areas like renewable energy, cyber or the ever more relevant ESG risks. We are a truly global team consisting of 260 risk consultants across all our six regions, and this combined with our LoB expertise also means we can leverage global hubs of expertise to support clients anywhere in the world, creating both efficiency and flexibility.

In a world which is fast-changing and volatile we constantly need to update our knowledge and expertise and adapt quickly to changing needs. We need to be aware of and react to both existing and emerging trends, so we are in a good position to respond to future challenges and opportunities. Our ambition is to be able to support our clients on key risk trends before they have asked the question or even identified an issue.

Michele Williams: In a nutshell, we are active across three core areas: Advising underwriting on the quality of our clients from a risk perspective through reviews, engineering surveys working closely with our clients; additional consulting advice and services to other teams across the business, and by providing external support and services to clients and brokers. As working effectively across all our lines of business is absolutely crucial, we are continually looking for ways to collaborate and share expertise to ensure the flexibility and technical expertise that our clients deserve. 

Furthermore, to drive our future focused approach, we have a digital transformation team focusing on digital solutions to support clients and underwriting across many parts of the risk landscape. We have some great digital solutions built in collaboration with underwriting that are already providing a positive impact on a daily basis, and some great training and support modules designed to help our clients across different areas of risk. Last but not least, we are looking to widen our service offering for customers, in particular in the area of climate resilience services to help clients to better understand their exposures to extreme weather and disaster hazards in order to protect their sites effectively.

Michele Williams: We further evolved our set-up to identify and evaluate emerging risks trends in a more systematic way and have established a dedicated team to optimize solutions and delivery. We’d like to ensure that our core focus is on risks trends that really matter to both our underwriters and clients. In 2023, we have identified six initial emerging risk topics, many of which are connected to the net zero transformation and low-carbon energy growth. For example, we investigate risks and opportunities of sustainable materials such as wood mass timber in construction, the impact of the wider adoption of lithium-ion batteries across the industry and energy storage infrastructure. The growing hydrogen industry is another key area for us where we can add value for our clients and underwriting. 

Michele Williams: Collecting customer feedback has been important to us for a number of years as this gives us an opportunity to understand what we do well and how we can improve, and act instantly to address the feedback, rather than wait for the next renewal. ‘Voice of the Customer’ is the next evolution of this customer feedback journey, which we are continually looking to improve. 

As an example, our customers are telling us they value our technical expertise and risk mitigation. In addition, they value our openness and the partnership they have with us, as well as our adaptability and our capability to understand their business and deliver services that are targeted to that. This type of feedback is hugely valuable, in that we can then ensure that we are focussing on the right topics and drive concrete actions to address any concerns and further evolve our offering.

Michele Williams: As with the underwriting profession, the profile of a risk consultant is changing in response to the fast-changing risk environment. Our role will always be focussed on expertise and the insurance and risk management needs of our clients. However, the current skill set will need to be enhanced and applied in new and different ways to support a more cross-functional and interdisciplinary approach. In future, risk consultants will need to embrace a broader set of skills and capabilities: They will be a bit of everything – a data scientist, remote surveyor, risk trend researcher, resilience service provider or ESG consultant. Upskilling the team and broadening our capabilities is therefore a key priority for ARC to ensure we are ready for these future opportunities. 

Michele Williams: Our delivery model, both now and looking into the future, has a multi-factor approach, with the expertise of our own team right at the center. There are huge opportunities in working in a truly collaborative approach, be that with other Allianz Group OEs, partnerships with external third parties, or offshore resources all ensuring we have the support in place that our clients effectively.

Against this backdrop, the Integrated Commercial strategy is an excellent opportunity for us to come together with our risk engineering colleagues from Allianz OEs across the globe, to share our expertise and learn from each other. We have always looked for opportunities to collaborate with our risk engineering colleagues in the other OEs, but through this strategy, we are in a position to create a unique and effective global team to support both AGCS’s Large-Corporate and the Mid Corporate business of Allianz OEs and benefit from synergies and a combined expertise across all business sectors.

The risk management challenges of mid-sized businesses are quite different to those of large multinational corporations, for example, in the Mid Corp segment, they deal with much higher volume of clients, and as a result surveys and risk engineering services. However, the bottom line is that combined we have a diverse and knowledgeable network across the world that we can tap into. By effectively bringing the expertise and different perspectives of the different teams, we have a great opportunity and we can offer the market a comprehensive and consistent service offering across the full spectrum of the Commercial segment. 

Michele Williams: This is, and will always be part of the ARC strategy, but we must focus on what we do best. As I said earlier, this means creating value both within Allianz and for our clients, and we want to embrace every opportunity to do this whether it is by building our own internal resources via expanding our focus or upskilling our team, or by partnering with other Allianz teams or external service companies and offering our clients a comprehensive and fully aligned approach. Our focus is on finding areas where there is demand and we can deliver a true value add. As an example, we are currently developing a climate risk and resilience solution for our Property clients which will help them map current and future climate change related perils in order to take appropriate mitigation action for their exposed sites and facilities. 

Michele Williams: Stressed supply chains, cyber-attacks, geopolitical tensions and social unrest – there are many disruptive scenarios for companies today and they are likely to increase further. To overcome crises, it’s all about becoming more resilient – and effective risk management is key both on a strategic and operational level. This requires a very agile approach focussed on continuous improvement. Best practices emerge if you continuously test and evolve your plans for likely scenarios and apply what you have learned from the events of the past few years, such as the pandemic or cyber incidents, that many companies have already experienced. Risk managers play an important role in their companies to highlight ‘evergreen’ risks such as fire and explosion but also flag new trends which are not yet on a companies’ radar. As experts dealing with corporate risk 24/7, we are standing by to support them.