It’s that time of the year again and the puck has been dropped for IUMI’s annual conference in Toronto, Canada. Today is the first official day of the renowned event and the Fairmont Royal York Hotel – this year’s beautiful venue - is filled with marine insurers from all over the world. Coincidentally Toronto is also hosting its annual film festival so you might just see George Clooney or Jennifer Lopez across the bar.

This year’s conference theme “Confronting the chaos for a sustainable future?” is a somewhat controversial one and was carefully selected to encourage and provoke a healthy debate at the conference. It is fair to say that the market has been difficult for a while, so we are looking forward to putting our heads together and discussing possible solutions. Anticipation is already building for the presentations tomorrow. We will begin with the opening session, followed by the Facts & Figures workshop that showcases the results and figures for the 2018 underwriting year and close with the Cargo workshop – a full day ahead.

IUMI is no stranger to Canada, our last visit was just 11 years ago in Vancouver, and we are delighted to be back. The Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto offers the perfect space to mark this year’s affair, with beautiful chandeliers, Steinway pianos and exquisite hallways to get lost in. The grand hotel is truly remarkable with over 1,300 rooms and is like a maze to navigate through.

We have over 500 delegates attending this year’s event and they are all busily getting ready for the traditional opening ceremony tonight. Our kind hosts, the CBMU (Canadian Board of Marine Underwriters) have chosen a wonderful venue – the Hockey Hall of Fame – that is just a few minutes away by foot. Founded in 1943 to establish a memorial to those who have developed Canada’s great winter sport - ice hockey – we could not think of a more fitting location to formally begin our annual event. We look forward to welcoming you there and catching up over a glass of wine.

The puck has been dropped and the game is about to begin!