This year we offered a complimentary place at our conference to the student who attained the highest score in our IUMI examinations. Patrick Eckstein from Munich Re passed with distinction (95.56%) and so we were delighted to invite him to Edinburgh as our guest. We hope to repeat this offer in Berlin next year – more details to follow. In the meantime, Patrick shares his experience of the conference:
Conferences add value through two elements: people & insights.
From the people perspective there is no conference like IUMI in the marine insurance world for bringing together delegates and participants from local and international markets; and connecting seasoned veterans with first timers, like myself.
While this IUMI conference was attended by the highest number ever, it also had the highest number of first timers – about a third of overall participants. This was very visible at the first timers’ reception where I was hoping to see some familiar faces, instead I got to meet many new colleagues.
For me, the conference was an excellent balance between connecting with clients and industry contacts I knew, and meeting and exchanging with new colleagues across markets and across the insurance value chain. However, with over 700 delegates it wasn’t always easy to keep track of who was around and to find the people I was looking for. As such it came in quite handy, that, as a proud gold sponsor, Munich Re had a prominent booth – including our own barista – with delegates constantly stopping by.
The second major appeal of any conference are the insights you gain from the presentations and exchanges. The IUMI conference is structured around workshops, which were either topical or line of business specific. Unsurprisingly there were a few recurring themes such as fire safety around electric vehicle batteries, supply chain disruptions following the war in Ukraine and sustainability aspects. I was positively surprised about the actuality of the topics presented and took away a number of learning points and discovered areas that I want to investigate further.
I should also add that good conferences leave room for fun and time for building personal connections, which was very much the case here.
Edinburgh was a lovely location to host the conference at (this was my first trip to Scotland’s capital city - and I will be back!). We had great opening and closing events (and a very fun Munich Re event in between). Luckily the organisers had very thoughtfully provided delegates with umbrellas, which were put to good use! And I even received a pair of IUMI 2023 socks as a souvenir!
I am grateful to IUMI for inviting me to this year’s conference in Edinburgh and am very much looking forward to joining future events – including the 150th anniversary conference in Berlin in 2024!