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April 21, 2025 13 mins

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In this episode of Energy Transition Talks, Peter Warren and Darren Rudd explore how insurance is evolving from a reactive safety net into a proactive partner for resilience in the Energy & Utilities sector. From real-time data to IoT-enabled risk mitigation, they dive into how cross-industry collaboration—especially between insurers and energy providers—can strengthen supply chains and better protect both businesses and citizens in a rapidly changing world. 

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Peter Warren (00:05):
Hello everyone and welcome again to another
installment on our podcastseries exploring how the energy
industry and utility industry isimpacted and interacts with
many other industries.
I'm going to kick it over toDarren to introduce himself and
then we'll kick this off.
Hi, darren.

Darren Rudd (00:21):
Hey, Peter, Nice to be with you again.
So I'm Darren Rudd and I leadthe insurance consulting team
over here in the UK.

Peter Warren (00:28):
That's great, darren.
And, as people have heard, onour previous podcast and maybe
I'll just summarize, in casethey missed it, the previous
ones we talked about a conceptcalled the citizen supply chain.
So everyone's familiar with thetraditional supply chain.
That's a product coming fromcompany A to company B to
eventually being delivered toyou as the consumer.

(00:49):
The citizen supply chain looksat that a little bit differently
, in the sense that we, aspeople living day to day in our
world, need a lot of differentsupply chains to have things
work.
So when we wake up in themorning and we turn the light
switch on, the electrical systemhas to be working.
If we were heating our houseovernight with natural gas, that
ecosystem had to be working.
As we move through and go toour fridge, the grocery stores

(01:11):
had to be working.
The people who built therefrigerator had to be working.
When we get into our car, weneed it to be working, and the
insurance companies lookingafter both our home and our car
have to be working and allinterplayed.
And today a lot of those thingsas well as we need health care,
fire and police.
A lot of those things areviewed very separately, but what

(01:35):
we're starting to do andunderstand here is as open data
starts to move forward, there'sa lot of opportunity for
organizations to team up, bothfor their personal requirements
as well as the benefits of thepeople they're interacting with
to provide better services, andthe insurance industry is one of
those ones that we sometimesdon't think about it often.
I just got my statement theother day from my insurer, so I
looked at it once and I signedit and that's kind of my

(01:56):
personal interaction.
But if I'm an organization, Ihave a lot more exposure to
things than just a one-timesignature, or at least I could
have a much better relationship.
So, darren, kicking it over toyou, what are your thoughts on
that and perspectives?

Darren Rudd (02:10):
Yeah, it's a really interesting point, peter, and I
think the way I think about it.
Insurance works at a couple ofdifferent levels.
So we often think aboutinsurance as a point solution
for my car, my house, mybusiness.
But when we look at the morecomplex insurance that's run, we
do provide cover for businessinterruption, which is much more

(02:30):
coming up to a level in termsof looking across how things are
interconnected.
I think traditional models areinsurance as a point solution to
solve individual, protectbusinesses from individual risks
.
Where I've seen a changeparticularly is we're starting
to move towards thinking aboutthose interconnected risks and I
think, as we get more dataflowing through the environments

(02:54):
, organisations, particularly onthe broker side, where they're
working very closely with therisk managers or big businesses,
they want to look at the wholerisk overall rather than just an
individual part of the overallrisk.
So I think it's thatinterconnectivity particularly
when we look at global supplychange and how just-in-time
delivery is impacted bydisruption across those the more

(03:15):
insurance can be involved inthat, but not just in the
reactive mode, but actuallyworking with the insureds to
work out where that riskpotentially looks different or
is moving over time.
I think it's really important.

Peter Warren (03:29):
And it was something we discussed on the
previous podcast with Helena andCharlie Wark.
It was that one of our clientswas telling us at one of our
leadership meetings they happento be Michelin that when he took
over the organization, supplychains were looked at every six
months, maybe even longer.
It just was one of those thingsthat they looked at because

(03:49):
they had to.
Now, the disruptions of thesupply chains, both geopolitical
as well as things like physicalpiracy and so on, means that
the supply chain is somethingthey look at weekly.
It's not something that theyare.
It's a constant monitoring ofwhere my products are moving
forward.
They had to put a lot ofpositions in there from a data
standpoint, but all of thoseshifts and disruptions both the

(04:12):
physical attacks on their supplychain as well as geopolitical
disruptions are all things thatimpact the insurance industry.
What's your views on that?

Darren Rudd (04:21):
It's really interesting in terms of how
insurers price.
So it's in the same way thatthe Michelin example is they've
gone from looking at theirsupply chains once every six
months down to every few weeks.
Insurers traditionally, becauseit's a pool of risk and they're
looking at the bigger pictureoverall rather than the
individual.
We're changing their rates onceevery year or once every nine

(04:43):
months.
With the technology shifts andthe data moving faster, that
ability to change rates andreact much faster to the
changing risk levels and down atthe individual insured as well
is forcing rates to change muchfaster.
Now that doesn't happeneverywhere and there's still
lots of complexity with theactuarial models and how things
are designed and shaped andrepriced and the understanding

(05:04):
of the risk.
And how things are designed andshaped and repriced and the
understanding of the risk, Ithink insurers are increasingly
going to move and reprice fasterand look at how the rates are
going to work alongside the waythat the businesses that they're
insuring are moving andreassessing their risk as well.
The challenge, though, is how doyou build that risk pricing
into that near real-timeposition on large, complex
businesses?
So you can do it in a car.

(05:25):
You've got an IoT telematicsdevice and that's fairly
straightforward, but the sheercomplexity of the number of
factors that have been taken inany under eye looking at that
would be raising their eyes atme.
I think if they're looking atthis saying you just can't take
all of that complexity into rateand price at the level.
But I think we've got to stepup to that challenge to work out
how that's going to happen,because everything's connected

(05:50):
in such a way that it wasn'teven four or five years ago.
It's changed much quicker thanthat.
So the challenge for theinsurers is how do we consume
and bring that data in toactually work and price
effectively?
And I think as well it comesback to not just pricing the
risk but look at how we canmitigate the risk and use the
insurance's wider view of anindividual within an industry,

(06:11):
because we're insuring multipleindividuals across that industry
and I think there's a differentway of looking at how we
mitigate and support society andthose wider connections through
insurance.

Peter Warren (06:23):
You use the word price effectively.
That doesn't mean increase theprice all the time.
I think there's a falseassumption that insurers just
want to raise the price.
They actually want to pricethings to reflect the actual
risk and if they have betterdata, they could understand this
.
And I know that we were talkingabout this as we prepped for
this call about how, if they hada better view of one risk, they
could perhaps drop your ratethere.

(06:44):
But perhaps companies arehaving exposure to risk that
they're not insuring that aninsurer could actually step up
and help them with and improvetheir business better.
An insurer could actually stepup and help them with and
improve their business better.
So what's your viewpoint ofexposing data and interacting
with insurance companies as apartner?

Darren Rudd (07:06):
Yeah, again, I get people's natural reactions when
they're most people'sinteraction with insurers with
car insurance or home insuranceand it always feels like the
prices are going up.
Most of the time, though, thoseprices are going up because the
cost of claims and replacementis going up.
Just the cost of everything is.
So it needs to reflect that.
Insurers want to be able toprice effectively.
Their whole models are based onthat, so they're not looking to

(07:26):
make excessive profits fromthat.
They're looking to make surethat they're able to react.
They've got certain, as aregulated industry, they have to
make sure that they're able toreact.
They've got certain, as aregulated industry, they have to
make sure that they've gotenough capital at the background
to support those claims thatcomes through.
And they've got adjusters andthey've got reinsurers looking
over the top of them sayingexplain to me how you've
assessed this risk and howyou've decided to price it that

(07:47):
way.
So the more information I thinkwe can share across industries,
the better able those actuariesare in terms of not just
looking backwards but lookingforwards as well.
That near real-time informationthat's flowing through helps
that pricing work much better.
Now we're a long way from doingthat in reality on complex
business insurance, but I'mseeing that in we're already

(08:08):
there with telematics at house,at least at the motor level
moving into house.
But we are moving intocommercial property risk, for
example, and managing water lossand those types of things with
active interventions through IoTdevices and monitoring.
So I think there's a mix ofit's not just about risk pricing
but risk mitigation and workingwith the businesses to better

(08:31):
manage and understand the riskas well.

Peter Warren (08:33):
It's a good one and, from a personal story
standpoint, I have installed awhole home water system.
It sits on the main valvecoming into my house and the
other day at two o'clock in themorning it turned the water off
automatically because itdetected what it refers to as a
micro leak.
So when I got up in the morningand I had some contractor work
done, so I looked at all thework and said no, it's not
leaking.

(08:53):
There Turned out to be a toiletvalve.
It was the old screw typeinstead of a ball valve, and I
guess the washer was given outand it was doing a slow drip.
So I was able to figure that out, but I could have also.
I installed that and thatcompany that I purchased this
unit from will give yousomething I could send to my
insurance company.
But it would have been betterfor my insurance company to

(09:15):
proactively say if you put oneof those in, I'll give you a
discounted rate, versus you toldme you put one in, I'll give
you a discounted rate.
Perhaps there could be moreintegration of that and perhaps
I wouldn't even mind themmonitoring it.
Maybe if I'm away and theycould tell me that you've got
this problem here.
How is IoT devices that's apersonal level Looking at that
moving forward?
You talk about it for an energycompany or anybody, any
manufacturer or producer.

Darren Rudd (09:41):
How do you see them getting closer with their
ranking of IoT devices?
So there's two challenges foran insurer.
Now my view from an IoT deviceis industry will implement IoT
and business level telematicsbecause it improves business and
they'll drive through on thatbecause it creates a better
business for them.
I think insurers need to buddyup and understand and guide

(10:01):
organizations on the additionaldata that they need that helps
them price and manage riskbetter.
The challenge for insurers whenthey take the lead on IoT and
I've seen this before,particularly when we move into
the examples that you've donethat at household If the insurer
invests today with you to giveyou that device and we do this
in the UK I've got my insurersgiving me a fairly clever,

(10:23):
simple device that looks at myincoming water.
It's not clever enough to switchit off, but it does tell me
when I've got a leak.
Someone's got to invest in thatupfront, but you may choose to
move the insurance the next yearand in the UK in particular,
personal insurance moves very,very fast in terms of people
moving around.
So they're not going to get themoney back from that investment
, particularly if it's ascomplex as something that can

(10:43):
shut the water off and monitorit.
No-transcript need back fromthe insurer's point of view

(11:21):
because there's slightdifferences in what they need to
see to manage that risk andprice better.

Peter Warren (11:26):
So, Darren, we're talking about supply chains and
ecosystems.
What's your viewpoint on those?

Darren Rudd (11:32):
I think it comes down to ecosystems build
resilience.
In the natural world, you know,the most resilient ecosystems
are those that are, you know,can adapt.
It costs, more particularlyfrom an economic point of view,
to be resilient, to build thoseresilient platforms in.
From an insurance point of view, we often have to step in when

(11:52):
those lower resilient ecosystemsbreak or those value chains
break down.
Um, I think if we're looking atthe way that insurance is a
societal good and I know noteverybody believes that, but you
know we're here to pick up thepieces and put stuff back I
think we do need to be lookingat how do we make our ecosystems
more resilient from thatcitizen point of view.

(12:14):
How do we bring that and stitchthat together?
So we're not thinking aboutpoint solutions on insurance or
backup positions, but how do weactually build that resilience
into the overall ecosystem?
And I think again, that onlycomes when we bring multiple
parties together the insurers,the energy partners, others to
really think about what do weneed to do to build back better.

Peter Warren (12:37):
That's brilliant.
Thanks very much.
If I gave you a minute tosummarize it, what would you
leave for our audience here as afinal thought?

Darren Rudd (12:44):
I'd say anybody, particularly on the business
side of it go and have aconversation with your risk
manager you will have one,particularly if you're a large
organization and talk to themabout where the biggest costs
are from an insuranceperspective at the moment,
particularly if you're lookingto make some change.
They may give you a slightlydifferent perspective in terms
of how you can take cost out ofyour business or mitigate the
risk better by engaging with arisk manager who will then be

(13:07):
working with the brokers and theinsurers.
That can provide thoseadditional insights.
So I think, think aboutinsurance even when you don't
want to really be thinking aboutinsurance, would be the way I'd
be looking at it.

Peter Warren (13:17):
So it's like supply chains, it's an everyday
thing now.

Darren Rudd (13:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And nothing happens withoutinsurance.
Rockets don't fly, ships don'tsail those type of things.
So we are always here,unfortunately, but we're here
for good.

Peter Warren (13:28):
Thanks very much, Darren, Appreciate it.
Have a great day Thanks.

Darren Rudd (13:30):
Peter.
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