Ep184 Ekhosuehi Iyahen Secretary General of the IDF: Putting valuable insurance knowledge to good use

Often when we go to a conference a CEO will pop up to give us an inspiring pep talk about how nothing good in the world happens without insurance and how our industry is one with a genuinely useful moral purpose that has a positive effect on everything that it touches.

We may nod along and then think little more of it.

But today’s guest is living proof that those CEOs are right to feel inspired.

That’s because Ekhosuehi Iyahen, Secretary General at the Insurance Development Forum’s (IDF) job is to harness the strong purpose of insurance to good effect in some of the countries in the world that can most benefit from it.

Insurance is a business that brings together a vast array of different skills from science and engineering to statistics and finance all to try and prevent bad things from happening and to fix them when they do.

But our skills and experience around prevention and risk mitigation are often lacking in developing countries that haven’t yet grown sophisticated financial systems and that’s where the IDF comes in, acting as a convener between the insurance industry, the aid community and international sovereign governments and local authorities on the ground.

For instance how does a developing country know where to site its critical infrastructure if its country hasn’t been properly modelled for natural hazards?

Ekhosuehi is a really interesting and intelligent guest. She’s also a very rare example of an academic of high intellect who has moved from the world of ideas to one of putting theory in practice on the ground.

There are a lot of misconceptions to dispel – the first of which is the idea that what the IDF is doing is a form of charity. Nothing could be further from the truth – from this encounter you’ll learn very quickly that the IDF’s work is all about developing the vast new insurance markets of the future – and that these are long-term profitable commercial opportunities that will give rise to even bigger opportunities as they take hold.

So listen on – if you have ever felt disillusioned at work and wondered whether what you do makes a difference, what you are about to hear should put a spring in your step.

NOTES

The IDF’s website is here:
https://www.insdevforum.org/

Get in touch via email: info@insdevforum.org

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/insdevforum/

X (formerly Twitter): @InsDevForum

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