Responding to new market dynamics - Ernst & Young - South Africa

How do you manage through the recession and position your company for growth? Our insurance representatives and other sector leaders conducted over 1500 client meetings and identified some overarching themes. Sound risk management strategies, an extended market reach and improved business model could mean the difference between surviving and thriving.

In January 2009, Ernst & Young published Opportunities in Adversity, where we looked at how management was dealing with the implications of the downturn, and gauged the outlook for the future. In the past six months, we have carried out interviews with 125 financial services organisations with revenues in excess of US$100 million, as part of a broader follow-up survey of some 30,000 managers across industries worldwide. The financial services findings (pdf, 4.9mb)  inform our following  assessment of the ways in which banks, asset managers and insurance institutions are reshaping and shoring up their businesses today.

Global financial market events have created unprecedented challenges for the insurance industry. Risks are inherent in every forward-looking business decision and therefore, successful risk management should be an integral part of an organisation’s strategy and operations. The economic downturn has taught us that the most important risks are the ones we did not see or anticipate. Read the top 10 risks most likely to affect the insurance sector during 2009 (pdf, 583kb).