Florence Bindelle

With a successful Seminar and our 40th anniversary celebrations behind us, FERMA has turned its attention to the projects which our European Risk and Insurance Report and Risk Management Benchmarking Survey show us are the priorities for our members.

At the top of our agenda is Certification. The report demonstrates that there is a great need for this qualification, and we are now finalizing the implementation timeline.

This is the first time that we have published the European Risk and Insurance Report, and the format and outreach are excellent. The survey identified key EU matters for our members, and those findings will be a source of guidance for our actions in the regulatory field.

On the Seminar, the feedback we received was very good to excellent. It is interesting that repeat attendance was more than 60% with nearly 40% attending their first seminar. A valuable innovation was the risk managers’ roundtable discussions. Some of the reports from the roundtables are now available on our website, and others are coming soon. Our presence on the communication side has never been so high, and we received extensive press coverage in Europe and North America for the Seminar, the European Risk and Insurance Report, and our 40th anniversary.

We have also to take account the excellence of the presidents’ summit before the formal opening of the Seminar, which gathered members, stakeholders and experts for a discussion on the topical issue of data protection. We will explore extending such platforms in future.

The next driving force is the Forum on 4-7 October 2015 in Venice. The Forum committee has defined the topics and innovations in the format. Its aim is to continue with the topical discussions at the Seminar, while always raising the level of quality. We are also considering our future guidance to risk and audit committees in line with the European Commission’s agenda.

December’s board meeting will vote on FERMA’s 2015 budget and approve the 2015 strategic plan, including key priorities. It will also elect a deputy president. Pierre Sonigo will retire as secretary general and Fernand De Winter as treasurer, and the board will elect their replacements while thanking them for their enormous contribution to FERMA.

Later in December, we will hold a communication meeting to review our press, social media and website presence in 2014 and refine our strategy for 2015. We will follow up with a meeting with the communication officers of some of our larger members to develop a European plan and offer support to our members in raising their profiles.

I wish you all a happy holiday and joyful new year. We hope to see you at our offices in Brussels or at the Forum in Venice.