Insights
AI is no longer only a tool insurers use. It is rapidly becoming a risk insurers underwrite — and most of the policy wordings in force today were never designed to think about it. The next two underwriting cycles will be defined by how insurers draw the boundary between affirmative AI cover and silent AI exposure.
ESG reporting in South Africa moved from optional to mandatory in 2025. Insurer ESG reporting is climate-risk reporting in a different filing — and the actuarial team should own it.
Climate risk modelling is becoming actuarial work, not specialist climate-science work. The frameworks borrow from cat modelling; the disciplines borrow from reserving. A shift worth naming.
The 2024 and 2025 catastrophe seasons changed the actuarial maths. A practitioner's view of what is happening to insurance premiums and cover in Southern Africa, and why.
The biggest unmanaged actuarial risk in most insurers today is no longer in the model. It is in the unversioned spreadsheets that adjust the model's outputs, and the reporting packs that re-aggregate them.
