By Andrew Cave
In the first of a series of articles written by journalist Andrew Cave, the glamorous reinsurance Rendez-Vous is examined with Cave asking "why Monte-Carlo?"
It’s that time of year again. The pubs are strangely emptier while reservations in the classier restaurants are suddenly possible at short notice.
That’s as long as you’re in Leadenhall Street, of course. Over the Cote d’Azur in Monaco, brokers and underwriters queue for Eu5 cups of coffee, wrestle to get to the bar at the evening receptions and can’t move for reinsurers, whether they be from Munich, Montpellier or Moscow.
It’s one of the delicious little ironies of the insurance market. For 51 weeks a year, London’s commercial insurers have to be offered gold-plated incentives to step more than five minutes away from Lime Street during working hours. For the remaining week, they’re a whole nation away.
If you want to find a leading broker or underwriter this week, there’s a good chance he or she will be in the Monte Carlo Casino rather than the Lloyd’s tower. And they don’t even normally have the excuse of going off to watch the rugby.
Rendez-Vous de Septembre, the reinsurance industry’s annual boondoggle, is under way again. The question really is why.
Every year since 1957, the major players in the world reinsurance market have gathered in this city more renowned for gambling and the Monte Carlo Rally.
Ostensibly reinsurers, insurers, brokers, lawyers, bankers, accounting and rating companies and specialist journalists come to discuss issues that concern the market and to kickstart the annual negotiation process prior to the renewal of reinsurance treaties.
This is an important business. As many reinsurance contracts are automatically renewed on the 31st of December, possible cancellation of these contracts must be announced by the end of September. In theory, the event also encourages high level contacts which can lead to strategic alliances.
In practice, it’s rare to meet anyone who remembers actually doing any business in Monte Carlo. The serious money gets talked about in earnest a bit later in the year, across the Alps and the Rhine in Baden Baden.
Rendez-vous is a strange event, not so much a conference – there are hardly any speeches –as an excuse to turn up to socialise like a girl with an old-fashioned dancecard.
It’s questionable, however, whether the reinsurance community needs to go away to become sociable.
There are plenty of coffee shops near the Lloyd’s trading floor, which of course was one itself a few hundred years ago. And in this electronic age, couldn’t much of this bonhomie be conducted over emails, text messages and blogs?
Then there’s the issue of why the meeting place is always Monte-Carlo - apart from the fact that it’s perfect if you like hanging around in Ralph Lauren polo shirts and chinos, showing off your Ferrari or latest Bentley or partying on yachts.
The website of the event, run by an organising committee with representatives from 15 nations and always presided over by the chairman of the Assurances Générales de France, does its best to come up with some reasons.
Firstly, Monte-Carlo is a neutral country with no local insurance company. Then, there are the excellent hotels all near each other so insurers can walk to most appointments.
Never mind the fact that rooms start at about Eu650 in the Hotel de Paris, where you’ve got to book a year in advance if you want one of the Eu3,500 suites with a good view.
Moreover, Nice international airport is a mere helicopter ride away – why go by taxi when it’s all on expenses?
Finally, the principality is one of the safest areas in the world – just as well when some of the world’s biggest financial risk-takers are in town.
But here’s another reason why we’re rendez-vousing in Monte Carlo, not Morecambe. The conference is managed jointly by the Rendez-Vous de Septembre Secretariat and the Direction du Tourisme et des Congrès de Monaco.
After all, with 2,500 professionals from 80 countries converging at the same time, it’s the principality’s second biggest annual event after the Monaco Grand Prix - and probably more lucrative as Formula One fans generally come for the day, sleep well out of town and bring their own baguettes.
So long live the Monte Carlo Rendez-vous. If it didn’t happen here, it probably wouldn’t happen at all but brokers get to compete with each other as to who can host the most lavish parties.
With any luck, all attendees also get a suntan, a sprinkling of new contacts and bragging rights over dinner for managing more 30-minute meetings in a day than their counterparts.
London gets a rest and next week, the pubs and restaurants around Lime Street will be back to normal, with stressed insurers hard at work. There is, after all, an estimated $20bn of reinsurance renewal business to discuss.
