W+K is delighted to announce the five finalists of the inaugural Wotton Kearney Turning Point competition.
The competition, which we launched in August, threw out a challenge to the insurance industry’s most creative and progressive thinkers to explore where the Property, Energy + Infrastructure market is going, including changes in industry and technology.
The submissions were judged by a panel including Peter Kelaher (Country President, Australia and New Zealand, Chubb), Fraser McLachlan (CEO and Founder, GCube Underwriting) and Adam Chylek (Partner and Leader of PE+I Group, Wotton Kearney).
We were very impressed by the high calibre of submissions and the breadth of issues they addressed. That made it difficult to settle on our five finalists. In the end, though, the issues they raised resonated strongly with the judging panel.
The finalists and the insights we will more deeply explore are:
| Finalist | Company | Topic |
| Adi Mehta, Senior Risk Engineer | Swiss Re Corporate Solutions | The use of structural mass timber in building and infrastructure projects in the future |
| Nathan McLellan, Vice President – First Party Claims, Asia Pacific | Liberty Specialty Markets | The importance of clarifying LEG2 and LEG3 for all parties during the energy transition ahead |
| Patrick Martin, Graduate | Chubb | Risk and data strategies to better manage insurer exposure to rapid ESG targets |
| Sumeet Bhardwaj, Senior Engineering Adjuster | Integra Technical | An insurance industry-wide levy to form a fund that responds to help manage uninsured losses following wide-area flooding |
| Trudie Moeller, Regional Director, Asia Pacific | CCI | How insurers can better ‘roadmap’ a claim for insureds to avoid disputes about RFIs and substantiation. Download now. |
The five finalists will now be paired with a senior W+K Property, Energy + Infrastructure lawyer. These pairs will have four months to co-author a 2,000 word white paper on the finalist’s topic.
The white papers will be assessed by our judging panel, with the winner announced on 19 June 2023. All finalist white papers will be published in 2023.
The competition winner will receive a trip to a key industry event, such as the Lillehammer Energy conference in Norway, PICS in London, the Asia Pacific Energy Conference or the Asia Power Forum in Singapore, to the value of A$10,000. Each finalist will receive travel vouchers in their jurisdiction to the value of A$1,000.
More information about the competition can be found here.