Patrick Tiernan’s Opening Remarks at IDF Summit 2026

It is a pleasure to have you here for this year’s IDF Summit — both as host and as a member of the Insurance Development Forum Steering Committee.

For nearly 350 years, Lloyd’s has been insuring the world as it develops. Today we embrace that spirit and history as we think about how to insure the developing world.

You are joining us in a place where risk has been understood, priced and shared for generations. Lloyd’s is proud of its history of firsts. First auto policy, first aviation policy. First space policy, first cyber policy. Can we add another chapter to that history with the work we do together at this summit?

Insurance, properly executed, underpins growth, resilience and innovation. It gives businesses the confidence to invest, communities the means to recover, and governments a more credible way to prepare for shock. In that sense, insurance is not just a financial product. It is part of the infrastructure of economic development and resilience.

And that infrastructure is under increasing strain. The world today faces complex, interconnected and volatile perils. Climate risk, geopolitical fragmentation, cyber vulnerability and fiscal pressure are no longer isolated challenges. They are converging. They move through supply chains, infrastructure, public balance sheets and communities with increasing speed and force. Volatility is not cyclical but structural.

That is why the work of the IDF matters. The protection gap is widening, and capital alone will not close it. If we are serious about building resilience — particularly in developing and emerging economies — then bringing public policy and private capital together in a commercial partnership is not optional. It is essential.

We need practical collaboration between governments, development institutions, donors and the insurance industry to turn expertise into implementation and ambition into scale.

What the IDF has demonstrated is that this can be done. It has shown that when the right institutions come together, insurance can move from being a missed opportunity in post event analysis, to being recognised as a tool of critical preparedness before it. That shift matters. Because when risk financing is arranged in advance, countries are better able to protect development gains, improve fiscal resilience and recover faster when disaster strikes.

It also requires us to be more ambitious in how we think about innovation. Insurance has a strong record of turning emerging threats into insurable realities. But innovation cannot sit at the margins. Commercial rigour and innovation must co-exist in a way that expands resilience without compromising underwriting quality. I believe they can.

For all of us, it means being honest about the scale of the challenge. We cannot assume that public finance alone will absorb increasingly severe and frequent shocks. Nor can we rely on incremental progress where the protection gap is moving faster than our response.

Return and resilience are not in conflict — they depend on one another. The long-term health of the market relies on our ability to engage early with emerging risks and new opportunities.

The IDF helps countries to understand risk, line up finance for recovery and, ultimately, retain control over their own futures.

Its objective is not just responding to disasters after they have hit but also building resilience before they occur.

It brings together diverse groups with complimentary expertise: governments, development institutions, humanitarian organisations, specialist law firms, technology providers and insurers.

We have seen encouraging examples of what can be achieved.

Jamaica used a layered approach to build disaster resilience, including insurance and pre-arranged risk financing

This helped strengthen confidence in its long-term economic outlook even in the face of significant catastrophe losses.

The result was that rating agencies reaffirmed Jamaica’s credit rating – with a stable outlook – even in the wake of Hurricane Melissa resulting in a 40 per cent hit to GDP last year.

Insurance has always been a business built on optimism – the belief that, when we put our collective minds to it, there is no risk we can’t understand and manage, no risk that we will allow to stand in the way of progress.

For as long as we continue to bring together expertise, capital and ambition in pursuit of that goal, I remain optimistic about the future.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

We are delighted to be hosting you.