Insurance experts are flocking to Tel Aviv this week for the May 11 commencement of Tel Aviv Re. The yearly event held by the Israel Insurance Association (IIA) is attended by senior insurance industry executives from Israel and around the world.
The goal of the event is to provide a physical meeting ground for Israeli insurance companies with the world’s leading reinsurance agencies; those companies which insure the insurers. Tel Aviv Re will last for one week, kicking off with a cocktail night led by the IIA chairman Yair Hamburger.
Tel Aviv Re was launched in 2007 by Harel Insurance president Gideon Hamburger (who was then serving as IIA chairman). This year’s Re conference will be the first in two years, following a hiatus brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to IIA director-general Dr. Guy Rotkopf, the Israeli insurance industry wasn’t financially impacted in a severe way by the pandemic.
“[At the onset of COVID-19], insurance companies were very solvent; they entered the pandemic with very solid financial assets,” he said. However, while insurance and reinsurance companies and executives did communicate with each other virtually during that period, the time away has led to an increased demand for a physical event in Israel.
“This year, many people are expected to come,” Rotkopf said. In fact, this year will see one of the event’s largest turnouts, with more than 150 people from 20 different countries. “[The attending executives] love Israel, they love doing business here and they love to visit.”
Additionally, this year will see the first executives visiting from the United Arab Emirates, following the recent groundbreaking Abraham Accords, which laid the foundation for historic business collaboration between Israel and the UAE.
That, plus the continuous growth of the sector, has led to a strong insurance sector in the blue-and-white state. “In the last five years, there’s been enormous growth in the Israeli insurance industry, with a lot of investment in Israeli hi-tech and infrastructures,” Rotkopf said.